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Ask Slashdot: Tech Customers Forced Into Supporting Each Other?
An anonymous reader writes "Has anyone else noticed the trend towards 'community forums' where customers are basically being recruited to solve the issues of other customers while the companies selling the products causing the issues sit back and take a passive role in the process? Granted, sometimes the companies' employees play an active part in the forums and provide some value-add by contributing crucial, and often undocumented, knowledge that solves the problem in a timely fashion. Unfortunately, that isn't always the case, and this leaves customers with no visibility into whether or not their problems are being addressed, and, if they are, when they might expect to receive assistance. This is bad enough when dealing with consumer electronics that cost up to a couple of hundred of dollars, but it's completely unacceptable when dealing with proprietary design tool vendors that are charging several thousand dollars for software licenses for tools that are the only option if a customer doesn't want to drop an order of magnitude more money to go with 3rd party tools (e.g., Synopsys). Who do you think are the worst offenders of this downloading of support onto the backs of the customers themselves, and what can be done about it?"
Customer Support Far superior to slave wage 3rd world call center or minimum wage uneducated moron with 8 hours of training
Generally, the number of a tool's users >> than the number of developers or support staff.
You're just noticing this? A successful business model these days includes limiting how much you actually have to deal with your customers. It's not just tech. Forums, voice menus and FAQs are the order of the day for problem solving.
http://www.rootstrikers.org/
This sort of thing has been going on for years, probably as long as there have been companies and products. Can't get X to work, maybe your neighbor can, why not ask? In the case of software and other technical products, it really costs the company little to setup a forum, so why not? Also the people doing the supporting are completely volunteer, and are compensated in a feeling of helping others. If they don't want to participate, then they can stop at any time.
Terrible support.
Just like modern medical and cancer. Together, doctors and pharmas often charge $40-50,000 a month for chemo with 5-30 minutes dr support, but the vict... er, patients have to mine forums and beg for help.
Everything you say is true, but at least having such a forum where one can get some support is better than not, and better than having that pseudo-support scattered across a dozen boards over the Internet. Doesn't excuse such lazy behavior, of course. Generally, if a company is providing an expensive product for which I need support, and then provides crappy support, I'll be looking for an excuse to try a competitor's product next time out. You might think that this would lead companies to upgrade their support, but it doesn't seem to. One of the big problems is that most of that company's customers are idiots, so it's a huge money sink to constantly answer their silly questions with expensive, highly trained support people. So, if a producer is using the forum to weed out the Tier 1 "Would it work better if I plug it in?" crowd while jumping in and helping out when someone has a real problem, then I guess I don't have a problem with it. If such a forum is viewed as a replacement for support, then I'll likely be looking at competing products next time.
I had that problem with 3Dstudio max back in its heydays.
...simply based on their PRIDE of their work. I was in love.
I finally decided to bite the bullet and go legit, I purchased a full 3Dstudio max 4 license + character studio (In my country, that cost over 5000 USD back then), and I didn't receive ONE ounce of support, only mocking for not having the right equipment for their software.
3D studio Max 4 got constant crashes with Application Error and corrupted files. And while I was in the middle of an important animation project of mine, this was unacceptable. Freezes and Crashes. Autodesk supporters blamed my computer. I did everything they said, I upgraded to Windows 2000 Professional, I upgraded my ram to the maximum possible limit. I even switched the mainboard 3 times + upgraded to the recommended intel processor. It still had the same freezes and crashes.
After 6 month struggling with the big corporation, I got tired of 3D software and swore I'd never use it again, but once a 3D artist...always a 3D artists...it's almost like being an alcoholic, it is THAT addictive (at least to me), so I tried Blender 3D (back then it was a small runt around 2mb while 3Dstudio max was a 60mb beast), and I had less crashes, albeit it was harder to learn.
Discovered a few bugs in Blender, and reported it to the coders (Ton Roosendaal), and got an INSTANT response, no longer than 2 days had some of his coders in his coding team fixed the bug, free of charge
And what can we learn from that? Today I still use Blender, albeit for professional production. I've produced high end commercial for the big brands such as Carlsberg (beer, not free...) worldwide and never looked back.
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
In the end this reduces the cost of software to the customer.
Customer benefits by having ready access to a database of information produced by other users (more expert than any front line help desk).
Vendor benefits by not having cost overhead of front line support infrastructure.
Everyone benefits by having honest information exchange.
Vendor developers/consulting team provide secondary support and expert knowledge as appropriate.
This is a win/win for all involved.
Is this akin to the "To help the environment, please reuse your towels" sign in hotel bathrooms? Sure, we know this is really to increase the profits of the hotel. But in a free market with open competition, these figures ultimately produce a cheaper product for the consumer.
Thoughts?
Although, as a developer who uses Unity, I feel like there are many situations where other developers will have better insights into how to solve a particular problem than Unity support personnel. I don't mind searching forums for answers (and posting my solutions when they contribute to the conversation) but there does need to be a clear process to make a bug report (and hopefully to track it through to a fixed state).
Community support is people who actually *use* the product. There are a lot more people there than could possibly be employed by the company, and the problems and solutions will be kept so you're likely to find the solution via google without even needing to deal with the hassle of tech support.
A good company will keep tabs on the forums and if there's a particular common issue, they'll investigate that. I'd rather they spend the money doing that than dealing with what their customers can do.
Google is the absolute worst about this. There is no way to contact them directly. Building a plugin for Google docs was one of the worst development experiences I have had in the last year. The documentation was poor, no examples, no support and a constantly changing API. Worst of all, no support. They're environment broke and it was a week or more before they even acknowledged it.
Google is one of the worst offenders.
I've noticed several bugs with chrome, but there is nowhere to report by but their shitty support "group": where I was told to try reinstalling.
Everything you say is true, but at least having such a forum where one can get some support is better than not, and better than having that pseudo-support scattered across a dozen boards over the Internet. Doesn't excuse such lazy behavior, of course. Generally, if a company is providing an expensive product for which I need support, and then provides crappy support, I'll be looking for an excuse to try a competitor's product next time out. You might think that this would lead companies to upgrade their support, but it doesn't seem to.
One of the big problems is that most of that company's customers are idiots, so it's a huge money sink to constantly answer their silly questions with expensive, highly trained support people. So, if a producer is using the forum to weed out the Tier 1 "Would it work better if I plug it in?" crowd while jumping in and helping out when someone has a real problem, then I guess I don't have a problem with it. If such a forum is viewed as a replacement for support, then I'll likely be looking at competing products next time.
Company's don't pay very well for the in-house support roles from my own miserable experience. Yes, the users often could have resolved the issues themselves with a bit of thought but these days nobody wants to think for themselves. If you think providing support in the tech market is horrible just try voluntarily supporting adult students in any discussion board within the on-line classroom. Entitlement mentality reigns supreme.
Adobe is filled with issues, among them when I am compelled to sign in to verify I am an authentic user each time I use the software. This does not bode well when I am in transit and have no access to wifi. I used the forums and asked about this issue but receive a robotic response that you do not need to sign in each time you use the product. My experience proved the contrary. I call Adobe tech support, who asks to log onto my computer, and over several days it feels like half of India is lgging onto my computer to try to repair this issue. I figure a reinstall would do the trick, several reinstalls later, no change. India still needs to get on my machine to try to figure out what the hell is going on and the engineers over at Adobe are laughing because they tell their outsourced labour nothing. You get the forums and get little help or call in and get no help either. Adobe has the largest market share in their industry, so they do not care. Only when an upstart gives them a run for their money will you see Adobe shake a leg.
"SO we bide our time, waiting for a purer kick to bloom and the future is still bleak, uncertain and beautiful" -GSYBE
You've identified a hole in the market.
It's more than just some brilliant VP deciding to reduce the cost of support by basically saying, "let's let the users tell each other how to fix our product."
The really nasty part of this, and you'll see this on any "community forum" for any product of any complexity, is the amount of BS and crap information being repeated as gospel, without correction or clarification from the vendor. One guy who has a flukey problem posts a sketchy "solution," other people extrapolate from it, n00bz try to apply it to completely unrelated issues and fail, they complain about not getting "support," whine when the board veterans and few people who DO know something don't immediately reply to their vague posts, the n00bz leave, the veterans fall away, and "community support" rapidly becomes "no support."
Oh, unless you buy a support agreement, but then, since their few remaining support techs don't hear about some or many of these bizarre problems, they don't fix them, meaning paid support is worse than nothing.
I've seen this occur over and over in situations where "community support" isn't accompanied by skilled, consistent moderation AND intercession by the paid support techs and the developers. If you completely leave the users to try to "support" themselves, you end up with no users to support.
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Rotate the pod, please, HAL....
I find that company support rarely is any good. Right off the bat if you call all they want is feedback for their MBAs, where did you buy it, when did you buy it, are you considering buying another in the next 6 months, how many people work at your company, etc. All this to ask how to reset the router to factory settings.
Or I can google "How to reset my ABC router to factory settings."
Then you get the brain dead people who just don't care. The other day I was a bell aliant and I asked them if their FiberOp has a real IP..... "what is an IP?" Then "Yes it probably does."
This could actually be good for open source, if company's are providing support through forums, then people will be used to this model when using open source without any "official" support.
Even that would not be so bad IF THEY ORGANIZED THEIR FORUMS AND FIXED THE SEARCH FUNCTION.
If I have version X of product Y then I should be able to search on product Y with a sub-search on version X.
I should NOT be getting results that apply to product A, B or C. UNLESS the company tech support people have specifically gone through and WRITTEN an answer and specifically labelled it as applying to A, B, C and X (version 1, 2, 3 and 4).
It cannot be that difficult to build a flow chart for the most common searches / problems that are appearing in your forums.
They basically have no support. How this company is still in business baffles me.
I work as a network technician for a K-8 school. My job, and the job of my small team, is to provide infrastructure and other equipment to our staff and students. Thankfully, we have an eager bunch who are anxious to learn. This proves beneficial to us because, frankly, we'd never get anything done if every student (or teacher) who didn't know how to cut/paste came running to us for support. That's not to say we don't assist people, or that we don't have busy days, only that smaller, more well-known problems can be handled by our staff--or, in this case, our community. Granted, we're also not some big company selling our product to consumers and then wiping our hands of any and all responsibility. Like with my humble tech team, a reasonable amount of service should be expected, but I strongly believe end users should be able to educate themselves. That said, I'm still gonna mash "0" until I get a human :)
The company I worked for 20 years ago bought some expensive software and the people who came out to install it couldn't make it install. A call to their own tech support was no help. Boss called me up to look at the problem. When I looked at their install batch file I saw the problem was the install script assumed the hard disk was at C:. When you have more than 2 floppies in the system the first hard disk is at E:. The system had three floppies. I modified the install script while the two company reps watched and the install when fine. A forum having other people with a similar hardware setup might have been a help.
Dyslexics Untie!
US companies have been engaged in a race to the bottom for some time now. Laying people off and borrowing money to buy back stock and keep the price up (and fatten that bonus). The constant layoffs and off-shoring have really eaten into the company's abilities to support or even produce quality goods. I used to work with an "enterprise" product for which we paid millions in licensing fees (yes, millions). The support was awful and the product quality seems to be constantly eroding. I don't know what replaces the old model. Perhaps a community based tool set. Whatever the solution, those companies that provided "enterprise" products at huge prices will not be a part of it.
You meant 'offloading'. If someone downloads something on to my back, I'm going to ask them to get a towel and clean it up.
The quality of support you get from forums. mailing lists, and IRC channels is almost always far better than that directly provided by the company. Support teams that are competent enough to not just be warm bodies reading from a script simply don't scale well, because support employees at that level of competency expect (and deserve) to be paid as much as developers.
The vast majority of support queries on the other hand are repeats of the same questions, over and over again from customers who can't be bothered to use Google to search for their problem which means companies have to have a filter in place. That filter can be a forum, a web form that forces you to view every single article in the knowledge base, or a team of barely trained monkeys who are underpaid, and will burn out within 3-6 months from being asked the same questions over again by customers who are, on average, so dense that they don't mention the device in question isn't even turned on until they have already nodded along and gone through 30 minutes of "troubleshooting".
The use of community based support shouldn't itself be a concern, but how that support is implemented, how it's managed, and how the company uses that community based support to triage and escalate issues should be. In the most effective, and customer friendly cases, community support basically is used to to weed out the people who can't bother to help themselves from the people who have real problems, and the latter will get real support from "power users" or even actual developers.
The key to making that work in favor of the customers that actually need help is good moderators. They need to be jaded, vicious bastards who will stamp out any hint of noise amidst the signal, who aren't afraid to humiliate someone who posts the exact same question without reading the post directly below it where someone else asked the same thing.
All of this, should of course be accompanied by the best paid support you can find, at whatever rate allows you to pay your support staff a good (at least $25 USD/HR) wage plus medical, mental health, sick days, vacation and other benefits, and generally keep them happy. This should be a "tierless" support team if at all possible - the people you put there should be able to handle anything that comes their way, or act as a liason between customer and developer when necessary. The rate for this level of support should be high enough that your support team shrugs off people asking "dunb" questions as suckers who wasted their money rather than banging their head in frustration.
Chances are, the same support people can be providing paid phone support and "escalating" cases from the forums for free support when it's needed & deserved. Everybody wins in this case - lazy people can pay to be lazy, people with no time to wait for a solution can pay for one, and people who are willing to work to find a solution can get the help they need free of charge.
I work for a company that does this for one of our products (not our main product, but a mobile app) simply because the app would otherwise be unprofitable. We typically sell the app or $3, and this app is to control an external device (not ours), so can require some configuration of the customer's environment. It's not something simple like a game, but it actually interacts with other things on the customer's network.
It's not a great situation, but there's just no way to support the users that need help setting up port forwarding on their router, re-configuring AV software, etc, on a $3 app. If we provided regular 1:1 support on a $3 app, it wouldn't make business sense for us to sell the app. If we raised the price to something like $20, I'd bet no one would buy it and we would STILL have many customers that want their hand held through everything.
I learned pretty quickly that the engineers skilled in making customers go away looked better when management did their metrics. Sometimes there were complicated problems (customer building a custom PCB made an error in assigning IRQs or memory mapping error). Customers figured out to ask for me specifically, which did not help my metrics. It is really a shame when companies design their process to make people fail. What an effin mess.
Merely supplying some kind of forum site centered on the product where users can gather has value. It's a bonus when they don't sanitize the content to bury problems and hide discontent; I've found that quite often if the product isn't complete crap, they're sort of self-regulating and total whiners get ignored by normal participants even.
Maybe it is a way to cut corners on support, but what kind of support were you really expecting -- a product development engineer dropping everything to figure out your issue? That doesn't exist except at the highest priced support levels for the largest enterprises and products, and even then you are just as likely to get steered into a hall of mirrors of consultants and local partners who just want to bill more. In almost all cases the alternative to Forum-centric support is bad telephone support and a weak knowledge base, at least from the vendor. If you're lucky there may be a third party site that helps, but often this just fragments knowledge across zillions of similar sites.
And it's not like supplying a reasonable forum is free, either. It takes software, hardware, hosting, administration and those cost money. I'll take the hive mind of other users over what the alternative is for the same money, which is like one one additional FTE -- an overworked, underpaid, clueless phone support drone.
VMware used to have awesome support -- has gone to hell -- get the impression the techs just want to close out cases as fast as possible, solution be damned. Some issues encountered. had the case closed out 5-6 times with no solution -- have to phone up to re-open it or start a brand new case on the same un-resolved issue. What happened to them?
I've done work for a local charity to select, install and implement a local open-source solution. The problems came when the national HQ with a national IT department started arguing with our choice of an open-source solution, recommending a proprietary solution on the basis that "you'll be able to get support". It wasn't just that they wanted $1200 per year per seat (as opposed to nothing per year per seat), but also that they were based in Flagstaff, AZ and had no (zero) offices anywhere in my country or anywhere in Europe. Just how exactly were they going to supply this support? Meanwhile we had two local volunteers on board, both competent in the relevant language, both of whom would be available at an hour's notice at no charge. So whenever you find yourself facing a recommender who is pushing proprietary on the basis that "you'll get support", call him out on it, demand to talk to a previous customer to find out what support experience they have had, and challenge him to match local availability and fees for people with relevant skills.
"Cock Up Your Beaver" does not mean what you think. This sig is intended to clog filters and annoy do-gooders
Microsoft is one of the bad ones too.
You can see their support forums plenty of queries where their outsourced support people from China or wherever give wrong/irrelevant replies, probably just to meet their targets.
>90% of the time when there's a useful answer it's from some other user, not someone from Microsoft.
I can't actually remember a case where their support staff provided a useful reply (other than yes it's broken but Microsoft won't fix it if you count that as useful).
Real support costs money. Most people aren't willing to pay the proper cost for it.
The next best example of something we all own and often need troubleshooting is a car.
Routine car things are costly enough (oil change...). But that's the equivalent of running a virus scan or defrag.
If you ever have a real problem where something isn't working, it is costly. Diagnostic work? Even costlier and no guarantee it will work.
And the PC is ever more complex as you mod it will all kinds of stuff. Custom hardware. Custom software installed on it. Custom configuration.
Now, how much do you think it will cost you to fix a problem with your car that had it's engine replaced with a more powerful model, software modded... and all the other fancy things car modders do? Yeop... it's going to cost you a hell of a lot more.
And with cars, the normal answer is to just replace parts as a whole.
If you have a problem with some application crashing. Would you consider it valid support if they just said, let's try replacing your ram or upgrading your video card. Cost $500. And no guarantee of working.
And yes, car manufacturers do offer warranties. But they're typically void if you do anything to mod the car.
You'd no doubt not find that acceptable. You want them to fix the software.
Computers are just that complex. And for the rest of the industry, it is heavily cost driven.
Don't mind offering and reading wiki solutions. But I admit I prefer it on neutral turf to when it's hosted by the troublesome product maker, who sometimes edits or deletes angry comments
Gently reply
People have no idea how much tech support costs. I used to run a tech support department in the 90s (on the technical side, not a manager) and it was always funny when customer would claim to have been "Ripped off" because they waited on hold for 10min.
How much did you pay for the device?
Take that, the figure out how much profit the manufacture is getting. 1/3 of the sale price would be very generous.
Figure out how long you were on the phone with support.
Assume the support worker is making minimum wage: $7.25 (they made more but lets just assume)
multiply... subtract...
The manufacture pretty much loses all profit as soon as you call them.
They first tried putting support on-line. But the people who needed support were usually so un-tech savvy they couldn't even open a browser. (this was the 90s)
So then they tried IVR (phone tree support) but people were too impatient and just skipped it.
They tried raising the price of the product but people wouldn't pay.
Then they tried charging for support. People flipped out and every call turned into an hour long bitch session.
Then they moved support out of the country so they could hire bellow minimum wage. But then the customers started screaming because people "Didn't speak English" That kind of bugged me because I trained staff from Jamaica and India, and they were all very intelligent people. Far more skilled than the people calling in and complaining.
Finally they just put up forums and said "screw it" and shut down support all together. I got laid off, got a hell of a lot better job and the general public just ended up forgetting that there was ever such a thing as phone support.
Over my career, I worked on many different mainframe systems (IBM "big iron") and with many different commercial applications. No matter which system or application, we were always involved (either passively or actively) with the associated "user group".
For IBM systems (both hardware and software), it was "Guide" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GUIDE_International) and "Share" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SHARE_%28computing%29). Other applications and services had their own user groups.
I can't comment on the trend to dispensing with vendor-support in favour of user-group support, but I can assure you that user-group support has (for decades) been a staple in the industry.
"values of beta will give rise to dom!"
http://xkcd.com/979/
We've all had that experience.
"Has anyone else noticed the trend towards 'community forums' where customers are basically being recruited to solve the issues of other customers while the companies selling the products causing the issues sit back and take a passive role in the process?"
Like the forums that existed on CompuServe over 20 years ago, and probably elsewhere before that? No, never noticed them.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
This was recently brought up on the Meta Stackoverflow site:
Third-party development support: hosted by Stack Overflow
There are local guys who moonlight as support staff but it is pretty hard to make a living at it.
For one, lets face it, home computing is a commodity. Also, tech has become MUCH easier to use. The days of the 2 inch thick IBM manuals are long gone and now we have quick setup sheets, trouble shooting charts, Google and user manuals that are at most 20 pages covering 4 different languages.
Then there are all those free classes at local community centers and schools. And just about every family has a tech savy person or two.
And of course Googling for an answer works 99.9999% of the time - why hire a guy for $65 to come to your house when google will tell you what you need to know.
And lastly, the truly tech illiterate left in this World waste their money at Geek Squad or some other big box store - whcih as we all know makes their money selling people shit they don't need; not from support.
We started it in most cases. Then companies created forums to bring the rogue help sites under their umbrellas (to help control the conversations; Apple loves to delete threads they don't like).
As long as there are EULAs stripping the user from all warranty rights, there won't be any incentive to provide support. "We got your money, good luck" The only way to work around this (for consumer tech) is to buy Apple (sorry slashdoters), because software and hardware is basically one product, and the exact same software runs on a great number of devices, so if a problem exists they 'll be shamed into fixing their software. That's why people who hate even the idea of troubleshooting buy them. Nobody cares about your random laptop or android phone/tablet however.
But Adobe promised me if I upgraded on a special price from CS5 to CC, I'ld be able to use CC anytime and only be required to check in once-in-awhile and have lots of time after my subscription ran out to pay up or get all my files converted and back, etc. etc.
Are you telling me Adobe lies?
Most customers at the retail or just above level are not willing to pay what good support costs. There are exceptions and there are companies that make money on support. But in the end Word (a low support product) beating Word Perfect (a high support product) because people valued price and some slight additional features over support is the general case. People in general are only willing to pay for light support for most of their products.
I think the current model where people buy light support with a rich eco-system of partner's programs which provide strong support is likely the best overall solution given the preferences of the purchasers.
This has been happening forever. Did the OP just get online recently? What planet is the OP from?
Their tech support is the WORST. so the only way I ever find answers is via forums. Sadly they make the best Bluetooth components for motorcycle helmets in the world, but they piss on their customers badly because they have no real competition, everyone else is in the dark ages technology wise.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
We use a public support forum format while supporting a set of software products, but we'd never leave the customers just supporting each other.
We use a public forum for all support cases (except those involving private information - mostly sales/billing issues) for some fairly simple reasons; Every time we solve a problem and the user is happy, we get...
- A public page on the web that shows us solving real problems and making customers happy.
- A clear demonstration that we are not hiding any problems - our stuff is not perfect, but we'll get the issues sorted.
- A public, Googleable page for the next guy who may have the same problem.
In our experience, using a public forum will GREATLY reduce the volume of support requests. The vast majority of issues that people run into are common enough so that if the guy Googles for the specific error, he'll most likely end up on a page where the exact same problem was already solved for some other guy. I do not have any recent metrics on this, but I'd venture a guess that these days something like 70-80% of problems are sorted before the user has to post anything. Thank Google and all that.
The only real drawback is that sometimes you run into people who have the dreaded mentality; "Customer is always right, so I must be right, so I'll vent on this forum and scream like a little kid and it'll get everything magically sorted, or at least my money back". Those require careful forum posting-fu to defuse the situation. Luckily in most cases even these temper tantrum people tend to back down if you do not get dragged into a mud wrestling match and stay in "just the facts" mode. Also slightly delaying the response to a "off the deep end" case often helps. They'll get their response, but they'll have to wait a few hours and during that time the emotional outburst has passed and if the reply is calm and level-headed, very few people continue pouring crap.
I'm fairly proud that in the past ~4 years I've had to outright remove only something like 5 public posts that crossed the line into unreasonable abuse without cause.
Now system like this requires that the support team is properly supported by the actual guys writing the code and support is actually able to push for bugs to be reproduced in QA & trigger a patch development process when the product is confirmed to be broken. Works in a small company of few dozen people, probably would be very hard to do in a big company. Also requires that the management actually recognizes the value of supporting something we've sold in the past but which isn't bringing in substantial revenue any more.
Shocking, isn't it?
TI (Texas Instruments)
Maybe big corporations can get support through another channel but everyone else has the forums.
They are patrolled by some TI insiders.
No one every answers my questions (3 of them). I think they were thoughtfully composed.
Even questions sent directly to the support email address had zero response after the automated 'we have received your inquiry' thing.
I see you've used the "chef" management software from www.opscode.com, or the "Zmanda" software built on top of AMANDA backup software, or the "Xen" virtualization software commercialized from the original freeware, or "subversion" from Wandisco?
I don't have a moral problem with this, as long as the companies actually *do* provide commercial grade support. It's been handy to have a contract with Opscode to get problems fixed upstream, and Citrix Xen is a vast improvement over the original Xen freeware. It has management tools that were not designed by monkeys working on "Hamlet".
We use a company that manages our cable modem provisioning. They tried one of those forums and it failed when the three or four of us that helped said enough.
I had (still have) problems with Dazzler video-to-usb. After long campaign to get video to work but never can get audio feed. Customer support is useless so that leaves the forums, which most are bankrupt. Most of posts are people with same problems, most solutions are copy/paste from same post from whereever (which does not address problem). But all these forums you gotta register with account name and password.
There used to be usenet where anyone can post and read, and since it was not technically sophisticated, you can't really copy/paste same crap over and over (you had to type your writings like a typewriter). This was also before the marketeers and spammers overran everything. sob!
mfwright@batnet.com
There are multiple layers of technical support, and they vary from company to company. A full tiered support model would include:
... 10 minutes tops. Would have taken me a LOT longer to call the manufacturer's technical support line.
... find a new vendor!
- Layer 0: Generalists on all products, read through scripts only
- Layer 1: Generalists on a specific product, know how to troubleshoot most common issues and some in-depth issues.
- Layer 2: Specialists, know how to troubleshoot in-depth issues.
- Layer 3: Code Fixers, will fix defects in code if identified
- Layer 4: Developers / Architects, author new code
The submitter makes no distinction between which layer of support they are referring to, so I can't tell where their frustration lies. For Layer0 and Layer1 issues, yeah, I'll be grateful to find the answer in a forum instead of having to call or email to get it figured out. Just fixed a family member's computer today thanks to Google + some forums
In some cases, Layer2 support in a forum is helpful, but often you need to send in data specific to your environment to troubleshoot further. I have serious concerns about doing that in a public forum and would look to open a ticket with the vendor instead. (Nice IP address, internal hostname and OS username you have in your logs there).
Most companies don't permit direct access to Layer3 and Layer4. Good luck working that out with your vendor. However, if you can't go directly to Layer2 support with the vendor you work with, you need to find a new vendor.
Disclaimer: I work in Layer2 support for an enterprise company. I have a BS in Comp Sci. and MBA. Most of my colleagues hold a Comp Sci undergraduate + a graduate degree of some sort. We could easily transition to a Layer3 or Layer4 job role at any time. However, most of us stay in Layer2 because we enjoy solving complex puzzles as a part of this job role. If the vendor you work with doesn't have high qualified specialists in Layer2
P.S. Since when did Slashdot start accepting anonymous submissions with no article?
I think one of the worst offenders is Apple. The article makes it sound like the problem is strictly with companies that lean on the community so the company can cut it's budget on support. Clearly Apple spends plenty on providing support and over 95% of the time their support is great. However, the official support from Apple has a conflict of interest in that they tend to provide the "answer" that is best for Apple and not always the answer that is best for the customer. Sometimes the community forums will provide a more technically correct answer or work-around that also reveals something Apple does not want to admit (design flaw, security issue, jailbreaking required, etc). Apple will then sanitize their forums of the best answers and leave only the responses from community members that re-iterate the unhelpful officially sanctioned answer. This allows them to artificially shape the appearance of their community support as falling in line with company sanctioned image. At the same time, Apple undermines the effort of the community to get to the correct answer as to why their problems are taking place. In some cases Apple successfully silences the most knowledge-able members of the community. In other rare cases the problem is large enough to provide motivation for creating sites outside of Apple's control such as the Time Capsule Graveyard. Regardless of the ultimate outcome, Apple has both squashed and hindered valid technical critiques of their products and services in a way that is not in the consumer's best interest.
worst offender in open source: the wine project.
Decades old issues require users to go hunting for patches done by other users, which seldom get into the official wine project.
No (working) two wine installations are equal, as everybody goes with different sets of patches and workarounds, hoping they don't break with each new release.. incredible mess.
Customer support forums are great, no matter WHO provides the solutions, as long as solutions come in a timely manner.
I think that's where each company needs to look at what it's doing for support, and using whichever method suits it best.
For example, I've been on a few forums for specialized music hardware or software where it was highly structured. You weren't really allowed to post messages helping out the next user. Rather, you had to post specific questions and wait for one of their support people to reply, as though it was an official "trouble ticket".
This gave a much worse result than a forum where the company provide no direct help at all, IMO. The official staff was slow in responding, and it usually required multiple emails back and forth as they asked for all sorts of details the company apparently made a procedure of collecting before assisting a person.
I think what USUALLY works best is an open forum where everyone can assist each other, but official employees are tasked with keeping up with the forum topics and interjecting assistance as well. But I can't tell you how often I've gotten useful advice from the Apple Support Forums, even though nobody from Apple gave any official help at all in there. When you sell a product that's very widely used (like Apple does), almost anything you come across has also been observed by somebody else. The forums help get those people communicating with each other and raise awareness of an issue. Other readers quickly chime in if they have any suggestions or also saw the problem -- and before long, there's usually an answer. When it's clearly a problem that's insurmountable without a bug-fix from Apple, there's always the option to file an official bug report with Apple's online bug-tracker, and that usually gets it corrected for you by the next software or firmware release.
It's also true that sometimes, I've found the users of a product who are interested enough in it to frequent forums in the first place will know MORE about it than the staff at the company who sells it! So just calling in for support is inferior to asking on a public forum in those cases.
I don't think your example really proves much?
Sennheiser is a fairly large company that sells a lot of higher-end audio gear. It's quite possible they take a loss supporting the cheaper products in their line-up, but consider that an overall acceptable expense if it makes happy customers who eventually step up to their higher-end products.
The real problems with support come in with the companies who really only specialize in the cheaper items. Say you primarily sell 4-port USB hubs and generic 3-button mice for laptops? Or say you specialize in selling 3rd. party replacements for cellphone batteries? It's all a customer can really expect, IMO, to get a prompt exchange or refund for a clearly defective item within the stated warranty period. A toll-free number to get live support on these things isn't financially sensible.
But Adobe promised me if I upgraded on a special price from CS5 to CC, I'ld be able to use CC anytime and only be required to check in once-in-awhile and have lots of time after my subscription ran out to pay up or get all my files converted and back, etc. etc.
Are you telling me Adobe lies?
It only counts as a lie if you actually know it's not true.
Why yes, I have spent the last few weeks dealing with Adobe licensing issues, how could you tell?
yeah, subsidized. or maybe those $50 headphones didn't really cost $40 (lol) in shipping and retail markup, and they make plenty of profit but would prefer to keep as much as possible while not losing the business of people who have higher quality standards and not enough money to burn. yes, those people might buy sennheiser's more expensive stuff later, but that doesn't necessarily mean the return is taking a net loss.
but, yeah, pursuing a return on a noname $3 mouse seems pointless. i guess everyone draws the line somewhere. some people treat macbook pros as disposable.
"They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky
I think part of the problem is, people simply have no idea how many other people are calling in with issues on the same product!
At one of my old jobs, I remember constantly getting called on by the boss to help with his HP printer issues -- both in the office and sometimes at home. He'd volunteer to drive me out to his place over lunch (and usually buy me lunch as compensation) to take a look at it for him.
Truthfully, most of his issues were bugs that MANY, MANY people using multiple HP wireless printers were running into, as evidenced by Google searches on it. He used to complain and complain about how long he had to wait on hold to talk to reps at HP, who would then spend HOURS remote-controlling in to his computer(s) to try to iron everything out. Yet he was sure these issues had to be fairly unique to his environment. He wouldn't accept the idea that lots of people experienced these issues, because in his mind, "HP wouldn't be able to afford to keep the products on store shelves if this was happening to too many people."
What I don't think he realized was that yes, that's exactly why he had to wait on hold for an hour or more each time, and struggle through tech support with language barriers. There were that many people calling in with issues! Apparently though, when you're the size of HP, it's still more cost-effective for the company to keep cranking out printers and all-in-one devices that have known software problems, and just take the calls as they come in. (I imagine the money is mostly made on the ink anyway, and HP is fine with people wasting ink and paper trying to get test or network config. pages to print, in an attempt to fix them when they quit talking on the network.)
Yeah, no doubt the earbuds don't cost nearly as much to manufacture as the sale price on them. There's just not THAT much to a pair of them, no matter who sells them. But to be fair, the big difference in sound quality of the more expensive ones comes largely due to money invested up-front in R&Ding a specific pair. (You can bet companies like Skullcandy don't get sound engineers as deeply involved with the production process as Sennheiser does.) They have to roll the development costs into the product price too.
this has become tedious. now on slashdot is the time when we dance.
"They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky
Healthcare Software (EHR and PM software specifically) is the worst that I have experienced.
A single provider license could cost tens of thousands of dollars, yet support is terribly painful. The companies either host community forums or have robust third party non-mediated pages. Proprietary technical design limits the user ability to perform basic configuration changes, training for said design could cost additional thousands of dollars. Support cases close with out resolution or even a jumbled together work around, and developed is centered only around government policies and regulations instead of functionality requests from users of the product.
I remember a couple of decades ago this was the primary reason for going to the monthly meeting of the local computer user's group, to pick the brains of people more knowledgeable than yourself to give you pointers into a problem you have been having. Unfortunately the instant gratification of the Internet killed all the user groups. I miss the socializing and camaraderie. Now this same idea is returning, but in a much poorer form. There is no camaraderie, or social events like picnics etc.
Sounds like what answers.microsoft.com is.
Your check engine light comes on. See how much help you get calling GM! They'll tell you to take it to a dealer (which, by the way, is not part of GM).
Oh, so you got a "free" 10 year, 100,000 mile warranty? Oh yes, you paid for that, and it wasn't cheap. You just weren't allowed to opt out.
Why do we expect free technical support for computers?
This is too close to the support model offered by pinko-commie Open Source and Free software long-haired smellies.
For more information, please see the MCSCF (Microsoft Customer Support Community Forum).
OS Software is like love: The best way to make it grow is to give it away.
And the Chicago Manual of Style Online says ..
http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/qanda/data/faq/topics/Usage.html?page=1
But, yes, it's the Chicago Manual of Style. Go find out what Oxford says, will you? And let us know.
I pay through the nose for support and still am sent to the community (Thwack) for answers. If I'm giving you thousands of dollars, don't tell me to look at your forums.
Assembly is the reverse of disassembly.
I have no problem with support forums and use them often. My problem is with designated moderators/experts who are rude and unhelpful more often than they are helpful. My most memorable experiences with this is on the Netgear forums, one particular moderator. I'm willing to bet some of you know who I mean. Yes, I've search a thousand times and ways looking for the answer to this question. Yes, I've read your carefully crafted how-to's and other sticky's that even remotely relavent. I've spent days looking for the answer on my own so I wouldn't bother your awesomeness. I've indicated all of this in my first post on this topic, but you feel its still necessary to provide me a link to lmgtfy.com and tell me how utterly dumb my question is. That, or a single word or link response that is much less than useful or something I've already looked at. You were so busy telling everyone how awesome you are, you didn't bother to actually read my very well articulated question. Instead, you scan it for key words on topics you are an 'expert' on and tell me with a link or five words how to fix someone else's problem. I'm not asking for enterprise level support here, I've done a lot of footwork to provide as many details as possible in diagnosing the problem. If you are going to be a forum moderator, be helpful, not an egotistical asshole. Fine, the guy before me posted a question that is always answered with "have you tried turning it off and on again?". Don't assume we're all like this.
And something more I just remembered while writing this, don't delete posts that point to an answer on another board!!! This one i've seen a few places, including the above. Someone found the answer! Why don't we make sure the users that are supporting eachother can support eachother. Guess what, someone figured out the answer and put it on another board or blog. I'll keep using your product because I found the answer quickly and can continue working. If you don't at least link to them, I'll stop going to your site and go to there's. Some third party support forums die out, but wouldn't you want the community to gather specifically around your brand instead?
Thank you, that is all.
</SoapBox>
To work from home.
I didn't get what he meant by "Whyd"
Typo for why'd, a contraction of "why did".
In May 2008, Barack Obama's political opponents tried to discredit him by claiming that they had a tape of Michelle Obama calling President Bush the racial slur "Whitey". The tape never surfaced, and what evidence we do have is that it was actually the question "Why'd he?".
I think the subconscious expectation among end users is that all computers and computer peripherals come with a support contract at least as long as the 12-month warranty printed on the box.
I hate reading the same questions posted repeatedly due to the person not taking time to query the existing threads.
Do you also hate reading these questions? "I tried these three search queries, and they all turned up this and this and this instead of something relevant to my problem." Or "I tried searching once, found irrelevant results, tried to refine my search, and it told me I couldn't do another search so soon after my last." That shows that someone needs support not only for the product but also for the forum's search feature.
But why should the support staff waste their time repetitively answering a question that is already answered in a customer forum?
Perhaps one reason is the people speaking on a company's behalf are traditionally deemed a more reliable source than a customer forum. You can cite the support staff more credibly than you can cite a customer forum. If you consider it a waste of time, then the support staff could at least mark a customer's answer as having been recommended by a member of support staff.
A business staying in business benefits the customers by not going out of business, which would end support.
I've not only noticed tech co's exploiting the user knowledge base to solve their problems, but employers doing the same. Within the past five years, since the start of the Second Great Depression in 2008, some employers are issuing essays requests with job applications to the tune of, "If you were how would you solve this problem?" They expect applicants (thousand per job opening are not unusual) to solve their greatest problems....free. I decline to batch dump my brain on their table.
Another place I am seeing this is is academia. One university has a closed (heavily data mined) forum for faculty....about 5,000 of us, mostly Ph.D.'s...and brazenly asks questions like (verbatim) "How can the university raise 25 million for ." Mind you, this state owned university does not as much as have a long range planning committee! Small wonder they are foundering. I do not have a problem helping with open source, but these guys are the usual fat cats at the top, terrified for their jobs middle management, (aka admin) and a highly disposable/replaceable faculty.
Lovely if I could post the charts....according to the Dept of Labor and Statistics, real (meaning real purchasing power) wages (us) have declined since 1972, and since 2008, corporate profits have soared. Well of course, desperate skilled workers have never been cheaper to hire, whether here or abroad. The Depression is good for business just like war.
Why do I post as a cowardly Anon? There are lurkers everywhere, and I am terrified for my job too. Plus, I post hard hitting little quotes like the one below.
“Religion is the only thing keeping the poor from killing the rich.”
Napoleon Bonaparte, circa 1799
after you've purchased a product, you and the manufacturer are now in head to head opposition regarding support. every second you get some handholding costs them. the more serious the support required, the more skilled the support provider needed, and the more expensive. they can't afford to assign talented engineers to answer phones, so you get support from people who know less about the product than you do.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
I consider those forums an advantage. Before I purchase a product, I can look into the forums and see whether there is trouble ahead or not.
I see if the product has its issues or not, and I see if support is active or passive - something I can hardly check with traditional support options where first class support is always promised in bright colors, but not always delivered (no more Canon products in my house, thankyouverymuch!).
Sometimes there are even highly dedicated people from the community who enjoy helping people for fun. I don't know whether that asian guy in the SiLabs forums is still around, but he gave good and well.thought advice even for complicated problems. In the end, I go such a forum to have a problem solved. If the support comes from an official source or from another customer (if he has proven trustworthy, of course) does not always matter.
Having a good suupport is crucial for tech business, whether companies realize this or not. Last year I bought a stack of GPU cards for a project from ASUS, had trouble, needed support and support failed, I returned them and bought the Gigabyte version (with the same chip). That was a los for one company and win for another directly related to the quality of support.
Staff come and go from a company, and usually initial tiers of tech support are people with scripts who often have never used the product. For many questions along those lines, a support forum is a good place. The problem there is signal-to-noise ratio.
One of the best places for forums (especially "unofficial" forums), is around bugs or defects that companies refuse to acknowledge. In my experience, HP has been especially nasty for known design defects which they refuse to acknowledge.
Before I swore off using their products, I had one laptop with a Northbridge issue which would spontaneously reboot in high-memory applications if you had more than 1 stick of RAM. HP for a long time refused to acknowledge that it was a design issue, instead insisting it was software (they were even a patch for Photoshop users as it commonly ran into the issue, but lots of other graphics/game/media software also experienced it). They actually tried the old "deny until the warranty runs out" tactic on me for that but I found enough collaborative evidence to force some action from their support dept.
The second HP product I had "fun" with was one of the reversible tablet laptops. Remember the fun graphics chips that were bottom-mounted and tended to de-solder after heating up (similar to Xbox 360 RROD)? Many manufacturers actually replaced them with models that remedied the issue. HP just replaced the laptops with the same model (which inevitably would die) until you ran out of warranty. Even better, later models used a chip that was less hot, but still had the same *terrible* thermal design (it died a similar death, just took longer).
One solution to that from forums: remove CPU, add copper shim with good thermal paste (similar to the "X-Clamp" for the 360), and basically you had enough force to hold the chip onto the board as well as slightly improved thermal conductivity to the heatsink/fan. HP would obviously never recommend such user service, they'd just do as before replacing the laptop with the same model (same failure) until your warranty was out.
I've found lots of issues that had functional (if inelegant/unsupported) methods for keeping products alive that the manufacturers wouldn't dream of mentioning, mainly because they involved user-servicing. I'd also expect that since planning obsolescence into products means that your average user blames himself/herself/the kids and goes and buys the next piece of junk from the SAME VENDOR... it's money in the bank.