aC forum: Unprofessional support http://www.activecollab.com/forums/topic/2652/ Recent posts on topic: Unprofessional support en-us Fri, 05 Sep 2008 07:59:13 CDT http://www.activecollab.com/forums/post/12516/#post12516 http://www.activecollab.com/forums/post/12516/#post12516 Post #16 by Sebastian Tänzer Sebastian Tänzer Thanks for pointing this out. I am one of these "completely happy with the product and support"-users and I think it's great to see how "open" you communicate with your customers. Other large companies would really benefit from a "support policy" like yours.

You have a great product - with v1.1 this is almost perfect for us. But knowning that you value service as we do is much more important to us. Usually you'll find out if a company is a good one when you're having a problem.

Ilija Studen:
Good support is as important as software we make. It is part of the whole experience and we all well aware of that fact - we try to respond as quickly as possible, treat people like people, not numbers, don't use "canned" responses, always try to help.

What happened with this particular ticket was an incident and we've taken steps to make sure it doesn't happen again. We defined a new set of rules for providing support that everyone employee (me included) will need to follow, considering introducing new service to provide even better service to people who may have trouble with setting everything up etc.

Thanks for brining this to our attention. People live and make mistakes, it's what they learn from that what matters in the long run.

To the community: thanks guys! :-)


]]> Tue, 22 Apr 2008 18:37:25 CDT http://www.activecollab.com/forums/post/12514/#post12514 http://www.activecollab.com/forums/post/12514/#post12514 Post #15 by Ilija Studen Ilija Studen Good support is as important as software we make. It is part of the whole experience and we are well aware of that fact - we try to respond as quickly as possible, treat people like people, not numbers, don't use "canned" responses, always try to help.

What happened with this particular ticket was an incident and we've taken steps to make sure it doesn't happen again. We defined a new set of rules for providing support that everyone employee (me included) will need to follow, considering introducing new service to provide even better service to people who may have trouble with setting everything up etc.

Thanks for brining this to our attention. People live and make mistakes, it's what they learn from them what matters in the long run.

To the community: thanks guys! :-)

]]> Mon, 21 Apr 2008 12:17:18 CDT http://www.activecollab.com/forums/post/12505/#post12505 http://www.activecollab.com/forums/post/12505/#post12505 Post #14 by Davor Davor
rez:

"I do agree that the tone in the mail is wrong, but you had totally no idea of the context,"
I know exactly what the other mail was.


One mail.

Ilija Studen:

Support thread you are referring has 55 status changes in 2 days and is one of the longest we ever had since we started selling and supporting activeCollab. 55 status changes is a lot - it's 20+ emails from a customer and similar amount from support.


Twenty+ mails.

Again: you had (and have) no idea of the context.

And you could have said it in this reply already: rez on Apr 17. 2008. 5:01 am

My guess is you have only recently read that 'other mail'. But then again: who cares...

As you see, nobody is complaining about support. The quality of the software is good. You assumed a bunch of stuff and jumped to conclusions.

]]> Mon, 21 Apr 2008 10:29:49 CDT http://www.activecollab.com/forums/post/12498/#post12498 http://www.activecollab.com/forums/post/12498/#post12498 Post #13 by rez rez "Yeah, a friend of a friend got a single bad email reply. Do not buy, despite how good everyone elses support was and the quality of the software"

Wrong. I came here to see how everyone elses support was. If the same type of support would delete a post like this, which is very often the case with that type of support, then I would have mentioned the experience while searching out competitors and reading reviews. I wasn't going to post a review of the software. Only the experience and pasting the mail. By legally, I meant wording it in a way to let the reader form their own opinion. Only stating the facts. There is nothing wrong with that at all.

"I do agree that the tone in the mail is wrong, but you had totally no idea of the context,"
I know exactly what the other mail was.

"Quite frankly, that email wasnt all that bad."
I disagree with you and beleive you underestimate a brand and how it affects successful companies. Mail like that can hurt this company more than it bothered me. I simply came here to see if it was common or rare as quickly as possible. It sounds like it is rare.

To me, the bottom line is that using that tone has the potential to create the wrong impressions with recipients of any mail. A small but interesting example of how to align daily employee behavior with a brand.

Seeing that the support here is highly regarded, I can see that I jumped in here pretty loud.

]]> Sun, 20 Apr 2008 12:39:09 CDT http://www.activecollab.com/forums/post/12488/#post12488 http://www.activecollab.com/forums/post/12488/#post12488 Post #12 by gmoyle gmoyle What?? jkiechlin are you telling me you can actually make contact with a HUMAN AT MS? Can I have that number or email address please?

I have the corporate edition of aC and have found the technical support to be outstanding. Loving the product and I cannot wait for 1.1 to be released.

]]> Fri, 18 Apr 2008 22:45:20 CDT http://www.activecollab.com/forums/post/12487/#post12487 http://www.activecollab.com/forums/post/12487/#post12487 Post #11 by jkiechlin jkiechlin I'd like to give a thumbs up for the aC support I received on an installation issue. I am a new user evaluating the cororate edition and was not sure what to expect. The initial response was in less than 8 hours. Once I gave support access to the test project and FTP access to see the code, it was fixed immediately. Try getting a MS engineer to do that! ;-)

]]> Fri, 18 Apr 2008 17:39:26 CDT http://www.activecollab.com/forums/post/12462/#post12462 http://www.activecollab.com/forums/post/12462/#post12462 Post #10 by Oliver Maksimović Oliver Maksimović @Leon: Ilija is out of the office for a short period of time (maybe for another day or two) so his response time may not be as short as usually ;)

]]> Thu, 17 Apr 2008 10:01:22 CDT http://www.activecollab.com/forums/post/12459/#post12459 http://www.activecollab.com/forums/post/12459/#post12459 Post #9 by Leon Leon My only input to this thread is that from my experience, when I needed support, the aC team responded quickly, professionally and with a quality fix/suggestion to resolve my issue.

@andrewCharron: +1 with what you said.

@rez: "Can you explain to me why I would buy your program..." - yes I can explain why you should get aC.. but seeing as though your perception of aC is already negative, I'd recommend you try the software for yourself. If you have any issues you can ask the community or aC team for support. I'm sure I can speak on the behalf of the community that we'd be happy to help where possible - although Ilija will probably answer before we do ;) He's very quick around here.

@Ilija: You can't control the actions of everyone in your team, after all they're human. I like that you recognised that the email tone was off, and that the person would be spoken to. +1 for taking action.

]]> Thu, 17 Apr 2008 09:31:59 CDT http://www.activecollab.com/forums/post/12458/#post12458 http://www.activecollab.com/forums/post/12458/#post12458 Post #8 by andrewCharron andrewCharron Im curious as to the language used in the other 20 emails by your friend, Id like to know the tone used there as well. Also, someone who hasnt tried the software or apparently contacted support themselves is probably not the best person to be posting reviews.

Quite frankly, that email wasnt all that bad. You have a right to post this and ask why, but to threaten to post it everywhere is just plain silly.

"Yeah, a friend of a friend got a single bad email reply. Do not buy, despite how good everyone elses support was and the quality of the software"

]]> Thu, 17 Apr 2008 07:45:36 CDT http://www.activecollab.com/forums/post/12449/#post12449 http://www.activecollab.com/forums/post/12449/#post12449 Post #7 by rez rez "Tone of the reply is wrong and I will have a discussion with person who sent it."

Ilija, thanks for this. That was my first impression of your company. Right or wrong, extreme or jumping the gun, that's what happens.

"not an example of bad support"- I disagree. The customer shouldn't be made to feel like an idiot or like they are being bothersome because they need a lot of support. That one statement can be deleted and completely change the support to being a helpful offer. That statement does nothing for your company or the customer. The "intention" of that particular statement was to insult. That's what brought me here and i cut to the chase.

Anyway, thanks for your reply. My first impression may be wrong. And a good company has nothing to worry about.


As for the cbtrussell nonsense, I can reply to everything you have said but it doesn't contribute anything. You are a huge fan of activeCollab, that's fine.

Davor, cyandesign, gcortesi- thanks for the support opinions. Good to know. As far as my comments about "exposing this everywhere..." Absolutely. I am currently searching out project management software and have found about 50 programs with reviews. This is presales. I will be looking into forums and review responses all over the Internet. If a company is taking personal shots at customers or has a bad tone, i will mention it when in any other presales forums or whatever. Pasting that mail can have a HUGE affect on a brand (Amazon reviews for example). I don't get the "give us/me a break" comments. Anyway... thanks for the feedback.

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