bitflipper



BTW, having worked tech support myself I can tell you that there is a good reason for imposing that awkward limitation of not being able to reply directly. Some users, once they get hold of your direct email address, will circumvent the reporting process and start emailing you unrelated questions. Some will become real pests. I know this from firsthand experience on the other end of that phone.

From '97 until '03 I worked for ANS/MCI/Worldcom in their network operations center. We had universal address that used a shared support mailbox that was based on pine that could be run by multiple users concurrently, it allowed the person working an email issue to mark the email so everyone else could tell they were working it, it gave the customer an address where they could send non-critical issues for resolution, and it gave me, as the manager, a way to have oversight to ensure that things were being resolved within a couple emails. It also had the ability to paste the email into the actual trouble ticket ( every email got a ticket, even if it was "What time is it?" ), so we could search the ticketing DB for similar issues.

I just say this to point out that there are ways to provide email support that will allow the back and forth that is required. If they want to take the time to do it.

"Support@cakewalk.com" anyone?

Hi Willy, if you guys want to see how not to do it... go check out the MOTU  techlink system... it has virtually guaranteed that I will never spend another penny on MOTU gear. :-)

Willy Jones [Cakewalk
]

Hi Everyone,

@Mike, I'm sorry to hear about your issue.  Please understand that 99.99999% of serial number & registration related support requests we get are related to a user putting in the registration code incorrectly, mis-spelling it or not entering it at all.

Exaggerating things like this don't look particularly good unless you really were intending to insult some of those customers that might now be reading this.

Anyway, any support engineer worth their salt can easily tell the difference between a user that made such a simple mistake and users that have genuine issues that are more complicated. Of course that does mean engaging the brain when at work.

Before the tech starts digging into the issue we first need to ensure that you are using the correct registration code, else anything after that would be pointless.  Its kind of like testing to see if the switch on the vacuum cleaner works, you need to plug the thing in first.

As this thread shows and my own experience confirms, this is not really the issue. The problems with Cakewalk support go much deeper.

RE: more user friendly system - I have mentioned this in another thread somewhere but this will be coming soon you will be able to review all of your correspondence and support history (both phone & email) online.  We are aware of the limitations of the current system in place, however for now it is the only way to ensure that we can help you.

That is good to read but I hope that Cakewalk realize that what they need from their support team is a dedication to solving problems. Not just closing tickets. Many support managers and support staff don't quite get the distinction.

@mrfitz - public email address - we've done this in the past it just becomes a giant spam collection bin and legitimate support requests get lost with junk.  The other problem is that our volume of support requests is way to high to be adequately managed in a mailbox.

Oh yes, Cakewalk will clearly have much larger support volumes compared to MCI/Worldcom. I have worked for companies much larger than Cakewalk (and maybe even larger than MCI but I'm not sure) that could easily handle a single support address. This only shows that Cakewalk don't have any idea how to manage their support activities.

Hire someone to advise you. Set up a library of video tutorials. (With high quality video. No cheap YouTube non-sense).  Get some decent forum software so that people can actually search the forum for answers. (Yes I know about using Google to search the forum, that isn't the point). Setup a proper FAQ (28 entries in the Sonar FAQ? You must be joking!)

The only reason Cakewalk support can't handle the "volume" is because Cakewalk support is incompetent. I suggest you start with the FAQ. That should be the easiest.

RE: live chat support - This is something we have considered, however the hours would be the same and if we turned it on today, hold times and email response times would suffer so its not a path we can explore just yet.

You need to hire extra people then. Of course they first need to be trained but it seems necessary.

My apologies again for the inconveniences Mike.  Alternatively you can get phone support from your local Cakewalk distributor, in your case Roland Australia if skype is not an option or if our hours don't work for you.

Does Cakewalk support have Skype? That should be cheaper for everyone. Still, that doesn't address the issues like this one where the support persons clearly were more interested in reaching some quota than actually helping the user.

UnderTow

OK - I'd like to clarify a few things and offer an olive branch -

a) Everyone on our support staff is dedicated to solving problems, there are no tickets to close or quotas to fill.  A support issue is not considered resolved until the user tells us it is.

b) My explanation to mrfitz does not show that we "don't have any idea how to manage our support activities" - my point was to simply explain that handling email support in the manner he described is not practical for us.  At its backbone, our current system is a giant email folder, subject filtered based on product that the appropriate rep handles.

c) Our support staff is not incompetent

d) Our current FAQ is an accurate representation of the most common questions posed to our support team, sure we can make it really long and include everything imaginable and filter it by topic but then we run the risk of it being to overbearing for new users

e) Even if the forum's search tool could read a users mind, new users may not always know what to search for and often times the forum crowd can be pretty unforgiving this of course is still assuming a new user knows where and what the forum is.

f) I had no intention of insulting anyone, and sincerely apologize if I did.  My intention was to explain to Mike our initial response, it is very common for us to get requests that lack information for us to troubleshoot and we have no way of knowing how tech saavy a user is.  The best of course of action in these cases is to start with the basics and make sure all of the bases are covered

g) We're not outsourcing, having our tech support team in-house is helpful not only for the support team who can go and talk directly to a developer about an issue they can't get to the root of, but also for our development team so they are clearly aware of the issues customers are running into most frequently

h) We're aware that we dropped the ball this time and screwed up pretty badly.  We're human and we do make mistakes, even when our brains our fully engaged.  We tried to swap a battery (3 embarrassing times in this case) when we needed to be looking at the radiator - now sure we could burn the shop down, all the cars and mechanics inside it as well or we could identify what went wrong why it did, and fix it.  Which is what we did/are doing.

Finally the assertion that we don't care about our customers is well, not true we do care - and a lot.  Once this issue was brought to our attention we looked into it further, reviewed the correspondence, talked to the support rep and directly reached out to Mike to make amends as well as provide a little further insight as to why he received the responses he did.

If you had a not so positive experience with technical support, I'd like to hear about it and we would like the opportunity to make it up to you.

You can send me a private message

You can email me wjones AT cakewalk DOT com

You can call me: 617-423-9004 x169