Support/Forum Issues

[xmanpacheco]

@Peter_K, I'm hoping you see this message. I had tried to reply to another message but it got locked before I could submit it. It had to do with some frustration about getting help in this forum. I would like to offer a suggestion.

First, however, I have to say that I have worked in tech support and appreciate the demand of dealing with tickets and having to manage support forums - it can be hell.

I have seen several posts here of users complaining about lack of response to both these forums and the turn-around time with tickets. I have also experienced no responses to what I thought were reasonable and what I would think are common issues. To be clear, I was not expecting help from support, I did expect that some more experienced user would assist.

Let me suggest something that worked extremely well and made my support job so much easier.

Create an invite-only team of MVPs. These are people who have demonstrated expertise and contribute frequently to help other users in these forums. Allow them to carry some sort of tag in these forums like ThisGuy_IKMVP. Offer them benefits like SWAG (t-shirts, mugs) and especially free product. This be advantageous in that it:

1. Benefits you directly, you get inexpensive help in this forum.
2. Benefits IK reputation as a company with great support for their products
3. Benefits IK support, you can easily direct real support issues (software not working) to the ticketing system and user help issues to the forums for the MVP to handle. Furthermore non-MVP will want to be MVP so you'll get even more help.
4. More benefit to IK support, MVP will develop articles, videos for common and not so common issues.
5. IK customers, they will get timely responses to their issues.

This is a tried and true model that has worked for Microsoft (I was a MS MVP) and other companies that offer support on forums. I hope you'll give this some thought and run it up the chain. I love your product, not so much these forums but I get the burden issue - not criticizing.

xp

[Peter_IK]

I understand where you are coming from and appreciate the kind words and suggestions. However, you are basing much of your post and your suggestions on an incorrect bit of information: You mention support forums, this is not a support forum per the rules linked on each page (and reiterated in the guidelines stickied on the top of each subforum).

As stated in the rules and post mentioned above, this is a user-to-user discussion forum. Users are welcome to suggest things to each other and assist but for anything that is a technical issue that is to be logged with the devs for an update or similar that would still require working with the support team in the trackable ticketing system.

Basically, you're all MVPs and welcome to help each other, that should be clear as the lead topic in the rules linked (and agreed to when registering for this forum).

There are also moderators who are not support reps but can and do offer helpful suggestions many times a day. It sounds more like you are disappointed in the thousands of users here who aren't pitching in when people post. Since this is a user discussion forum, you'll need to rely on users to step up and if they don't then official support will need to be utilized.

There is a high support volume due to the current circumstances around the world. The team is working day and night on tickets and adding personnel but the growth in requests from people who are stuck at home and such is sometimes expanding exponentially.

I appreciate your comments, concerns, and suggestions. More so I (and the support team) appreciate your patience.

Let's please not make this a "meta" forum nor should it be where people post their ticket hasn't been answered (in some cases within less than a day as you can see in other posts).

Everybody please review the rules and keep using this forum as intended for user-to-user discussion and know the support team will assist you with the things they will have to be the people to assist you with.

[Peter_IK]

And yes, posts that continue to be so "meta" and technically against the forum rules will likely be locked and/or removed per those rules. Let's all review the rules and the guideline post at viewtopic.php?f=10&t=19505 and follow them.

Help each other or seek official assistance as appropriate. Follow the rules and guidelines. Simple as that.

Thank you.