Thread

Leslie, your work as CEO looks exhausting.  You’re really good.  Keep it up and we’ll get there as a community.  Thanks!

Leslie, your work as CEO looks exhausting.  You’re really good.  Keep it up we’ll get there as a community.  Thanks!

Thanks Stephen. I love my job and I love working for you guys. Its all worth it IMHO.

Personally the reason I don’t post my 10c to folks with tech support questions is that if I post, the customer is going to be placed at the end of the queue to get official support from EllisLab. Even if i’m pretty sure I know how to fix a particular problem, I wouldn’t want to be responsible for a 24 or 48 hour delay in the user getting an official response..

Just to be clear, this was changed quite a while ago and we’ve already updated it again to stream line it since this thread started.

So to confirm Leslie (want to make sure here): if I post now into someone else’s tech support request it has no effect on how quickly that request will be reviewed to by EllisLab?

Personally the reason I don’t post my 10c to folks with tech support questions is that if I post, the customer is going to be placed at the end of the queue to get official support from EllisLab. Even if i’m pretty sure I know how to fix a particular problem, I wouldn’t want to be responsible for a 24 or 48 hour delay in the user getting an official response..

Just to be clear, this was changed quite a while ago and we’ve already updated it again to stream line it since this thread started.

So to confirm Leslie (want to make sure here): if I post now into someone else’s tech support request it has no effect on how quickly that request will be reviewed to by EllisLab?

That’s correct Iain.

Thanks for clearing that up Leslie. Since the forums change developers including me are somewhat hesitant the give hand when needed. Could you include this point in your next blog post so it’s exposed to wider audience.

I genuinely look forward to getting back to old days where hanging out on the forums, helping out and learning from others is a part of my daily socialising activity.

Ditto. I was also afraid to help.

And I second the stuff about Leslie having a tough job. I gave him more grief than anyone possibly could and he not only calmed me down, he managed to extract useful input from me (I hope) rather than only ranting.

I agree with what others have said.

One point that keeps coming up for me is in the arena of GIGO: Garbage In, Garbage Out. I don’t know how EL manages to do the kind of data analysis they think they’re doing. I don’t know how they’d know when I’m working on a project for myself or someone else…

In other words, how would they know when a question was being asked by a license holder on their own behalf or on behalf of one of their clients. So the data analysis that says that X projects want X level of service could be complete garbage.

It is just as likely that the person with that 2004 license who still wants “free” support doesn’t have a site of their own. They could be bringing in 20, 30, or 100 (or no) customers a year who pay for the licenses under their own name, for all EL knows. That 2004 customer they could be ignoring, planning to ignore, or wanting to set aside, could be one of their most loyal customers. EL has no way of knowing that because they’ve not asked for any data to track that.

There is nothing in the current method of data tracking that tracks any of this now, and that’s something EL should get on immediately. Yes, they offer volume discounts, but for a variety of reasons, some larger clients can’t buy licenses this way and need to have a contract for the license themselves.

It’s a simple matter of assigning developers an account ID to give to their clients when they buy the license. When those clients make a license purchase they enter the developers ID. That “credits” their developers’ account. It allows the client to get a discount of some sort (gotta do it to get the client to get compliance, ie, to go to the trouble of entering it—and $5 off is enough), and it gives the developer access to the forums/support without having to update their 2004 license each year.

That is how EL can turn their Garbage into more reliable/useful data… which, I swear, they do not have now. There is nothing EL can do to guarantee that their data will be 100% reliable. $100 to $250 is not a significant enough purchase to know what people are doing with each license or how much business that brings to EL. But EL doesn’t have any idea if people are developers, designers, or site owners because they’ve never given any incentive or reason for us to declare. My 10 license discount might be for myself and someone else’s might be on behalf of their clients. My 1 might be so I can access the forums, but I’ve brought in another 100 in business, and someone else’s 1 might be the only 1 they have, or will ever bring to EL in business.

Edit: The above was just a suggestion in the method of the way to track this. I’m sure there are other ways. The suggestion is to segregate the users is someway so that EL doesn’t unintentionally ostracize its best and most loyal customers, who may not APPEAR to be the paying customers.

I’m so glad that this is being discussed. I’ve bumped my head into this here on the forums a few times. Sometimes I’ve even had a tantrum.

I would agree with a bunch of stuff that has been said, I don’t think it’s because it’s forum based support, but I do notice how it is administered and moderated has an impact.

For me, a forum is a record. The reason I love forums as a support method is that I often come up with the same issues when building sites. I just go back and retrace my steps.

1) When you separated the old forums from the new forums, you cut that off. I know the old forums are “somewhere” but it adds a number of layers: Where did I put that link? Would I look in the old forums or the new forums?

2) You close topics way too quick. It just feels like you are checking off a to-do item. (which, I think you are). Sometimes I am working on an issue, post that I have it solved. I come back to add to it and it was closed 5 minutes after I had posted about it being solved the day before. Another support forum automatically closes any forum after X days of inactivity (they have it set for 90, I think). It allows things to evolve….

3) Updating a support request puts it back to the bottom of the pile. I’ve never hear of this before and really discourages any updates…

4) I think that if you can find a way to bring back the addon developers, that would help build community.

5) This thread is reminding me of what happened with MovableType where they had a really vibrant online community and just killed it by offering a paid support model. Ultimately, I think their business model succeeded (selling the biz), but I think the loss was felt amongst their customer base.

6) Finally, I think that having so many formats for support dilutes the concentration of support and community:
1. Articles
2. Wiki
3. Forum
4. Knowledge base (QA)

I never know where to look, some stuff is here, some stuff is there, some stuff is on the old forums, some on the wiki, some on the new…

Really, it’s a human driven thing. I think, if it is done well, community will do a lot of the support. But, a tone has to be set, an environment created and behavior must be modeled. A forum can be a magnificent way to provide support for a product.

Finally, I would support an “enterprise” level support for a much higher price. The rest could be done on some sort of community forums, with EL support too. I can see a model where you must have an active license or you can’t see certain sections…

Thanks for listening. I’m super interested in this issue. Not just as a customer of EL. But, I’m interested in the human part of online community.

For me, a forum is a record. The reason I love forums as a support method is that I often come up with the same issues when building sites. I just go back and retrace my steps.

1) When you separated the old forums from the new forums, you cut that off. I know the old forums are “somewhere” but it adds a number of layers: Where did I put that link? Would I look in the old forums or the new forums?

This is a big one for me as well…on some threads I have spend A LOT of time in formatting code alone…some tricks, snips, queries and links I have forgotten. Still don’t understand why the old forums are ‘hidden’ and if it was not for the browser cache and bookmarks.

On some newer threads I simply said ‘%$#& it’ since I can’t find my (or other members involved in a thread) old posts with the solutions and links, let EL help that member out…
Not sure if it is all related directly to ‘support quality’ but I found myself not posting much in forums…

In a nut shell, I’d like to understand better why EllisLab has pushed developers off the forums

when add-on support was pushed off the forums I stopped visiting daily. I used to come here a lot and try to help when I can and just read threads where other devs where discussing approaches or problems - was a really great way to learn.

Now it’s impossible to do that. Support is on various other sites. Support on devot-ee is great but again you can’t browse everything at once, you have to visit each individuals add-on to see their forum threads. In the past the forums were a great way to learn about new add-ons and how other devs were using them.

I’m a little late to the party (mostly because I don’t browse the forums here anymore - came via a blog post by Michael Boyink), but there’s my two cents.

One more thought…

each time an ad for a support position has come up one of the requirements is that the person be able to work North American business hours. Your customer base is global - I would think that you could benefit from having more official support during busy times in other time zones. Clearly Europe has a lot of EE developers and could use more support during their business hours.

I’ve been living in South Korea for 14 years and have come to accept that getting support often means waiting for a long time, but I know that there is a fair number of developers in the Asia Pacific region who could benefit from extended support hours. I know of devs in Japan, Thailand, the Philippines and Australia to name a few countries in the region.

Obviously having support staff located far away means that it may be difficult to coordinate times for discusssions with all staff present. But if that type of teleconference is only once or twice a month then most people should be able to get up early or stay up late if necessary. Probably most things could be coordinated by email.

In any case I’m moving to Toronto in 7 weeks so this will no longer impact me, but I’m sure these sort of changes would be appreciated by other devs who live in the wrong time zone.

@all - Just an update, we hired a new full time Support Specialist. He starts Monday!

@all - Just an update, we hired a new full time Support Specialist. He starts Monday!

Congratulations to whoever that might be.

I vote for Mark :D

I vote for Mark :D

Thanks for the kind words. One day maybe.

I vote for Mark :D

Thanks for the kind words. One day maybe.

You know we love you Mark. One day indeed!