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.

Agreed.   1:00 to 6:00 isn't long enough.  Luckily, I have not had to wait 45 minutes to get help.

I would much prefer online chat.

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.

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.

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.

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.
 
 

Wow you said "bastard" - and the forums didn't censor you!!!... Lord might have to try other swear words now :) :)
Arse **** bollox ****.. dick **** ****

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.

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....