Willy Jones [Cakewalk]
Hi Bruce,
 

tenfoot 
This is pretty funny Willy - at least if you live in Australia. 

 
I'm not involved in the distribution arrangements, but thanks for sharing this. I'll send it to the right people to find out what the story is.
 

Thanks Willy. FWIW I think the new callback system is a good idea. I also don't see how it is unreasonable to offer telephone support as part of the membership plan and have no problem with it ceasing with my membership. That seems pretty logical to me.

Hmmmmmm....  I see a few problems.
if my problem is intermittent I  would need to call as it is happening.
next, are support hours being expanded?
finally, any guarantee of max length of time before a scheduled callback? "Sorry, can't schedule until two weeks from today, all slots are filled......."
i find the support, both via phone and the forum, a major reason to stay with Sonar as my DAW of choice.

Not to be a smart ass, but the best way to reduce the demands on tech support is to make a product that requires less of it.

I don't earn my living using SONAR, so I might not appreciate the anxiety some anticipate about the loss of "immediate" phone support, but...
 
I imagine some users are prone to make phone calls even when an answer might be available from elsewhere (e.g. this forum and its archives, the help system, documentation, etc.) and a short scheduled wait time might encourage those folks to explore those resources before picking up the phone.  That would reduce the load on the staff allowing more time for more perplexing problems...or even to <gasp!> check their email.
 
A lot of other software vendors offer support contracts that spell out ways the company will provide premium support, and each product supported--potentially even sunsetted products--will increase the cost of that support. These premiums would cover the cost of this premium-grade support, so it wouldn't have to impact the membership model.  I personally wouldn't pay a premium for pick-up-the-phone-and-talk-to-the-tech service, but then, as I said, I don't earn my living working with this software.
 
From a management perspective, I see how this makes sense.  Time management is more effective for everyone (staff and customer) expect the user who expects an answer while his/her HD is still spinning down.  It's a little one-sided to say that it's all about making more money, but lets face it, Cakewalk/Gibson are in business for that exact reason. The way they do that is by keeping their expert staff and us users happy and productive.  Not by skimping on service or price gouging.  So far so good, as far as I'm concerned.
 
 
ps: How many suppliers promote such a vital community as this for its customers to debate the pros and cons of its business decisions?  
 

Superfluous and distracting snark removed. Nothing to see here:)

Hi Scott,
 
Thanks for the feedback.
 

scottfa
if my problem is intermittent I  would need to call as it is happening.

 
We don't have a great solution for this, even today if your intermittent issue doesn't occur between 1pm and 6pm eastern time we don't have a great solution either. Our support team however, is understanding of intermittent issues and pretty heavily rely on email for follow-up in these types of cases. When I was in support I had a few that would pop back up 3 or 4 months later sometimes, it happens and generally email is the best route for those.
 

scottfa
next, are support hours being expanded?

 
We can't 100% commit to this yet, but once we've done callback for a bit and can measure it find out what works and does not work we have every intention of expanding the hours we are available for phone support.
 

scottfa
finally, any guarantee of max length of time before a scheduled callback?

 
Not yet, we have no idea how quickly the schedule will fill up once we switch. We do have a few safeguards in place however to prevent this from happening and will be monitoring it closely to ensure we can help as many folks as possible.

ampfixer
Not to be a smart ass, but the best way to reduce the demands on tech support is to make a product that requires less of it.

It's on the very short-term roadmap and coupled with analytics we should soon have the data to automate audio and midi device setup which makes up something crazy like more than 50% of our support volume. (Don't have the exact numbers in front of me, but its really high).

Nov 15th 2015 I filed a support ticket due to updating Waves shell to 9.6 and their new license center.
Since I want everything to be up to date, and work - I scanned for Sonar and it crashed for VST3.
Cubase scanned fine - so a Sonar thing
 
Still have not heard from Cakewalk support over this.
 
So maybe bring "The wait is over...." to email support to start with.
 
I filed a ticket with Waves support - and they responded in hours - and gave instructions to give phone number and TeamViewer contact id. So some hours later they connected to my machine, called and all was fixed real soon.
 
And I'm not even in WUP anymore.
 
So this kind of support is what I am prepared to pay for - $100 annually, no problem, $200 as well if really priority support by email even. This would collect points for me moving back to Sonar.
 
The priority at Cakewalk over support is really strange in my view - I just don't get it.
Email support is asyncronous and no part need to be in contact in real time - best of all worlds if response time is short enough - like 24-48 hours or so. Once in dialog, a few hours are appreciated and good, even top notch.
 
And Cake make a big thing over call back support which certainly cost multum in comparison - and more complicated since both parties needs to meet in real time and it's about office hours and stuff.
 
So again - I don't get it....but I don't know Gibsons Pro Audio plan for Cakewalk....Sonar as product I consider Pro enough once VCA faders are in place and maybe full support for control surfaces like Avid Artist Mix, S3, S6 and others(at least the level that Cubase has).
 
Sonar is already a fine daw - why not make a home run....

For all products/software/services I use phone in case of immediate issues only (login problems, service down, money transfer failures, etc.). So in declared form, Cakewalk no longer has phone support at all starting from 11.04.
 

Outside of the US, Cakewalk Support is typically provided by the distributor.

So, next time I have a question I can try to call "Korg&More" (German local distributor).
 
But for Russia it is funny:

Local Distributor
Russian Federation
Gibson Europe BV
Kamerling Onnesweg 2
4131 PK Vianen, Netherlands

I understand that since US Army headquarters are (still) in West Germany, someone can think that Russia is (still) in the near. And since Netherlands is not far away, well... let it be "local distributor" for Russia. Really, even for Vladivostok Vianen is more local (8k km) then Boston (10k km). But in this case Japan distributor is closer (1k km)
 

Hi Lars,
 
Thanks for the feedback
 

lfm
So maybe bring "The wait is over...." to email support to start with.

We'd love to, and we're hoping that this change can get us closer to that by freeing up time throughout the day for our staff to answer and reply to emails.
 

lfm
So this kind of support is what I am prepared to pay for - $100 annually, no problem, $200 as well if really priority support by email even. This would collect points for me moving back to Sonar.

 
Interesting and helpful for us to know as we roll this out and start collecting data on it's effectiveness.
 

lfm
And Cake make a big thing over call back support which certainly cost multum in comparison - and more complicated since both parties needs to meet in real time and it's about office hours and stuff.

 
I'm not really sure I follow, our current model is all 'about office hours and stuff'. This change makes it waaay easier for our support staff to be available anytime/anywhere with or without connectivity to our phone queues.
 

lfm 
Sonar is already a fine daw - why not make a home run....

Thanks again for taking the time. I'll pass your requests for VCA faders and improved surface support along to our products team and if you have not already please don't hesitate to create a thread for each of these topics we'd love to hear what the community thinks about them as well.