Technical Support Through Official Company Public Web Forums..........

[Smokey]

I've been doing a few projects recently, where I needed some manufacturer technical support.  Gone are the days of FAEs and individual technical contacts.  Many of the big name companies have seemed to migrate to providing official technical support primarily via public web forums.


I'm not talking about random arduino user forums with questions about what a pullup resistor is.  I'm talking about the place professional engineers are directed to ask real technical questions and replies by paid support engineer employees of the company.

For example:
https://community.renesas.com/ (Formerly renesasRULZ.com!)
https://e2e.ti.com/
https://forum.microchip.com/
etc.

I have found dealing with support in this way at a minimum frustrating, and often times totally infuriating. 

Some of the basic problems are the huge lag (at most one official response per day), and the generic replies to very specific questions ("here is a link to the data sheet").  It often takes multiple days to just get someone to acknowledge the specific question you have and get to work on a solution, no matter how clearly you word your initial question with background information and links to all the stuff you have already tried and read.

In theory, having a public forum allows the community to answer a lot of questions without needing a company employee to jump in, but in practice that rarely seems to be the case.

And it's not just me.  Since these are public forums I can see other people going through the same process (and frustration) when they post questions.

One of my hats used to be user tech support, so I get why that job is hard.  But this public forum format apparently forces fewer, less qualified, support engineers to publicly respond to more real technical questions.  While I'm sure it saves the companies money over individual support contacts, this system universally sucks at doing the job it's intended to do which is quickly provide support to the engineers that are trying to use the company's parts in real products. 

//rant over.... for now, until I need to ask another support question on an official public support forum....

[Smokey]

One more note....

The idea:
Yes, the public nature of the forum is, in theory, a good record of problems and solutions.  So, again in theory, once someone asks a question and gets a solution, that answer is on the forum for everyone to search for and just read so the company doesn't need to answer the same question over and over with each user privately.

The reality:
1) If your users are asking the same question over and over, that means your documentation sucks.  Take the user feedback and questions, and revise your documentation.
2) Many public forum questions never get adequate resolution.  Either the user figured it out and just never posted their solution... Or the user gave up and changed the design to use a part that has adequate documentation... or, and this is my favorite, for really hard problems the paid support engineers actually pull the conversation offline into a personal support channel AND never update the public forum with what the actual solution was. 

So support forums are littered with real questions with no clear resolution. 

[ataradov]

At least Microchip has a way to submit regular support tickets. I'm not sure if the experience is a whole lot better until you manage to get to L2, but at least there is probably more accountability and if the request is reasonable enough and you are persistent, you can often get it to L2.

I'm not even sure how "official" that forum is as a support channel. I think it is just people post as normal, but if you are registered with microchip email you get identified as an employee, which created perception that it is their direct job to respond to those forum posts.

This is one of the reasons I don't want to participate on that forum. It happened many times on AVRFreaks too - people assume that if you work for a company, it must be your job to respond to their every request.

[Smokey]

At least Microchip has a way to submit regular support tickets
...

So does renesas.  But, from what I can tell, it's the same guys doing double duty on the forums and tickets. 

[ataradov]

So does renesas.  But, from what I can tell, it's the same guys doing double duty on the forums and tickets. 

I don't think it is a policy or a requirement, but I may be wrong. At least from some requests that I get forwarded from the forum, it is mostly local FAEs that participate in the forms. And I always ask to create a real ticket for this because handing 100s of tickets without a support system is a nightmare.

[JPortici]

At least Microchip has a way to submit regular support tickets. I'm not sure if the experience is a whole lot better until you manage to get to L2, but at least there is probably more accountability and if the request is reasonable enough and you are persistent, you can often get it to L2.

I'm not even sure how "official" that forum is as a support channel. I think it is just people post as normal, but if you are registered with microchip email you get identified as an employee, which created perception that it is their direct job to respond to those forum posts.

This is one of the reasons I don't want to participate on that forum. It happened many times on AVRFreaks too - people assume that if you work for a company, it must be your job to respond to their every request.

It is! Happened to me some times, that i went straight to L2. It only happened to 16bit devices and fairly complex problems such as
- Documentation and reference manual non completely clear
- Compiler Issues (then confirmed as actual bugs, or them asking for even more info and testing on my part)
- Device issues
In some cases there were already forum threads made by me and already argued by/confirmed by other "high level" users and either the microchip employee already saw that thread and told me to refer to it, or they straight passed me to the guy because it was a moment in which i was sending a number of tickets, it was early days of new devices available to the public.

I wish there were more active employees such as mad_c, which is one of the XC8 compiler writers that helps us diagnose problems, or explain what we perceive as problems. There used to be george, which was IIRC the head of the simulator team (a huge help in getting the simulator doing complex things, and he was also benefiting from the hivemind for ideas on how to solve situations) but he retired a couple of years ago. I see that the MATLAB and the FPGA subforums have some microchip employees that post there, but that's probably because they are more highgly priced tools, so more money to invest to user care.

In the end having the public forum is a good thing because you can search if other have your same problem (unless you are so brain dead that can't conceive the idea of search before posting, these are usually the users that do not understand what you are writing as well  ) and i want to say that a good 5% of threads come out to be gold mines because very knowledgeable people hang in those places

And Yes, it's good that with microchip you can AT LEAST send a ticket and have a chance of having it answered and the problem solved, even on asking for info. Most of my tickets were sent from my gmail account, not even work email.

[ataradov]

At least for MCU32 there is an easy way to get to L2. If you need a hardware design review, there is a separate request form. That form submits straight to L2. In you do it during business hours in the US, it is highly likely to get to me. There is a bit of wiggle room on what constitutes "design review",  but it should be hardware related for sure, software or firmware questions would be rejected.

[AndyC_772]

One of the most important issues I come across is that support forums are public.

Doing stuff for fun as a hobby? Not a problem. Share your knowledge and enthusiasm.

Working on a commercial product, under NDA to a client, where the very fact you're working with a specific device gives a massive heads-up to competitors about what product might be coming to market months later? Very different.

[mendip_discovery]

How about when they point you at the FAQ which is just cut and paste parts of the promotional material/datasheet and not a real answer.

I dislike forums at times as the thread drift can be epic and a 200 page set of replies doesn't bode well for working out if someone actually worked out the problem.

[HwAoRrDk]

Working on a commercial product, under NDA to a client, where the very fact you're working with a specific device gives a massive heads-up to competitors about what product might be coming to market months later? Very different.

Yeah, had this problem before at a previous job (not in the area of electronics). Having to post questions to a public community support mailing list under a personal account and obfuscate what exactly you're doing because revealing what you're working on might tip off a competitor. Although in that case it wasn't because the vendor in question didn't have any direct support, it's that the boss was too stingy to pay for 'premium' support.

[thm_w]

User forums for support are great. Almost all of the problems you mention just sound like resource issues, support is not being given enough time or resources to spend answering questions on the forum.

There are also integrations between existing support software and forums, to be able to track posts and assign priorities, support staff, response timelines, etc. But the above sites may not be doing this.

I dislike forums at times as the thread drift can be epic and a 200 page set of replies doesn't bode well for working out if someone actually worked out the problem.

Could easily be managed by having a "Solved" thread tag, which some will use.

[Smokey]

User forums for support are great. Almost all of the problems you mention just sound like resource issues, support is not being given enough time or resources to spend answering questions on the forum.

There are also integrations between existing support software and forums, to be able to track posts and assign priorities, support staff, response timelines, etc. But the above sites may not be doing this.
...

ok... Give me an example of an official company sponsored tech support forum that you think does a great job?

[ataradov]

This is not a fair request. You need to compare to the "private" support. And then forums very well may end up being on par.

It is just all support is not great if you are not a key customer.

[thm_w]

ok... Give me an example of an official company sponsored tech support forum that you think does a great job?

I'm saying if you put the same budget and effort into a support forum, vs that going to traditional call-in or email in responses, the first option will be more efficient.
I don't have an example of a company that has actually done that.

If you've worked in support before you'll know that a good percentage of questions have been asked and answered already. But the answers are hidden away in the support ticket system.

[Smokey]

User forums for support are great.
....

That was a specific claim.  I'm not sure what is so outrageous about asking for an example of a company that has a great user support forum.

As I mentioned, I have worked support.  Both for products I had a hand in designing and for other legacy products.  If your support system doesn't have a feedback loop back into documentation that updates the documentation with the answers to reoccurring questions, then your support system sucks. 

[thm_w]

User forums for support are great.
....

That was a specific claim.  I'm not sure what is so outrageous about asking for an example of a company that has a great user support forum.

Most don't, for the reasons I explained above. and I cant link my company forum as it requires login.
You can look at the level of support given here from company reps. Or even the Altium section which not a single rep has posted in.

As I mentioned, I have worked support.  Both for products I had a hand in designing and for other legacy products.  If your support system doesn't have a feedback loop back into documentation that updates the documentation with the answers to reoccurring questions, then your support system sucks.

Automatically updating documentation? No not that I've heard of.
Manually sure, but no one designates time to that because the phones need answering...

[Smokey]

As I mentioned, I have worked support.  Both for products I had a hand in designing and for other legacy products.  If your support system doesn't have a feedback loop back into documentation that updates the documentation with the answers to reoccurring questions, then your support system sucks.

Automatically updating documentation? No not that I've heard of.
Manually sure, but no one designates time to that because the phones need answering...

Can you imagine automatic documentation updates.  That would be a nightmare.

I'm not talking about companies with 3 dudes in a garage somewhere.  TI and Renesas (... big companies that I'm primarily complaining about) have real budgets with departments of people who's job titles are about writing documentation.  These are the guys I Expect to have good documentation (and good support in general). 

I would LOVE for public web forums to actually work as a pro level tech support solution.  In theory, that would be great.  I'm all about it.  I've just never seen it happen.