Hi Friends,
This is a good faith post to reach out to provide some updates about what's going on here at Cakewalk HQ in regards to Cakewalk Support. I'm just a nerd who helps program the website, so please go easy on me. :D
We recently went through some changes that may have been lost in the mix of all of the announcements as of late. Seems like many users are tripped up by the changes so I wanted to take a moment to explain what's new and different. We’ve made a lot of recent improvements you probably haven’t seen!
Support Workflow / Logistics We completely redesigned our
Support website! Here's what's new:
- The Knowledge Base has been completely rebuilt.
- Search has been drastically improved. Not only is it faster, but you can now search by terms as well as tags. You can also save your favorite searches (for example, maybe you're only interested in seeing new articles related to [SONAR-Professional] and [Z3TA-2]
- Speaking of Tags, articles are now tagged. You'll often see these at the bottom of Knowledge Base articles. Essentially this is a great way of us grouping related articles for products you care about. Here's an example (scroll to the bottom).
- Views and popularity are factored into results based on activity and feedback.
- You can add Feedback to articles to inform Cakewalk of whether or not the article was helpful and/or needs improvement
- Contacting Email Support has been rebuilt
- You no longer need to enter your email address and fill out your support profile (what audio devices you own, etc.) every time you reach out to us. Your information is linked to your Cakewalk Account, so you can just send us an email and we'll know what products you own and what your setup is like without having to ask redundant questions.
- Contacting Phone Support has been rebuilt
- We moved from phone queues where users waited on hold to a callback model of phone support where you schedule a call and support staff calls you back. Willy's announcement here explains this in a bit more detail. In short, we call you. No listening to awful hold music, no long distance charges.
Both Email and Phone support make an attempt to help you with Knowledge Base articles we feel may be helpful. Ultimately we're making a stronger effort to provide helpful information upfront with the hopes that having to wait for a reply from Cakewalk Staff is not necessary. To a degree, the KB stuff I mentioned above learns from itself - that way we can provide helpful resources based on real metrics, versus what we
think or
assume is helpful information to know.
In the event the articles aren't helpful to your inquiry, you can of course send an email or schedule a call. Eligibility for technical support is determined by product ownership. You can see what technical support level is given to your products with the new iconography visible on your Products page
here. Pre-Sales and Account Related (customer service) email support, of course, is available to everyone.
If you send an email, you will be sent a confirmation email with your case number. It looks like this:
If you need to provide further information to your case, you can reply
directly to the email. This will append your case in our internal ticketing system. Replying directly to the case, versus opening a new one, helps Cakewalk Support staff more quickly respond and resolve cases. It also helps you keep your place in line versus new information going to the end of the line.
If you need to contact Phone Support, you must choose an available time, like displayed below:
When you schedule a phone call, you will be sent a confirmation email as well. Here's an example:
Once the call is scheduled, the rep you're assigned to is notified and will contact you at the number and time specified. Please be aware we’re in Boston, MA, so all times are Eastern Time. You can visit
https://www.cakewalk.com/support/phone to update your case with any new information or cancel the call if needed.
Lastly, we provide details upon call resolution and welcome feedback in order to give users like you a chance to let us know what we’re doing great at, and where we could improve upon. Here’s an example:
Disclaimer: not real call details, however not a false reality. Cheers! ;DCustomer Demand "That's great, Ryan, but this does
nothing for me if I'm still stuck waiting for a response or there are no callback time slots available!" - Legitimately Frustrated Customer
I hear you loud and clear! In fact, so do both Cakewalk and Gibson for that matter. Both companies have a strong core philosophy that great customer service is extremely valuable.
With that being said, there have been a few recent developments that created
much more demand than we anticipated. The support queue is backed up but we’re adding resources
right now to solve the problem. We think you'll like the changes we roll out and the additional contact methods you'll soon be able to use. Cakewalk prides itself in offering good quality support. To put it quite simply, it's just that the demand far outweighs the supply right now.
I'm well aware that this doesn't immediately reduce the frustration some users are experiencing, but I wanted to take a moment to first describe the changes and the new process, and then also acknowledge recent frustrations. As I mentioned, this is more of a good faith post to hopefully provide some transparency and acknowledge you guys. We're very apologetic for temporary increased response times as a result in the meantime.
We also have a lot of stuff in development outside of the typical SONAR announcements that we believe will strongly improve everyone’s overall experience. I look forward to discussing more in the future.
As always, I want to thank everyone for their support, their patience, and especially for their outreach to one another in this community. I know myself and other Cakewalk staffers have expressed it before, but the helpful and knowledgeable members of our community are an incredible asset to us and I don’t think we often get a chance to thank
you for all of your support.