To Charles: From Mike (via qway@juno.com)
Mr. Moore,
I was skipping through the SI thread, and saw your complaint
about not getting an e-mail response, and thought I'd help set the
record straight on that one (or at least open the window so you
could see things from the support side...). Along the time that the
stock was riding high, the Electronic Support staff numbered about 8
people. And the daily incoming e-mail from all sources (Compuserve,
BBS, and the Internet) numbered around 400 messages. Including
weekends and 3-4 day holidays. And this number continued to rise as
more people joined the "information superhighway". Meanwhile, to
break down the numbers: (and please remember, the integration we
have now between e-mail packages, databases, and the like didn't
exist at this point - automation was minimal to say the least, and we
*did* automate a lot of things as best could be done)
For e-mails that were "quickies" - things solved by patches or
technotes, requests for upgrades, registration of products - these
generally took between 1-5 minutes to type up/macro a response, and
enter the data in the customer contact database.
For e-mails requesting support for QEMM, anywhere from 5-60 minutes
each, due to having to analyse the system information provided by the
customer, along with the error messages, and dealing with versions of
DOS/Windows ranging from DOS 5 to Win95.
For e-mail requesting support for Winprobe, MagnaRAM, and the
InternetSuite, it would range anywhere from 10-20 minutes, and being
there isn't much in the way of settings, a lot of it would end up as
problem reports turned over to Development.
For e-mail complaints about not getting service, it would take
anywhere from 10-30 minutes to compose a non-form letter response
that we would hope would placate the customer, not mentioning trying
to route the info to the appropriate product manager.
I'll leave the math to you on the above, but would also like to point
out that as the backlog grew, there were more complaints about not
getting a response, which in turn grew the backlog more.
As to why more people were not assigned to answering e-mail:
They were busy answering the phones, and if you've seen the typical
techie's writing abilities... let's just say it limited the number of
individuals qualified to respond to e-mail.
That's just how things were then.. and things *have* changed a bit -
the staff is a bit happier, and seem to be more focused, and the
products have gotten better. I would humbly suggest you not base
your opinions on the products or the company from then, but evaluate
them as they are now.
Humbly,
Mike Bryant II
Former Senior Support Technician and Short Order Cook
Quarterdeck Electronic Support Team, currently a disgruntled former
employee who looks at Lernhaus(sp?) & Hauspie and wonders why people
pay executives who crash a company that much money...
Glad to be of service Mike. |
