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.

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

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?

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 :)

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.

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.

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...

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. 

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...

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...