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OT-ish. Software Support – what are your expectations?
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[Walter Soyka] “Simon, what does “support” mean to you?
General help using the system? Emergency help when something goes unusually wrong? Bug fixes for the stuff that’s broken?”
Thinking about that purely from my own point of view as a user, I would always expect the supplier to respond to a bug report – even if it’s just with a form letter to say that it’s a known issue. That’s irrespective of whether I was paying for support. Just because a bug is frequently reported shouldn’t, I think, exonerate the supplier from this (ethical) obligation.
Of course, that raises a lot of questions as to what you mean by a bug – it certainly means a lot of different things to a lot of different people, which is where a good deal of confusion comes in.
What do you class as a bug? Would you agree that for the average user the actual technical sense of this is not always easy to grasp?
(One of the things that used to happen back in the day is that suppliers would publish regular updates detailing known issues and even in some cases suggest workarounds. This practice seems to have disappeared almost entirely. Are there legal reasons for that?)
Beyond that, I’d accept that there’s no reasonable expectation of support (with the possible exception of installation issues) – unless you are paying for it via subscription. This is one the attractions of the subscription model – and it works for both parties. Knowing what you can reasonably expect leads to a much healthier relationship.
There’s of course another way of looking at it and that’s asking if buyers would willingly pay more for a product if they knew there was guaranteed support within agreed parameters. The race to the bottom in pricing means that this could be a tricky sell in today’s market – but there’s no intrinsic reason why it shouldn’t be a valid strategy.
Interestingly, I note that Intelligent Assistance are now saying this on their support page:
“Please Note: We’re a small company of two people, who want to make great software and support it as well as we can, but we have to be realistic. With tens of thousands of customers we can’t honestly promise individual support for $10 – or even $50 – apps, and I doubt you reasonably expect it. ”
Which potentially raises the question, shouldn’t they perhaps be charging more for their apps? Perhaps the real enemy in all of this is unrealistic pricing …
Simon Ubsdell
tokyo-uk.com -
[Simon Ubsdell] “Thinking about that purely from my own point of view as a user, I would always expect the supplier to respond to a bug report – even if it’s just with a form letter to say that it’s a known issue. That’s irrespective of whether I was paying for support. Just because a bug is frequently reported shouldn’t, I think, exonerate the supplier from this (ethical) obligation.”
I agree 100%.
[Simon Ubsdell] “Which potentially raises the question, shouldn’t they perhaps be charging more for their apps? Perhaps the real enemy in all of this is unrealistic pricing …”
I also agree on this 100%. This is a point I’ve been trying to make here over the last year or two. Most folks here are very excited to see the costs of professional post-production software dropping, thinking the lower costs are good for their businesses. I see it differently. I want my vendors to compete, but I also want them to have the healthy margins they need to continue competing in the future.
I think that major developers are salting the fields redefining our expectations with their pricing policies, creating a toxic environment for third-party developers.
Realistically, Intelligent Assistance’s excellent products are worth AT LEAST 10x what they are charging today.
But FCPX is $300 — including almost four years of free updates. (And Motion is $50. Fifty dollars! Surely Motion is worth more than a Lightning/HDMI adapter is!)
That low, low host app pricing (and the piles upon piles of $0.99 mobile apps in the app stores) are mis-calibrating users’ senses of value and putting tremendous pricing pressure on developers. Charging what a product is worth sounds like a great way to make no sales. “I can buy a whole editing application for $300, why should I spend $500 on just a keyer?”
When people call the downward spiral of product pricing in our industry “the democratization of video,” it reminds me of that H. L. Mencken quote: “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.”
Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive | RenderBreak [blog] | Profile [LinkedIn] -
[Simon Ubsdell] “Thinking about that purely from my own point of view as a user, I would always expect the supplier to respond to a bug report – even if it’s just with a form letter to say that it’s a known issue. That’s irrespective of whether I was paying for support. Just because a bug is frequently reported shouldn’t, I think, exonerate the supplier from this (ethical) obligation.”
To amplify this point a bit.
There is definitely a sense in our industry that there is no over-riding obligation on the part of the supplier to respond to each and every bug report, but the fact of the matter is that bugs are the responsibility of the developer, not some random act of nature, and an acknowledgement or better still an apology doesn’t seem an outrageous thing to ask for. A form letter (snippet) could easily take care of that.
There is also a perception that having a very large customer base means that free support is simply not feasible under any circumstances, but this is not necessarily true.
Let’s take the example of a typical large supermarket chain with millions of customers and thousands of product lines. The fact is that I can contact my supermarket directly in a variety of different ways simply to discuss my experience as a customer – in fact, they actively welcome the engagement because they fully understand the commercial value of it.
If I buy a pot of cherry jam (jelly?) that has a pit in it (the jam equivalent of a software bug, let’s say), not only will I receive a fulsome apology, I can be pretty sure they’ll be offering me a month’s free jam and a fistful of vouchers to boot. For all they know, this may be the first and last purchase I ever make from them, so it’s not as if they are even amortising the support costs over my lifetime’s shopping with them.
OK, so software is a bit more tricky to support than jam, but the commercial point still holds. My supermarket has found ways to provide total support, of a kind that is supposedly unthinkable, despite the absolutely minuscule profit generated by any one product.
The supermarket analogy also helps to reveal another piece of slightly faulty thinking. A million customers doesn’t equal a million customer support requests – or if it does, then there’s something seriously wrong with your business at every level and you won’t carry on trading for long. Clearly the supermarkets can afford to respond they way they do because the ratio of unsatisfied/satisfied customers is extremely small, as it should be in any well run business.
The problem with almost all software is that the relentless downward pressure of the market and, if we’re honest, some frankly silly behaviour on the part of certain players in depressing prices far below any sensible level, means that most businesses are either monetising support or simply not offering it. That’s not the same thing as saying that there is no possible business model that could accommodate free support.
Simon Ubsdell
tokyo-uk.com -
Great post. Very much agree with all of that.
[Walter Soyka] “Charging what a product is worth sounds like a great way to make no sales. “I can buy a whole editing application for $300, why should I spend $500 on just a keyer?””
I wonder whether there isn’t a collective failure of nerve, however, and whether the notion of a premium product can’t be retrieved by players bold enough to risk it. As things stand, virtually everyone is terrified of being more expensive than the competition and would sooner sacrifice profits to market share.
Within just a few years we seem to have seen the almost complete disappearance of “premium” in a lot of software product categories.
Simon Ubsdell
tokyo-uk.com -
Hello Simon,
Thanks for bringing up the topic.Unfortunately, I really should not weigh in on comparing the Adobe support experience with our competitors. That would be unsavory since I’ve worked directly with some pretty great people at these other companies and have a lot of respect for them.
Although we all provide support slightly differently, I’m sure that we are all working hard in trying to improve the customer support experience for all of our respective products. It’s never easy, that much I’m sure is true.
From my perspective, I think that communicating directly with customers is important, especially if you can turn that interaction into an item that gets fixed or improved. This is something I’m doing constantly.
[Simon Ubsdell] “Shame that my experience of contacting Adobe Support has been … consistently less than great.”
I’m sorry to hear that, especially because I have a lot of confidence in our team both here in the U.S. and abroad. In the future, feel free to share any negative support experiences you may have via email kmonahan {at} Adobe {dot} com and I’ll do what I can to correct the situation.
For others, when contacting support for digital video issues, make sure you are routed properly. After connecting, ask the agent for the “video queue.” They are the ones with the specialized knowledge, not the baseline Creative Cloud agents, who you may get off the bat.
Adobe Support: https://helpx.adobe.com/contact.html
Available only M-F 7AM-7PM PSTThanks,
KevinKevin Monahan
Support Product Manager—DVA
Adobe After Effects
Adobe Premiere Pro
Adobe
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[Simon Ubsdell] “Within just a few years we seem to have seen the almost complete disappearance of “premium” in a lot of software product categories.”
There are still premium products, but they’re in adjacent markets and they’re really premium. Resolve hurt Digital Vision, but Baselight still seems to be ok. A whole lot of products have hurt Flame, but it’s still out there — and actually seeing a lot of active and promising development right now, indicative of real investment. (Sidebar: I find that both the low-end tool users and the premium tool users regularly underestimate what they other is capable of.)
There are fairly-priced products, too. Pretty much the entire 3D market, as well as NUKE/NUKE X/NUKE STUDIO seem to be priced pretty well; low enough that anyone who really needs to can afford it, but high enough that it costs more than a coffee habit.
[Simon Ubsdell] “I wonder whether there isn’t a collective failure of nerve, however, and whether the notion of a premium product can’t be retrieved by players bold enough to risk it. As things stand, virtually everyone is terrified of being more expensive than the competition and would sooner sacrifice profits to market share.”< I>
Charging premium money requires delivering premium value.
Considering the capabilities of FCPX at $300 once, or Creative Cloud at $50 monthly, how good does your product have to be to sell at a premium?
And who would be in the position to bring such a product to market? Mature products can compete on features, but they have a hard time competing on workflow and training, due to their legacy idiosyncrasies. New products would have to develop massive feature sets before they could be considered viable competition.
It wasn’t that long ago on this forum we used to talk about the four As. Autodesk was the premium player. Have you noticed that people only talk about the 3 As now? Also, does this mean that Avid has become the premium player by accident?
Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive | RenderBreak [blog] | Profile [LinkedIn] -
Hi Kevin
Thanks very much for chiming in.
And apologies for being unnecessarily harsh about Adobe support, which I have only very rarely used and not recently – I am aware that there have been improvements, and I’m pretty sure you guys are working extremely hard to keep those improvements happening.
I’ve already flagged up in my original post the incredible value that we get as users from your participation in the forums, and of course that of Todd and Dennis and others. This is one of the things that Adobe does seriously well in my view, and it’s pretty unique. (AVID kind of do it too but not nearly as well or as thoroughly.)
In fact, it is so consistent and quietly helpful that we are in danger of forgetting how remarkable it is.
One of your own posts got me out of a long-standing problem only last week (one that customer support hadn’t been able to resolve) – that you are prepared to go into specifics about specific problems is a huge help. That you will also go as far as volunteering to escalate an individual issue is seriously valuable as well. You’re not just here for the PR value – it’s always so much more than that.
But of course, the PR value of you guys being here is enormous. For example, there are, it seems, a number of Adobe users who are less than happy (if we can put it that way) with the subscription model, but there is no doubt that your calm, helpful and measured responses are an emollient that if it does not take away the pain at least helps to soften it.
More than this, it’s your continuous presence, contributing to the discussion (not just of Adobe products even) that of course makes us feel that you genuinely care about your users. That’s a really big deal in terms of perception. Privately you may think we’re all “dicks” but if so you do very well to disguise it 😉
That probably all sounded unbearably sycophantic, but it’s actually nice to be able to praise for once rather than snipe. It doesn’t stop me from still really not being happy with the documentation of Adobe products which sadly just never seems to get any better. But in terms of the overall support offering, this “forum participation support” model is imaginative, proactive and of huge value in my view – not just to us as users, but also to Adobe – and I’m more than happy to celebrate that.
Simon Ubsdell
tokyo-uk.com -
[Walter Soyka] “There are still premium products, but they’re in adjacent markets and they’re really premium.”
Yes, indeed. The thing that is perhaps interesting is that the divide between the companies that sell premium and those that do “economy” continues to widen as pricing competition at the latter end gets ever more unrealistic.
AutoDesk are rowing back from their somewhat half-hearted efforts to occupy the NLE space and have retreated back to premium where they are most comfortable since the abandonment of Discreet.
Perhaps there are inherent difficulties in simultaneously offering products that are premium and non-premium. AVID have flirted unsuccessfully with this for many years – though if one is brutally honest, one would have to ask whether AVID products have ever really been premium other than in their frequently eye-watering pricing.
[Walter Soyka] “Charging premium money requires delivering premium value.
And who would be in the position to bring such a product to market? Mature products can compete on features, but they have a hard time competing on workflow and training, due to their legacy idiosyncrasies. New products would have to develop massive feature sets before they could be considered viable competition.”
I know I keep going on about it but Modo is a really interesting example of a product that started out looking like a budget offering but then mutated. The extremely reasonable entry level pricing was the reason I picked it up for home use and just because it looked interesting.
Since then, the Luxology guys have added huge incremental updates at a carefully planned and predictable rate such that it is now genuinely a premium offering. I’m pretty sure that they had this strategy in mind from the very beginning and proceeded to follow it single-mindedly and very effectively.
Of course, this has come at a price – buying into all those updates has meant that we early adopters have ended up paying in total what amounts to a premium price. The entry price of a seat of Modo today remains extremely competitive but the product is not just outstanding value but outstanding in relation to the competition.
Talking of Modo in the context of product support, of course, Brad Peebler and the team have really put a lot of thought and creativity into how they interface with their users and it’s very effective. Brad’s hugely entertaining and informative modcasts are a real treat. Andy Brown’s training videos are among the best of their kind anywhere. There is a great community forum. There are great Modo events across the world. What they’ve shown is that there are many ways of building and supporting a thriving user community – you just need imagination and passion. And of course a great product doesn’t hurt.
Simon Ubsdell
tokyo-uk.com -
[Simon Ubsdell] “though if one is brutally honest, one would have to ask whether AVID products have ever really been premium other than in their frequently eye-watering pricing.”
On the contrary, I think the one thing established is that Avid products ARE premium products. Ask most of Hollywood. As price conscious as they are, Avid’s prices are rarely discussed as needing addressing.
(BECAUSE THEY LEASE AVIDS, NEVER BUY THEM.)
I think you’re absolutely right that, ironically, Avid’s primary conflict has been trying to chase lower prices rather than embracing their premium-ness.
I’ll give you my favorite example. For 3 years, I sat next to the product manager for Avid DS. I think it was the best VALUE in the company, even though it was the highest PRICED in the company ($145,000 with storage, iirc). And what was he bombarded with, all day every day? Lamentations that it was priced TOO LOW.
“Our clients read trade magazines,” they said. “We’re having to cut our rates so far below our Flint and Flame rates that we’re risking the health of our business.”
(A note to the DS diehards who will hate Avid with a hatred that can be seen from outer space until the end of time because of EOL’ing DS: Avid primarily acknowledged that its time had passed. There was a time when you needed the most powerful hardware acceleration available to run 2K. We used to use SINGLE STREAM realtime 2K PLAYBACK– just playback, not even editing, and just one stream — and people were shouting from the audience that this was impossible. They insisted on coming up to the stage after the demo to see if we were playing any tricks.
Now, 6K from a laptop is child’s play.
DS’s color grading? Obliterated by Resolve. Node-based compositing? Obliterated by Nuke, Scratch, and yes, Resolve. No control surface kept it out of the running in EU in particular, where, wait for it, RESOLVE was king. Because of the control surface.
So there was not one single area where DS could keep up — not because Avid didn’t care. My product manager colleague was the most diligent, customer-focused PM I’ve ever met. The issue is that no “do-it-all” product can survive the onslaught of specialist companies and products who eat it from every direction.
Which is why there are no longer any meaningful “do-it-all” products. Even though A-desk comes close, there’s still a whole range of “do-an-awful-lot” products. Evolution is at work. The small mammals have won.)
ANYWAY…Avid’s issues include chasing lower-end markets with products like Liquid, Pinnacle Studio, Xpress, Xpress Pro and others — all of which were major sucks of time and money, and distractions from Avid’s core competencies: premium products for upscale customers.
As one VP put it to me in casual conversation, “Avid’s business model doesn’t support moving lots of inexpensive units. We can only prosper by moving fewer, more expensive units.”
True, which is how Avid’s most prosperous days were built around $20,000 hardware running Media Composer. FCP with AJA and BMD should have been eating Avid’s lunch, but the opposite was true. Introducing a software-only Media Composer at $4995 should have been a disaster, but it wasn’t. It was successful beyond anyone’s imaginings.
(Including mine. I argued vigorously for launching at $2995. My immediate bosses argued for $999. Wrong. $4995 both supported the premium message that Avid’s customers WANT Avid to maintain, while scooping up a lot more money.)
Things started to run off the rails with the combination of a nine-figure purchase of a company whose non-premium products they had to sell off for fractions of a penny on the dollar, and trying to sell lots of lower-priced units.
Their future is stabilizing by going back to their long suit: selling software for more than the competition (thanks Apple!) and LEASING — only now, going direct to the customer, rather than forcing a lease through a VAR who could only make money on a lease that included computers and storage. This still works for Hollywood, but software-only was the only pitch that would work for customers.
re: public support, I think Avid erred a bit by trying to build a strong support community on their own site — HUGE success; an unabashed home run — to the exclusion of their support elsewhere. I don’t think they reckoned on how thoroughly this would marginalize them. They’re certainly addressing this with more more aggressive user group support (again, thanks Apple for making Apple UGs so open to this that they’re ASKING for Avid presos) and much more wide-ranging PR stories….partly enabled by having so many new stories to tell. Thanks Apple! LOL
I’m going to skip the part where paid direct support is still a key revenue source for Avid, a tale too complex to explore in a post as long as this. 🙂
I heartily agree with you on Modo, Simon. Like Adobe, among a handful of companies who is producing exceptional work on every possible platform, aggressively reaching out on every possible platform. I think BMD is doing exemplary work too, including at the COW, where BMD folks have been second only to Adobe, albeit necessarily limited by a much smaller team.
Begging the question: is Adobe the only big company swinging for the support fences? Or is this increasingly becoming the domain of smaller vendors?
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Seriously fascinating post, I really enjoyed that!!!
Even though you disagreed with me, I will agree with you. AVID only ever sold two products that I would call premium: DS and AudioVision.
My contention is that an NLE, any NLE, is fundamentally not a premium product, despite all of AVID’s attempt to price Media Composer that way.
Compared to 3D applications, compared to Flame, compared to NUKE, compared to anything one can genuinely call high end, an NLE offering is basically small beer. You can create the perception that there’s something amazing going on, and obviously AVID’s early entrance into the game put them in pole position to frame the narrative, but really there’s nothing that special about bringing media together and enabling you to stick it back to back.
I’ve been spending the last few hours doing just that on Camtasia and it works just fine. HitFilm have a nice little NLE bolted onto their graphics/compositing offering that works just fine. iMovie works just fine.
NLE’s just ain’t special and they’re not premium.
Simon Ubsdell
tokyo-uk.com
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