Guitarmech111
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SONAR Support needs help and longer hours for phone support!
c'mon - 45 mins to wait for someone to pickup the support line on a toll call??
Bakers - you need to get longer hours for phone support and get more manpower to help with the issues being reported via phone.
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easyjoey
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Re: SONAR Support needs help and longer hours for phone support!
2014/01/03 15:27:13
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Agreed. 1:00 to 6:00 isn't long enough. Luckily, I have not had to wait 45 minutes to get help.
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Splat 
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Re: SONAR Support needs help and longer hours for phone support!
2014/01/03 15:48:55
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I would much prefer online chat.
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Re: SONAR Support needs help and longer hours for phone support!
2014/01/03 15:51:50
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I agree as well. Unfortunately we are doing the best we can at the moment. Phone support hours are so we can also offer email support. The vast majority of our customers contact us via email these days, from all over the world.
Average hold time for today is pretty bad, but it's not 45 minutes. It's sitting at 13 minutes. For 2013 our average hold time was 2 minutes for all Customer Service and Technical Support.
We're pretty busy from questions from a lot of holiday volume, which is pretty normal for any company. Try to remember we don't have hundreds/thousands of employees.
I want to hire more staff as well and am always hoping we can do this. This forum isn't really the best place for this conversation though.
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Guitarmech111
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Re: SONAR Support needs help and longer hours for phone support!
2014/01/03 16:00:51
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Ryan, I was told on the phone that hold time was 45 minutes. I was on hold for 20 mins and hung up!
You wonder why most of your support is via e-mail?? It is because your phone support window is so small.
Hire me, I will work remote for you. seriously. I need a gig. PM Me if you wanna talk more then.
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Re: SONAR Support needs help and longer hours for phone support!
2014/01/03 16:12:22
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Conley, I'm looking at the reporting. Average hold time: 13 minutes 31 seconds for today. It's an average. Right now the queue's are pretty busy.
On average, our hold times historically are 2 minutes or less. I'm not making up data here. 5 years ago this was not the case. We've improved our services quite a lot. A lot of our customers email us because this is what they prefer to do. I have access to this information whereas you do not. You're making a major assumption. Customers were contacting us mostly by email when our support times were extended as well. I have an insane amount of data here that showcase all kinds of trends. This was the reason we reduced the phone support hours, not the opposite. One alternative is to start charging for technical support, but I'm not quite sure this is the direction we'd like to go.
Anyhow, I'm not going to go into details here. There are so many aspects of what we do that are not exposed to this forum.
We offer free technical support for our products. Most of our competitors charge premium rates to even have a conversation with technical support. We're always trying to improve our services, but let's not trivialize how much everyone at Cakewalk does. You are one customer, and we want to do as much as we can to help you, but there is a sea of other customers we have to help as well.
I'm sorry that we're quite busy right now and that the hold times are poor, but everyone is quite literally doing an insane amount of work. Try to understand that we're also going through a lot of changes here at Cakewalk. It's been an interesting year for us, but actually an extremely positive one. And, like I said, I agree with you. I'd like to see more help.
Anyhow, I'm sure things will calm down after everyone gets back into the swing of things and recovers from the holiday madness. Sorry for the difficulties in the meantime.
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slartabartfast
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Re: SONAR Support needs help and longer hours for phone support!
2014/01/03 16:28:07
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CakeAlexS
I would much prefer online chat.
Online chat is not a solution to the wait problem, although it does often provide the illusion of a response, since the support person (or robot) can download some chatty prepared text that makes you think he is delighted to help you while he is juggling a dozen other chat lines. If you want a human response, you have to wait until the question can enter the human brain and the answer get back out, whether that output is text or sound. I have had some very bad output from hassled and confused support personnel trying to type answers to me and god knows how many other customers on his cue. At least with oral communication you have a better chance of getting the full attention of the poor bastard on the other end of the line. Online chat has the advantage of leaving a written record and a complicated process is much easier to understand in that format. Email has the disadvantage of taking hours to days to clarify what you are asking and the answer if neither is clear in the first draft. It has the advantage that a complicated question can be forwarded to a knowledgeable source if the guy who gets to read it first is not very sharp. My personal favorite is an extensive and well written knowledge base that incorporates the latest known problems, fixes and workarounds, but that requires a lot of work up front.
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Splat
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Re: SONAR Support needs help and longer hours for phone support!
2014/01/03 16:33:11
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Wow you said "bastard" - and the forums didn't censor you!!!... Lord might have to try other swear words now :) :)
Arse **** bollox ****.. dick **** ****
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Studious
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Re: SONAR Support needs help and longer hours for phone support!
2014/01/03 16:39:06
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Ryan Munnis [Cakewalk]
Conley, I'm looking at the reporting. Average hold time: 13 minutes 31 seconds for today. It's an average. Right now the queue's are pretty busy.
Ryan, Is it possible your data is misleading? (EDIT: not saying you are intentionally misleading anybody!) Maybe it's only averaging hold times of customers who actually connect to a rep. So, people who wait 20+ minutes and hang up are not counted. If so, this would also be the case with those who hear the 45 minute estimate and hang up immediately.
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JimmyBoy
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Re: SONAR Support needs help and longer hours for phone support!
2014/01/03 16:43:21
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I think Support should call the customer - That is the customer logs a call with Support online and provides them with the problem description then also leaves their contact details, (and contact preferences) their availability, and the severity of the problem, this way support calls the customer instead of customer having to wait on the phone getting pissed off waiting every minute that goes by.
I personally would prefer email....
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Re: SONAR Support needs help and longer hours for phone support!
2014/01/03 16:46:43
(permalink)
No, it's pretty solid. I think the opposite is the truth and that a single report is misleading. Very misleading.
Like I said, that was the "average" for today, meaning a lot of people probably barely waited at all and a few unfortunately people waited really long. Also, it changes through the day. For example, in the past hour average hold time is down to 4 minutes 5 seconds, versus from 1:00 pm to 2:00 pm when it was at 14 minutes.
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JimmyBoy
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Re: SONAR Support needs help and longer hours for phone support!
2014/01/03 16:51:24
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or maybe during those busy periods the phone should divert to a call service to take down the details and have the support call the customer back
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Studious
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Re: SONAR Support needs help and longer hours for phone support!
2014/01/03 16:51:27
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Ryan Munnis [Cakewalk]
No, it's pretty solid. I think the opposite is the truth and that a single report is misleading. Very misleading.
Like I said, that was the "average" for today, meaning a lot of people probably barely waited at all and a few unfortunately people waited really long. Also, it changes through the day. For example, in the past hour average hold time is down to 4 minutes 5 seconds, versus from 1:00 pm to 2:00 pm when it was at 14 minutes.
If a customer hangs up while on hold, are they counted in the average?
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Re: SONAR Support needs help and longer hours for phone support!
2014/01/03 16:51:36
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The other thing to keep in mind is that the issues we dig into are pretty complicated most of the time. We work with customers of all different backgrounds and experience levels. Some people are beginners in every sense of the word, and some people are seasoned veterans that could be teaching us a thing or two. The neat thing, and challenging thing, about technical support at Cakewalk is that nobody is reading from a script. Everyone is just working with their personal expertise. I learned more in my first few months at Cakewalk then my entire time in college where I was in studios every day. The guys I work with here get pretty geeky about digging into complicated issues that some companies just ignore. We're not always spot on, but I know that everyone working at Cakewalk genuinely likes digging into this stuff.
Anyhow, there really is no method of offering one solution to everyone. Finding a resolution is different every single time since people, their systems, their workflow, and their expectations are different every single time. Personally, I find this makes online chat seem a bit daunting. I like using online chat when I contact Comcast or AT&T because I don't really need to provide much information to them and I know they can fix the systems on the back end via basic tools.
With us, we often have to collect some pretty specific information from customers and spend time digging into technical details. Diagnosing the cause of a crash can be pretty tricky business. A lot of times you have to hunt for debugging symbols for the build the customer was using which can take a lot of time. Random example, but finding out that Session Drummer 3 was not showing up for many SONAR X3 customers due to missing dependencies actually took a lot of digging from customers themselves, some of our techs, and one of our Developers who had to point us in the right direction. It definitely wasn't obvious to anyone involved. Anyhow, I truthfully can't imagine doing some of the work we do over a chat window. Not to mention everyone would realize how bad I am at typing when I don't have an edit button :)
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easyjoey
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Re: SONAR Support needs help and longer hours for phone support!
2014/01/03 16:56:30
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I am grateful that the tech support is free. I prefer phone calls because sometimes the issue is complex and email can easily be misinterpreted.
Typically the wait time is low and acceptable for me.
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abb
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Re: SONAR Support needs help and longer hours for phone support!
2014/01/03 16:57:45
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☄ Helpfulby fakher 2014/01/04 00:48:39
What pisses customers off the most is failure to hear back from a company irrespective of the mode in which they seek help (phone, chat, email). I'd be glad to use email if that made it easier / cheaper for Cakewalk to provide support, but the response via email (for me) was several days or, sometimes, never.
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Splat
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Re: SONAR Support needs help and longer hours for phone support!
2014/01/03 16:58:05
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After XMAS is always a nightmare, any organisation...
I purposely hold off any support until mid January if I can, or as long as possible anyway...
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Re: SONAR Support needs help and longer hours for phone support!
2014/01/03 17:16:29
(permalink)
abb
What pisses customers off the most is failure to hear back from a company irrespective of the mode in which they seek help (phone, chat, email). I'd be glad to use email if that made it easier / cheaper for Cakewalk to provide support, but the response via email (for me) was several days or, sometimes, never.
This is mostly my fault. You're welcome to be mad at me for not following up on your other thread here: http://forum.cakewalk.com/45-minutes-and-counting-m2938163.aspx The email we didn't respond to was the one you posted more info in that thread on. I checked and we do have an official bug report on file for this for you. It's CWBRN-13695. I'm not sure if you logged it directly or if Tech Support did on your behalf. Unfortunately it's still open with development so tech support doesn't have any fix. I'm not sure if it will make it into our next update but it's assigned to that as a milestone with a decent priority.
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abb
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Re: SONAR Support needs help and longer hours for phone support!
2014/01/03 17:20:36
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This issue has been raised a number of times ... I think it might be useful to conduct a quick-and-dirty poll of those here on the forum to gauge the quality of support by:
voting "1" if you think support is satisfactory
--or--
voting "0" if you think support is unsatisfactory / needs improvement
Then, add up all the responses, divide by the number who voted and that's the proportion of 'satisfied customers.' If the number is large, say >70%, then Ryan / Cakewalk can say that we put it to our customers and XX% (who voted) are happy with our support. If however the number is small, say < 30%, well then this seems like useful information for Cakewalk. From there they can dig in a bit deeper to find out why people voted the way they did.
Although I'm *thrilled* with Sonar X3, and Cakewalk as a company, my experience with customer support has not been very favorable, so I vote 0. To be clear, I absolutely love the product, greatly admire the company (and the folks here on the forum), but think that customer service can be improved a bit.
Cheers...
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abb
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Re: SONAR Support needs help and longer hours for phone support!
2014/01/03 17:25:42
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Ryan Munnis [Cakewalk]
abb
What pisses customers off the most is failure to hear back from a company irrespective of the mode in which they seek help (phone, chat, email). I'd be glad to use email if that made it easier / cheaper for Cakewalk to provide support, but the response via email (for me) was several days or, sometimes, never.
This is mostly my fault. You're welcome to be mad at me for not following up on your other thread here: http://forum.cakewalk.com/45-minutes-and-counting-m2938163.aspx
The email we didn't respond to was the one you posted more info in that thread on. I checked and we do have an official bug report on file for this for you. It's CWBRN-13695. I'm not sure if you logged it directly or if Tech Support did on your behalf.
Unfortunately it's still open with development so tech support doesn't have any fix. I'm not sure if it will make it into our next update but it's assigned to that as a milestone with a decent priority.
Ryan, I'm not mad at you (or Cakewalk). I *do* think you're doing a very good job. Frankly I'm delighted that your company is in business and hope that you remain so for many, many years. I was just making a general point in my previous post. I fully understand that -- as Alex pointed out -- this is a busy time of the year, so I chose not follow up. I'll pursue my controller issue again in a month or so when things are less busy. Cheers...
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Re: SONAR Support needs help and longer hours for phone support!
2014/01/03 17:33:57
(permalink)
Thanks :) We can poll all of our customers with a survey and I know we've done this in the past. I'm not sure polling just people reading this thread is going to be a very accurate measurement, though I do welcome people to contribute what their experience has been. Any time someone has a good or a bad experience with support, I love hearing about it. I love hearing the good ones because it's nice to share the news with people. It means a lot and can make your day/week/month when you go through the day mostly without thanks. Hearing about the bad experiences are helpful as well, because they help justify that support is important and that customers are expecting exceptional service. I bookmark and archive both types of interactions. They help us grow. It's not personal and I don't think anyone at Cakewalk will take it that way. Update: FWIW, most recent poll data for SONAR X2 customers revealed a 3.95/5 satisfaction rating for support.
post edited by Ryan Munnis [Cakewalk] - 2014/01/03 17:47:56
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...wicked
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Re: SONAR Support needs help and longer hours for phone support!
2014/01/03 17:45:04
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I think most of you have an extremely outdated and financially ignorant idea as to the cost of that service. If you really wanted longer support hours and extremely low wait times the increase in expense would mean SONAR would start costing more. A company Cake's size? Sheesh even with the Gibson $$ I don't think it would be feasible.
Anybody using software like this today has to come to grips with the fact that they're gonna have to climb under the hood once in a while and do some practical troubleshooting. Cake's forums are quite excellent (having been on them since they were a newsgroup a BILLION years ago) and peer-to-peer support will get most of your problems solved. If you're needing to call support regularly for sequencer setup issues you should consider taking a basic computer class.
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Re: SONAR Support needs help and longer hours for phone support!
2014/01/03 17:58:41
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Conley, I found your CWBRN that you uploaded (probably while waiting on hold). Replicated it easily and logged it with development. Thanks for reporting!
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Splat
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Re: SONAR Support needs help and longer hours for phone support!
2014/01/03 18:03:07
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...wicked
I think most of you have an extremely outdated and financially ignorant idea as to the cost of that service. If you really wanted longer support hours and extremely low wait times the increase in expense would mean SONAR would start costing more. A company Cake's size? Sheesh even with the Gibson $$ I don't think it would be feasible.
Anybody using software like this today has to come to grips with the fact that they're gonna have to climb under the hood once in a while and do some practical troubleshooting. Cake's forums are quite excellent (having been on them since they were a newsgroup a BILLION years ago) and peer-to-peer support will get most of your problems solved. If you're needing to call support regularly for sequencer setup issues you should consider taking a basic computer class.
I hate to suggest it, Cake could make a buck or two here (I bet they've already considered this as it is a good source of revenue), but you generally have to pay a lot more for premium support. If people want to pay more I wouldn't stand in their way as long as the current support was consistent. Of course most people will disagree now because they don't want to pay.
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Seth Kellogg [Cakewalk]
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Re: SONAR Support needs help and longer hours for phone support!
2014/01/03 18:21:58
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CakeAlexS
...wicked
I think most of you have an extremely outdated and financially ignorant idea as to the cost of that service. If you really wanted longer support hours and extremely low wait times the increase in expense would mean SONAR would start costing more. A company Cake's size? Sheesh even with the Gibson $$ I don't think it would be feasible.
Anybody using software like this today has to come to grips with the fact that they're gonna have to climb under the hood once in a while and do some practical troubleshooting. Cake's forums are quite excellent (having been on them since they were a newsgroup a BILLION years ago) and peer-to-peer support will get most of your problems solved. If you're needing to call support regularly for sequencer setup issues you should consider taking a basic computer class.
I hate to suggest it, Cake could make a buck or two here (I bet they've already considered this as it is a good source of revenue), but you generally have to pay a lot more for premium support. If people want to pay more I wouldn't stand in their way as long as the current support was consistent.
Of course most people will disagree now because they don't want to pay.
We actually had premium support for a while, but we canceled it not soon after. Only like 2 people ever used it.
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rebel007
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Re: SONAR Support needs help and longer hours for phone support!
2014/01/03 18:30:45
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Some good suggestions here and some obvious grievances. Companies have struggled with support issues since for ever. I have had my experience with both having to give and get tech support, the biggest issue with Sonar, IMHO, is that every issue is going to be different. I don't think any type of automated system will work, there's just too many variables.
I purchased my copy of Sonar through a local distributer in Sydney Aust. I have given them several calls, of which there was no wait time to speak of, and emails were exchanged to add detail to the calls and give extra information. I wanted to let Cakewalk know that there is at least one of their retailers that is willing to go the extra mile to support their customers, and with a good deal of expertise.
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mettelus
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Re: SONAR Support needs help and longer hours for phone support!
2014/01/03 18:37:02
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Seth Kellogg [Cakewalk]
We actually had premium support for a while, but we canceled it not soon after. Only like 2 people ever used it.
That solves the queue problems right there 
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icontakt
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Re: SONAR Support needs help and longer hours for phone support!
2014/01/03 22:05:53
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I'm sure there are people in this forum who are willing to work for you for free (not me  ). Utilize them.
Tak T. Primary Laptop: Core i7-4710MQ CPU, 16GB RAM, 7200RPM HDD, Windows 7 Home Premium OS (Japanese) x64 SP1Secondary Laptop: Core2 Duo CPU, 8GB RAM, 7200RPM HDD, Windows 7 Professional OS (Japanese) x64 SP1Audio Interface: iD14 (ASIO)Keyboard Controller/MIDI Interface: A-800PRODAW: SONAR Platinum x64 (latest update installed)
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Guitarmech111
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Re: SONAR Support needs help and longer hours for phone support!
2014/01/03 22:08:33
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Ryan Munnis [Cakewalk]
Conley, I found your CWBRN that you uploaded (probably while waiting on hold). Replicated it easily and logged it with development. Thanks for reporting!
Thanks Ryan, and YES, I did upload it while on hold. I appreciate your effort on the ticket too! I do have to say that when calling in for support, I have been told 17 minutes and 4 mins later I was talking to a tech support guy. I would like to make sure that everyone knows I was NOT complaining about the actual advice a support guy has given, but the ability to get in touch with support via the shortened phone hours. Also, I would not pull the 45 mins estimate out of my rear. I do not play that way. Bottom line is that I am happy with support 90% of the time when I can get in touch with them. This has really been the first time I was ever told 45 mins and I did not want to hold out on a toll call for that long. From a customer point of view, and that should be the focus here, I was not real happy with that phone call and chose to go the online method. Again, that is probably why most of your support tickets come in from e-mails or SBM tickets from the inet. I am happy with the final results. thanks Ryan.
Peace, Conley Shepherd Joyful Noise Productions PC config: (Win performance base score = 7.7) ASUS Sabertooth 990 FX -amd fx-8150 - core processor am3+ - 32G Corsair 1066 DDR3 - PNY GTX670 2g gddr5 - Corsair Force SSD 120G - Samsung 750G SATA drives - WD 1tb Black (Audio files) - WD 2TB for storage - RME UFX - USB ASIO 2/2016 drivers Win8 Without a mess, there is no message
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mettelus
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Re: SONAR Support needs help and longer hours for phone support!
2014/01/04 04:59:16
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Ryan had mentioned a while ago that the majority of folks contact for registration issues, etc. Pretty simple and quick stuff. I just took a gander at the support page and although this is there (albeit buried), I think the "technical issues" portion should have a more obvious link to the forums on it. 1) It would get new users into the forums 2) The forums typically have quick turn around and 3) Forum members are often pointing out other resources for others that are not obvious to someone with a question in the first place. That said (and Alex close your eyes here! - no more post for you ), someone entering a technical question in the forums should be given guidance on how to get the quickest turn around (i.e. descriptive title, platform and hardware used, as much detail as required, etc.) Also... make all forums have the ability to post pictures! I initially thought that was concern for server space, but then find out there are attachment links for new threads in the social forums (not sure if they work though). I find it rather odd to put hurdles like that to someone with a legitimate technical question... just in the past few months I have seen cases of new users, legitimate questions, they cannot post a picture and then "vanish." That is a "not good" thing at all. Can also add icons/flags when posting a "technical question" thread so that forum members can easily identify those.
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