Support

[jaigupta]

People who have used Kayako support, please give a review.

This is not a review about the product but only review about support.

How was your experience?

Note: Kayako staff should not post here.

[Creative]

I have been using this software for years and not updated for a while but have always found support to be very good and with a response within 24 hrs.

Ian

[jnet]

I am scared to say my opinion. I am already not popular here

[craigbrass]

Everyone is entitled to an opinion as long as they don't act like a couple of other members here who insist on Kayako-bashing in every thread they post which is simply not constructive.

[Jamie Edwards]

As well as voting, I would very much appreciate hearing why you chose to vote the way you have (particularly those who voted for 'Bad') - details are very important, and I will make sure to act on them.

[craigbrass]

Indeed. Just voting bad is not much use. Isn't going to help Kayako improve.

I definitely think the way forward is to have tech support staff to have a basic to intermediate knowledge of PHP coding and to charge tech support on a points basis. This would mean customers pay for what they use rather than it being totally unfair as it is now (as I pay the same as others yet I don't even use support) and would mean staff understand the software after a period of working with it better than if they didn't have this PHP knowledge. This is what my company is doing when we launch our first software product and based on a few other companies doing it, it works well.

[Jamie Edwards]

Our technical support team do have basic knowledge of PHP, and continue to learn (among advanced skills with MySQL, Apache and the Unix platform). We also have two in-office PHP developers (in India) during the day, as well as one in America who is on-hand for the night-shift.

With regards to the points basis; I can see where you are coming from, but I think that unlimited support for everyone is a good policy and makes more economic sense.

Different support levels will be offered in the future, but unlimited support (assuming your subscription is current) will be the standard.

[craigbrass]

but I think that unlimited support for everyone is a good policy and makes more economic sense.

And I suppose you look for "Unlimited Broadband" when you go for an internet connection too? I look totally for the opposite and look for one with a set bandwidth limit which is why I went with Zen after leaving PlusNet. The reason why? Simple: unlimited is not possible. A sustainable service with limits works much better and you expect to get much better quality of service.

Before you point this out, btw: I know I am now with Be There for internet service but this is simply while they continue to not traffic shape which I doubt will go on for more than another year when O2 who own them realise it isn't sustainable.

[Jamie Edwards]

Originally Posted by craigbrass

And I suppose you look for "Unlimited Broadband" when you go for an internet connection too?

No, I do not

A sustainable service with limits works much better and you expect to get much better quality of service.

This would be a valid point if our infrastructure (staffing and otherwise) was swamped with support demands we cannot handle, and that we couldn't facilitate growth fast enough. However, this completely isn't the case.

The current model has worked for a long time, and we forecast that it will continue to work. It is also a model shared by most software houses who develop similar software (including our competitors and those outside of our market) to ours. Beyond a small audience, there are also serious problems with the model you suggested - it simply does not scale well.

If you're interested in the field of support and service structuring (the whys, wonts and donts from both a development and business perspective), I recommend reading the likes of Windley, Mattsson and the the SCP. It has been heavily researched, and has been buzzing with activity for the last couple of decades.

Thank you for your suggestions, but there isn't anything to solve with respect to yours. I do not wish to sound dismissive; please keep them coming

[craigbrass]

Well why not offer an updates-only service, then?

[jaigupta]

Originally Posted by Jamie Edwards

As well as voting, I would very much appreciate hearing why you chose to vote the way you have (particularly those who voted for 'Bad') - details are very important, and I will make sure to act on them.

I voted "bad" for support because I found support to be useless, support guy was not able to install a working copy of CVS build on his own developer server which I wanted to test as it included a resolved bug.

All this started when I installed a CVS build on my server, support guy wasted more then 20 days saying my environment on server is not correct, files are not uploaded properly, it ultimately ended by Jamie Edwards saying that CVS build is not for production websites and is not supported by support.

All this talk wasted 20 days and guess what? the problem was that I was using wrong regex syntax as input, my first post in support asked about correct syntax but the support guy said syntax is correct, he thought that problem is with my server environment or with code.

Details: Problems applying the regular expressions fix from the CVS build - Kayako Community Forums

[craigbrass]

This is my point. If they were intermediate PHP programmers paid for by using a technical support points system, he would of been able to understand such a issue by quickly looking at the code.

[jaigupta]

Originally Posted by craigbrass

This is my point. If they were intermediate PHP programmers paid for by using a technical support points system, he would of been able to understand such a issue by quickly looking at the code.

In fact, it had no code, just an regex input.

My input was (incorrect)

regex:@[On [A-Za-z]{3} [0-9]{1,2}, at [0-9]{1,2}:[0-9]{2} (PM|AM), (.)+ wrote:]@

But it should be (correct)

regex:@On [A-Za-z]{3} [0-9]{1,2}, at [0-9]{1,2}:[0-9]{2} (PM|AM), (.)+ wrote:@

I knew regex but the way kayako uses it was not known to me, support guys should be technical enough to understand how kayako works.

[craigbrass]

I knew regex but the way kayako uses it was not known to me, support guys should be technical enough to understand how kayako works.

This is what I mean about it being a big advantage if they knew PHP at an intermediate level.

[jaigupta]

I agree