You're right, an instant auto-responder would skew the averages to make it
look like support was happening when that first reply came out.


best wishes

Franz Maruna
CEO - PortlandLabs Inc

We do this and @adaptive is speaking of his support tickets with us.

We do this is to make sure it's clear to the customer that we are not ignoring them. Not to take advantage of any system.

Tickets are prioritized. So, in your example, you posted a question not a support issue: "should I update ProForms".

I personally view that question as somewhat low in priority and obvious in nature truthfully. The answer is ALWAYS update when you can...but ALWAYS back up your db.

You have had other support tickets that inquire about customizations. Again, these are not support issues. aka - something is broken.

These are "I would like some of your free time if you could".

Which I am happy to do. When I can.

But support tickets are really intended for just that "support" . Something is broken and I need your help.

We try to get to all of them...and I think we do an excellent job of getting to them quickly.

But the autoresponder is there as a helpful notice - "hey - you're important and we will get to as soon as possible."

Perhaps I should add to that and further clarify what a support ticket is and how it is prioritized? Would that help you?

ChadStrat

Just another note on this - there is a lot that goes into support that can effect response time.

- time difference
- current support load
- current company work load
- priority of ticket as assessed initially.
- sometimes, for whatever reason, we don't actually get an email notifying us(only happens about 1/100 emails....but it does happen)
- personnel availability. If my mom is in the hospital I don't care about support....ect

We have two people helping with support. I address almost %100 of them.

We have a business to run though. So please keep that in mind. We have a lot of other things going on just like you do.

The intent of that email is not to be misleading in any way. It's to let you know that you matter and we will do our best to prioritize.

Hope that clarifies. I would hate for anyone to think specifically RadiantWeb is someone who only has in interest in looking good but not actually supporting our products in a timely manner.

Because we do... Try suggesting we don't to my wife! (the number of times I had to step out of movie on a date or show up to dinner late, or hop out of bed late at night to try and be helpful to someone.)

ChadStrat

I agree with you regarding assessing priority of support requests wrt clarification request or bugs etc.
Perhaps the support ticket could be improved, and ticket priority should have an alternative to the Low, Medium, High, Critical levels, or perhaps another drop down that defines the type of request e.g. Clarification request, Minor Bug, Major/Fatal Bug.

The support ticket you refer to was submitted with Medium priority. I selected this level as the request was not urgent, did not require an immediate fix, and I did not expect an answer in 'less than an hour'. Yes, it probably should have been submitted with Low priority.
Perhaps an improved support ticket form could give examples of which priority level to select.

Regarding use of auto-responder emails, I agree that it is good to get an acknowledgement to know that the request is in the queue, but it does have the unwanted side effect of skewing the marketplace response figures as Franz said. Now that I know this, I will apply less significance to response time when deciding which add-on to buy.
Is there a better alternative to 'response time'? I'd love to see a rating that gives performance standards for quality and duration.

Jon.

I'm just curious - are addon ratings not reliable in some way?

C

I imagine that add-on rating tends to reflect more about the product, such as quality, features, value etc. Hence, the add-on rating itself probably could not give a accurate picture of the longer term support provided, unless support was so bad, it was the dominant factor.
So, perhaps a rating system that gave separate scores for the product and service, would be good?

I've always thought this should be set for when a bug is resolved, not when the discussion starts...

Some tickets never come to a full conclusion, so average support time would become infinite.

That's been my experience as well. It's rare for someone to come back and close a ticket once they have the answer they're looking for. That's why we built the auto archive stuff a long time ago

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