Why doesn't Cakewalk have a single "PR" person?

It occurs to me that most of the frustration about this company stems from the dead silence screaming in our ears.
 
I can't imagine why they wouldn't hire somebody to work this forum to at least create ths illusion that they care, and at best to actually use the feedback.
 
If there were someone here who just said, "Yes, I understand your frustration. We're going to do our best to address these issues", it would go a long way toward making us feel better about the company.
 
Is it not true that every one of us would jump ship if another company came up with equivalent software AND also had decent customer relations? I'll bet this place would empty out in a heartbeat. I don't know, it just seems like Cakerwalk's lack of customer relations is LEGENDARILY bad. I've written to support several times with no response, and I see people expressing major frustrations on these forums without a single person from Cakewalk validating our frustrations and simply telling us that our frustrations are important to them.
 
Maybe you guys have a differents view. I just know that it p!sses me off to no end when I faithfully buy a company's products and they can't even communicate with me in any way shape or form. It's the height of arrogance (or perhaps greed), and it will come crashing down if and when someone offers an equivalent product.
 
How hard is it to put someone on the forum to simply say "We're working on it and we value you. We want to make the best product possible for you"? Wouldn't that appease the masses and cut 90% of the complaining on these forums, which, by the way, are being read by lots and lots of PROSPECTIVE customers.

If you seek a single PR person, try eHarmony 


lol, you walked right into that one.

I heard that Cakewalk had hired a person to address forum queries. A PR guru with a formidable reputation. He spent one hour trying to figure out the forum software and ran away screaming and kicking.

On a more serious note, I think it would indeed be good to have more forum presence from Cakewalk besides Brandon. Another thing would be more active moderation. And I don't just mean closing threads or moving them to other sub forums. I mean the occasional post to remind people to stay on topic  or to stay polite etc. (IMO that is much more effective than a ban based on unknown people complaining for unknown reasons). Removal of offensive posts (Again, better than banning and leaving the offensive posts. ). Or the merging of threads that are too similar. Etc. In other words, general house keeping and visible company presence.

UnderTow

I may be remembering this wrong but in all the time I've been on this forum (since it was created though I only created a posting account later), the Cake folks have been active and helpful but tend to go a bit dark when things are either about to be unveiled or something requiring a ton of effort is underway.  I actually think they have historically engaged quite a bit more than what I'm used to from software companies.  I suspect the current situation is a huge honking deal for them in that we have a release X1 that is simultaneously:

1. buggy in bad enough ways for enough people that it can't be considered a minor oversight
2. changed enough in UI that some long-term users are professionally impacted by a learning curve that's forced upon them by a non-backwards-compatible design philosophy
3. released just prior to new competitive product releases (at least 3 and maybe 4 by my counting) that represented a serious threat to capture upgrade $$.

For a software organization, this is too catastrophic a situation to be taken lightly.  If I was guiding the Cake folks, the developers would be designing/coding/unit testing most of the time for long hours while EVERYBODY ELSE (with the necessary background) was using the product looking for problems so that X1b represents an 80% or greater reduction in bug occurrence frequency.  Folks like Brandon would be critical in wringing out release candidates as they are musicians, users and insiders so I would want him reading the forums to create punch lists for fixes and verification scenarios and using the software in as many devious ways as he can infer from the posted user experience and his own know-how. They need to be doing as much negative testing (trying things that are illegal or atypical to make sure the right error handling is in place) as possible and this is one of the hardest things in software development, especially when the driving stimulus is non-deterministic, i.e. us crazy users.

I guess I'm saying it's only been a couple of weeks since the brownness of the fan became noticeable so let's not infer too much motive from the lack of real-time interaction from the Cake folks.  Frankly, the way the user base is reacting to X1 is such that it would be a total waste of time for them to respond and get drawn into pointless arguments.  Still, as you guys have said, a periodic status update of the "we have reproduced more issues and remedied some significant ones - will let you know when it's in good enough shape that you'd rather have it than wait for perfection" type would be nice but OTOH, it represents ammunition for competitors or their advocates.  I personally prefer to err on the side of transparency but that's not a widespread point of view in multi-million $ organizations, at least not the ones I've been part of. 

I'm not trying to be a Cakewalk apologist here but I think my best chance for getting a satisfactory or at least acceptable X1 is to encourage Cake to listen and fix and not waste time wrestling in the mud with us pigs.  Again, if I could direct them, I'd want them to be working in near real-time with two or three of the forum folks like Mike McCue, Billy Arnell et al, giving them developer builds or having a product manager/UI specialist grill them, in order to increase their effective operational force strength but that may be too foreign to their culture or too disruptive to their staffing situation.  Either way, it looks like we've got about 2-3 months before we can draw a final conclusion on X1 in light of it's likely "final" stability level and the real (as in not just marketing) state of competitive options so I'm in favor of Cakewalk making sure that by that timeframe we've got no better choice than sticking with them.  I'm disgusted with Cakewalk for allowing this situation to occur but once I get back to a rational level of irritation, I'd rather have an X1 that lives up to most of its promise than anything else I currently know about.

longwindedly yours,
-c8

perhaps Brandon is single, who knows?

They do have a professional PR guy and dept. - they spend their time w/ professional groups/mags etc.  They are not customer service.

This is a user forum, created for users.  Brandon and others do drop by, I imagine in their spare time.  If I was a business, I can't imagine wasting money on paying someone to respond to legitimate (and non-legitimate) complaints on a forum or even to keep track of it.  I check it usually once or twice a day and it can kill a lot of time just trying to keep up.  And Cake has a process for bug reporting and a suggestion box, so the forums (as Brandon has said flat out more than once) aren't for that purpose, although I'm sure it gives them a good idea about likes and frustrations of their users that frequent here.

This is not to say there aren't good points posted here, and I've never seen this much frustration w/ a release.  I'm sure Cake is aware - it would be hard not to just looking at the thread headers.  But personally, I'd rather have Cake personal trying to fix bugs by an organized system in place rather than responding ad hoc here.  If you have followed threads where Brandon has responded you'll see they quickly turn into a mess. 

Still, some kind of forum announcement would be nice of what Cake is working on first, and a reassurance that it will be out, tho I doubt they even know how long it will take to fix some of the big complaints.

@

kubalibre


perhaps Brandon is single, who knows?

He might be single, who knows. I highly doubt he'd want to become romantically involced with Compguy though (or anyone else here).

*involved  

Simply put, there's simply not enough return on the investment to have reps moderating / responding in the forum. Also I think the power users here are likely to be far more well versed in the product than the available reps and that then would surface another source of frustration for users. 

I hear ya.  I had a Roland R-8 Human Rhythm Composer that developed an issue when you adjust the tempo (it would randomly shoot up to 220-bpm when making up/down changes).  I took it in for service and they said they "could not replicate the problem."  Which I was able to do as soon as I powered it up.  I was so angry that it kept me from buying any Roland products for over 20-years.  I recently jumped in with both feet getting a TD-20 SX, and well wouldn't 'cha know it...  Had a problem with the hi hats (which did get resolved).  

But I could go on and on about the subtle improvements they could make on an instrument that has a list of over $8,000 and a M.A.P. of $6,999!!! 

I like the posts where someone from Cakewalk does show up.
They kind of go like this.
Hey Robin what about........?
Hey Brandon can you tell me....?
Hey Seth what's up with........?
 
There are usually multiple attempts to gain the attention of the Calkwalk rep
within a single thread. It often turns into a feeding frenzy. I figure if the tables were turned I would not come to the forum with the water in full boil. I would tend to stick with the task at hand, and when completed, release it , and hope for good results in the re-writes.
 
But what the heck do I know, I'm still unemployed.
Still a 8.5 user, but I don't want that to be forever.