Site Management Forum/Community Support vs. Actual Technical Support

[Sinistra]

Ok I have noticed that Invision Community dose this and I'm sure other forums development companies are going this route too. What are your thoughts and views on forum/community support over the actual company offering tech support. My thing is depending on who answers your topic could be rude, this could be a red flag of how the company runs things. I have never had this problem with IC I have always gotten good reliable answers when I need them. Then you have those that want to be cryptic lol. I have developed skins for IC for awhile now so I can figure a lot of the stuff out myself. But for those that are just starting I feel it's good to have a community that is inviting and willing to help when needed.

 

[Cedric]

Everyone needs support every now and then, there's no shame in that. You can't all be blessed with the knowledge like I have. (Joke, lol.) But having that said, what you need to understand is that forums are in a huge decline for years. Many look outside the box further than a simple forum platform and often need more features as Invision Community provides "a complete suite". What also is a reality, is that many forum administrators no longer want to get into the server management hassle and choose for the Cloud subscription.

So naturally, companies will also see a decline in support for self hosting. Unless you have a bad platform that is. So, the focus lays with Cloud as that is often more profitable which you can't really blame them for, they're a company - no hobbyists. Woltlab does this, Invision Community does this, XenForo does this, pretty much everyone is going that route.

Problem is that we as hobbyists are often not having the same vision as those companies do. Luckily we still have many other hobbyists on those support forums that are willing to help.

 

[Arantor]

Remember that the free platforms, the support isn’t a company but volunteers in their spare time, and they get a higher level of entitled user to deal with than the paid platforms.

I lost count of the times I rolled my eyes at what amounted to “you know this platform better than I do, huh? I only built headline features for it, I guess”. Patience wears thin surprisingly quickly.

 

[Dismal_Bliss]

I only have experience with Invision and I am completely fine with what they do. Their Support Forums doubles as a knowledge base, and I've oftentimes found my answers in other people's posts and never actually had to post about my issue. Invision support Staff monitors these forums during business hours, and the rest of the community can help you out during off hours. Some IC employees pop in on evenings and weekends too. If I have a serious problem, they will escalate it by creating a ticket and remotely connecting to my server if they believe it is software related. Of course, if it's server related then they will tell me what I need to do or what my server manager needs to do.

I crashed my private popular site during an upgrade once, and was offline for 19 hours. I leanred not to attempt an upgrade outside of their normal business hours, lol.

 

[Empire]

Actual technical support means also that you get the pros to help if they get around to getting time to help you more so then the communty forum

 

[Uncrowned]

I think the move to a public support forum was good as most of the issues admins have are well.. very basic.... and can be handled by most of the user base on that forum. Both providing a faster solution and freeing up a tech support member for a real issue. The truth becomes that the admin whose site is completely down needs to wait for tech support to explain to 500 others before them in the queue needing help on how to change their site name or add a larger image upload limit. So it does seem like a win for everyone, plus it adds these issues (an more importantly their answers) to Google Search for when I do the same dumb thing and can't figure it out two years from now.

Granted, it does need to follow up with a true support ticket system and most do seem to keep this running well for issues that require private support or advanced support.

 

[joelr]

Ok I have noticed that Invision Community dose this and I'm sure other forums development companies are going this route too. What are your thoughts and views on forum/community support over the actual company offering tech support. My thing is depending on who answers your topic could be rude, this could be a red flag of how the company runs things. I have never had this problem with IC I have always gotten good reliable answers when I need them. Then you have those that want to be cryptic lol. I have developed skins for IC for awhile now so I can figure a lot of the stuff out myself. But for those that are just starting I feel it's good to have a community that is inviting and willing to help when needed.

Ive been a client of IPS long enough to have private tickets before they switched to forum support for classic self hosted clients.

Now that I have forum support, I personally prefer the intimacy, the professionalism, and the privacy that ticket support provides. I don't know if I need to have a dozen other clients "chiming in" or providing helpful suggestions. I want the most correct answer and diagnosis for my platform. So I'm mixed. I was someone who unabashedly poked fun at IPS for not offering forum support, yet now that I have it, I'm not convinced it's the best way.

 

[Tyrsson]

As a former Support Team Lead this is something I feel that SMF got right. They provided support for all users via the forums and they had a ticket system for charter members. It has always been a team focus, especially for the support team, to provide top notch support in a timely manner to all users, by the team.