ESWC06: Panel, Supporting Users

I hardly have any notes from the second panel of Day two, which was about supporting users. Either there wasn't a lot of action, or I was getting sleepy... I'm betting on a combination of the two.

Thomas Wetzel of Wisco
Marcel Hartgerink of Wibu Systems
Gary Elfring of Elfring Fonts
Bob Walsh of My Micro-ISV
Tony Edgecombe of Frogmore
Marck Pearlstone of BrainStorm Software (Moderator)

Q: Telephone support?

Those who took calls liked the fact that you can address all the beginner issues at once, rather than having to go back and forth with emails for a few days. Whether telephone support is offered varied, usually depending on the market, the number of users, and the price of the product.

Q: Where do you draw the line?

You have to be patient with support. It's easier in forums and email, and if you have too many calls it can be difficult. It's great if you have an active forum because other users will help out with beginner issues.

Q: Does it take a lot of time to control forum content?

Not really, no.

Q: Any more phone issues?

It's not as time consuming as you might think, the people who call are generally very interested, and therefore tend to be worth speaking to. Bob [I think] mentioned that it's very frustrating as a user when you can't find a number or even an email address.

A bit of a discussion and a few audience polls about Contact forms vs published email addresses. Most prefered to be able to find an email address rather than fill in a form.

Q: Issues keeping up with email support?

Some recommended using the Bat email client, for it's templating facitilites. Andrea Nagar's Direct Access was also mentioned as a useful email support tool because of it's text substitution features.

[I've noted a discussion of license key issues, but haven't made any notes... I think it was about what to do when users lose their license keys, and everyone seemed to agree that it should be easy enough in most systems to find the original key and email it to the user.]

Q: What if you have localized versions, what do you do about support?

It's usually acceptable to have a policy about what language support is provided in, most people understand and this isn't too much of an issue.

Q: Anyone outsourcing support?

No.

The session broke early for coffee.

Tags: eswc06 shareware micro isv