On Apr 7, 2009, at 4:30 PM, Michael Semcheski wrote:
>
> On Tue, Apr 7, 2009 at 2:48 PM, Andrew Shafer <and...@reductivelabs.com
> > wrote:
>> I've been on both sides of this equation many times and my
>> experience has
>> always been that every intermediary in the communication loses/
>> distorts
>> information, so if I really want something to be fixed the best
>> strategy
>> always seemed to be provide the best possible report with clear
>> steps to
>> reproduce the issue.
>
> I think what you're saying happens quite a bit. It depends a lot on
> the quality of the support and the patience and thoroughness of the
> person who is reporting the problem.
>
> If I'm paying for support for a product, I want to have my cake and
> eat it too. That is, I don't want to be the one tracking down bugs,
> and I also want the supporting party to track down the bugs and get
> them fixed as soon as possible.
I think this is reasonable, and generally this is what we offer for
support, but it's often essentially impossible to track down a bug
without some involvement from the support customer.
We're still in the process of figuring out exactly what people expect
and want and how best to provide it, but it's certainly our assumption
that we should file the bugs and we should do as much work as we can
to discover and resolve them.
>
>> What are your expectations for support? Have you ever had support
>> from
>> Oracle(replace with enterprise software company of your choice)?
>> Did that
>> put an upper bound on the amount of time your staff had to spend
>> working on
>> anything?
>
> My expectations for support are that when I encounter problems, I will
> have someone I can go to for expert advice. 9 times out of 10,
> there's an expert way around or out of the problem. Very rarely is
> there an actual bug that needs to be fixed with a code change. In any
> case, when I call, I want a solution or a work around immediately.
> That may not always happen, but from that point on, the ball's in the
> vendor's court, and I've always got other things that I can be doing.
>
> Support is really like an insurance policy though. You have a product,
> and there are core requirements it needs to achieve. Once you've
> plunked down the money to acquire it and the grace period is over if
> it stops working it needs to start working again. That support
> contract is how you ensure that if it stops, it won't stay stopped.
I think these are normal and reasonable support expectations, although
my own experiences are that they're rarely provided. We are doing
well at it so far, I think, though.
>
> I've never had support from Oracle. Biggest organization I've ever
> purchased support from is CommVault. I've had support from my
> organization's enterprise-IT department (of which I am not a part).
> We've got a realtime OS developed by a one person firm, and he has a
> support contract which we renew yearly, even though there's probably
> been just one bug we've found in the last 5 years. We've got hardware
> support on most of the things we buy.
>
> We'll take support for things that are vital to our ability to
> operate, because ... they're vital. I think the best analogy is to
> replace "support contract" with "insurance policy".
>
>
>> I want to explore this topic so Reductive Labs can provide the most
>> valuable
>> support possible by understanding everyone's expectations and
>> motivations.
>
> I think its a great topic, and I'm trying to respond as honestly as
> possible.
And we appreciate it, but so far, you've been quite reasonable. :)
--
Write a wise saying and your name will live forever.
-- Anonymous
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Luke Kanies | http://reductivelabs.com | http://madstop.com
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