OT-ish. Software Support – what are your expectations?

[Craig Seeman]

What’s not clear to the customer is what kind of support you’re getting with the price. I’m not sure if it would make a difference but, for a professional, knowing in advance that you’ll get good support may motivate one to pay for the higher priced app.

I few years ago I purchased Teleprompt+ from BombingBrains, an indie developer, for my iPad teleprompter.
At about $25 it’s priced a bit higher than the bottom feeder iOS prompters.
https://www.bombingbrain.com/teleprompt.html
They even had a page on their site explaining that they were available for hire. Truly a mark of indie developers who knew their apps weren’t a sole source of income.

When I had questions/issues with setup and functions, they were quick to respond. Almost always within 24 hours and it was one of the developers, not a “support” person who responded. After a few bug fix updates things went silent for a long time. One day I searched to see what had happened and I discovered they had updated their app, which requires a new purchase.

I don’t have an issue with complete new purchases in that price range. There’s no upgrade pricing in the App Store and, given the value, the full price is really no more and probably far less then the upgrade price of a professional app.

What surprised me though is that I never received notice that a new version had been developed. Given past correspondence they certainly had email contact info for me. Had I not checked I’d have assumed (and actually had assumed) that they abandoned their apps. There’s also no notification in app that lets the user know a new paid version is available.

I do think if Apple allowed upgrade pricing they wouldn’t drive developers into bottom feed pricing structures. It doesn’t help that apparently there’s no in app notification of new versions.

Support absolutely costs money but, whether it’s the app store rules or the companies, if you can’t exploit your current customers whether it’s paid upgrades or even new paid versions, you’re being pushed into a model which doesn’t motivate support from the developer.

[Tom Sefton]

I’ve always found it a massive pain in the arse to deal with Adobe. So far apple have been great with FCPX.

The plugin manufacturers I’ve worked with have been mixed. Some aren’t interested, others like Thomas Szabo at Primaries Exporter have given up spare time and been available for email and Skype whenever it has been required and gone above and beyond to solve issues and provide beta versions for testing – fantastic.

Co-owner at Pollen Studio
http://www.pollenstudio.co.uk

[Simon Ubsdell]

[Tom Sefton] “So far apple have been great with FCPX.”

That’s great to hear.

Out of interest, what mechanism have you been using to “speak” to them? Email, Skype, phone support? If it was phone, did they phone you back? Did you initiate the contact through the feedback page? How quickly did they get back to you?

What kind of issue were they helping with? Was it a bug, or question about how to operate the software?

Would be really interested to hear the specifics, if you don’t mind sharing some of them.

Simon Ubsdell
tokyo-uk.com

[Simon Ubsdell]

[Craig Seeman] “Support absolutely costs money but, whether it’s the app store rules or the companies, if you can’t exploit your current customers whether it’s paid upgrades or even new paid versions, you’re being pushed into a model which doesn’t motivate support from the developer.”

This is very true.

Support represents a huge investment of time – for the smaller developer there’s no question that represents an opportunity cost. Not to mention that many small developers are not doing it as a full-time job, but rather in parallel with something that actually pays the bills.

There does seem to be a view among developers who use it that the App Store model tends to keep them at arm’s length from their customer base to everyone’s disadvantage.

Simon Ubsdell
tokyo-uk.com

[Walter Soyka]

[Simon Ubsdell] “There does seem to be a view among developers who use it that the App Store model tends to keep them at arm’s length from their customer base to everyone’s disadvantage.”

Not to Apple’s! Not only are they moving a ton of hardware, they’re making 30% off of most software written for their platforms and controlling the relationship between third-party developers and their customers. 1990s Microsoft would be proud (or jealous).

Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive   |   RenderBreak [blog]   |   Profile [LinkedIn]

[Mark Suszko]

I’ve had nothing but problems with anything I tried to use from Smith Micro. The installers don’t. The support was all automated responses so far.

I was a little upset at BMD when I had issues using their Media Express app with the Ultra 4K box. I felt like the abilities of the software had been misrepresented, and more troubling, seems like nothing further is comping in the way of improvements or revisions. I advised my people to buy the 4K ultra boxes partly because of the bundled Media Express app, so when it didn’t do all I was led to expect, *the way I expected*, it hurt my street cred at the shop a little.

On the hardware side, I have to give a shout out to AJA for trading me a replacement unit when my IO HD recently died, just out of warranty. They could have been sticklers, pointed to the fine print as an out, and left me in the cold; instead, they made good and shipped a refurbed replacement unit overnight at their expense. Worked right, right out of the box.

Also, when I had a problem with my scan-do ultra, my email support question was handled within the hour, successfully, by a VP from Communications Specialties. Over lunch. That’s impressive.

[Tom Sefton]

As soon as I can, I will go into specifics. There have been 2 cases. One for repeated crashes that I contacted support for via email and received phone support within an hour of my original email. That was resolved quickly.

The next has been something else, but I can’t go into too many details at the moment. They have been very attentive, asked for system logs, system reports and a few more specifics from us about the type of projects we are working on.

Co-owner at Pollen Studio
http://www.pollenstudio.co.uk

[David Lawrence]

[Simon Ubsdell] “Greg at Intelligent Assistance – so quick to respond, so quick to fix any bug.”

+1 for Greg at Intelligent Assistance. He worked directly with me to add a new feature Xto7 that benefits all FCPX users.

_______________________
David Lawrence
art~media~design~research
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[Noah Kadner]

Also as someone whose lived on the other side of the curtain it’s reasonable to break down the various types of support we’re talking about. If your Mac itself dies and you are under warranty you have a worldwide army of stores and call in support that will correct things succinctly.

If you’re expecting a particular bug say in FCPX to be address, sending a note about it to Apple Feedback is the best way to get the ball rolling. Chances are they are already aware of the issue but it never hurts to add your voice, whether you get a direct reply of any sort or not.

A smaller developer might be more directly responsive because their volume of customers will be much smaller and in many cases their product much less complex to support. But I can assure you there are many many good folks at Apple watching out for you as an FCPX user.

Noah

FCPWORKS – FCPX Workflow
Call Box Training

[Noah Kadner]

And for that there are myriad resources including official how-to articles, user to user forums and tutorials… not to mention the manual.

Noah

FCPWORKS – FCPX Workflow
Call Box Training