bring back old good support

[Luis Manson]

In the past when i had problems support where real fast, not magic, it took its time to get a solution, thats ok. however the interaction happened at a good rate.

Now im all but happy, upgraded my ipb3 to 4 and got new problems im not able to diagnose, (skin issue) but most actions on the board cant be done, since dynamic menus are not showing on some browsers... registrations stats and adsense are making me get mad with the numbers i see now.

Do i need to pay priority support?? im not happy with paying $100 for one ticket... but i REALLY need to get this fixed! (yes, i know most customers will screm to get their problems fixed too).

I just want a bit more of interaction from the support guys, not miracles, heck i can try to be more patient if i get a "we have a lot of support requests" or "after you next action i can get back to this possibly in XX time"

 

 

[AlexJ]

I am trying to be patient as well. My site has been throwing DB errors after I used get ready for IPS 4.x upgrade thing while back which was released. It converted few tables to InnoDB. That upgrade app from IPS didn't mention that it will be break your existing IPS 3.4.x installation. So now Download links are throwing DB error. 

Now it's like we don't support this and that in IPS 3.4.x much so you are mostly on your own. 

[RevengeFNF]

I think clients also need to be proactive and not reactive. 

Before a major update, backup your site. If the update goes wrong, take note of the error log and restore the backup you made. 

Then open a ticket. 

I've seen people here that update and then they are something like a day with the site down. This is not normal in my opinion. 

 

[Luis Manson]

8 hours ago, RevengeFNF said:

RevengeFNF

i do have backup, but in my case it took near 12hours the update, i tought it would be faster to get a fix/idea

i checked all logs, debuged JS,SQL,php, checked the logs...compared tables with a new install. 

But yes, my mistake was to go live with that issue

[Donkerrood]

8 hours ago, RevengeFNF said:

I think clients also need to be proactive and not reactive. 

Before a major update, backup your site. If the update goes wrong, take note of the error log and restore the backup you made. 

Then open a ticket. 

I've seen people here that update and then they are something like a day with the site down. This is not normal in my opinion. 

 

Yes, that's what I did, and I had excellent support from IPS in doing this. 

First, copied the entire database to a separate test environment to test the utf converter, it did break some things and I pointed IPS to it, but with no hurry - which was fine because it was a test environment anyway. Then they fixed the issue, we ran another test on the test environment and when that was good, IPS actually offered to run the conversion for me on the production site, taking away stress and headaches.

It took a while (couple of hours) for the conversion to complete, but I was able to announce that, so no surprises for the members, and it is a big board on a VPS with limited CPU availability.

Now I'm ready to do the same process for my 3.4 > 4.1 upgrade. But overall, I had great, very responsive support from IPS. Thanks a lot Josh!  

[Luis Manson]

48 hours with no news... :\

And for what i saw, priority support is not a warranty of anything...also the other nice board software is just $200...

[Lindy]

We strive for and typically deliver standard support in a matter of a few hours or less. Unfortunately, issues that require escalation such as your menu/IE concern do require a bit more time to work through. I'm very sorry for the delay and I've expedited your request as it's impacting core functionality. Someone should be with you shortly.

 

[jackflash]

On 1/7/2016 at 9:04 AM, RevengeFNF said:

I think clients also need to be proactive and not reactive. 

Before a major update, backup your site. If the update goes wrong, take note of the error log and restore the backup you made. 

Then open a ticket. 

I've seen people here that update and then they are something like a day with the site down. This is not normal in my opinion. 

 

 

22 hours ago, Luis Manson said:

i do have backup, but in my case it took near 12hours the update, i tought it would be faster to get a fix/idea

i checked all logs, debuged JS,SQL,php, checked the logs...compared tables with a new install. 

But yes, my mistake was to go live with that issue

I plan on upgrading some sites to 4.X soon and will create a mirror site to see how it all works out to avoid/address problems as they arise.

I've been putting in support tickets since 2005 and have never had a bad experience with their support.

[Luis Manson]

7 minutes ago, jackflash said:

I've been putting in support tickets since 2005 and have never had a bad experience with their support.

This is the first time i have a bad experiencie

3 hours ago, Lindy said:

as your menu/IE concern

thanks, I got a reply and was answered back. Also i want to note the issue is not tied to IE only! 

[ArchangelX]

I've been pleased with the service I've received so far. Granted, it's not within the hour or even a couple hours, but more like the next day.  They were able to resolve three issues though within a fairly short matter of time.  I would think extremely complex items are considerably longer in their timeframe.

 

[IveLeft...]

You have to remember that with the new release and constant updates and new stuff the support staff may be more stretched than normal, they are only human and doing their best.

As said above - a decent site backup - try and upgrade on a test forum and check everything works fine before hand would help not only your IPS board but also IPS support.

I have only good things to say about IPS support, they are really good and coming (a good few years back now) from another ***cough***  forum software - well their support was abysmal for all the years i was there, i wont say any more other than when i moved to IPS it was like a weight of my mind.....

[Luis Manson]

im still finding bugs ¬¬ 

the issue was solved, i found the error by myself, not an easy guess, long ago i modified the analytics code, this was cassung "something" since there was no error displayed 

[Rheddy]

While response times have increased over the years, it's nothing to get stressed about. The only problem I have is that when you submit a ticket, some low level IPS Support employee will look at the problem, reproduce the same error that you describe to them and not do anything about it. I cannot tell you how many times I have had to keep submitting the same support ticket before someone like Marc Stridgen, Brandon Farber or Lindy will advance my support ticket to Tier II prompting an "investigation" into the error that appears with the IPS software platform.

I've expressed my concerns about this but its painfully obvious that there needs to be some changes to how support tickets are addressed and simply telling a licensed client to "redownload and reupload the original files" is NOT a solution. What these low level techs don't understand is that its the installation that creates these problems in the first place and that the reason we are submitting support tickets is to actually get the assistance that we're requesting from IPS Support.

It kind of reminds me of the generic responses that you often get from Best Buy, Target, Amazon and Walmart customer service when filing a complaint with their customer service departments. I've been fortunate that I don't just give up on the first response from IPS Support when they haven't addressed it. I think I even brought up this issue with Lindy about it, that we shouldn't have to submit several support tickets on the same issue before someone actually takes a look at the problem. Marc, Brandon and Lindy have been very helpful in escalating the problems that I have included in my support tickets and have actually discovered that the errors I was experiencing ... they were able to reproduce, despite other IPS Support staff claiming they couldn't reproduce the errors.

Hopefully, they can examine how support tickets are being addressed and come up with a better method on dealing with such issues.

[Lindy]

I can empathize with your concern, Morisato and I wish I had a better sure-fast solution. We field hundreds of support requests a day (literally) and by and large, most of them are third party or self-hosting related. There are occasions when legitimate IPS-related issues fall through the cracks (and that bothers me as much as it does you) as the 45 tickets before yours were caused by installing an out of date modification, outdated server software or a poor quality VPS crashing in the middle of a MySQL query. It's certainly no excuse for what amounts to poor service and please trust that we're doing everything we can to improve on this.

As a client, a couple things you can do is be very specific when you're encountering an issue that you need us to reproduce. Often, people don't want to bore us with details -- but we prefer that - bore us! Everything is relevant. Tell us what OS and browser you're using, specific accounts and/or content impacted, exact steps to reproduce and equally important - what you've recently done to your community -- even if it's as simple as a theme edit. If support indicates they're not able to reproduce your issue -- be more specific how to reproduce and you're always welcome to ask directly for it to be escalated; they're required to do so. 

Regarding uploading fresh source files -- unfortunately, that is often a part of the diagnostic procedure. There are hundreds of files within the IPS suite -- all it takes is one to be out of date due to being missed during an upgrade or similar. Often, a fresh upload resolves many concerns - similar to thinking your PC is on the verge of demise and a reboot brings everything back to life as it should. So it very often is the solution. I can understand you expect us to do that for you -- unfortunately, we've had to find a balance between providing superior customer service and maintaining a level of efficiency that allows all clients to get fair and equal support. In the past, a simple fresh file upload could turn into a half-a-day event. Client provides a "special" FTP account for us but it doesn't have access to the appropriate directories to upload. A few "try now"'s later and they can upload, but it stops midway through -- client forgot to whitelist our IP on their firewall. Those kinds of things can become an enormous time sink for support and ultimately, other clients suffer unjustly.  

Finally, speaking generally - when IPS4 was developed, we tried to go for more self-help features. Semi-automatic upgrades, the support tool and ticket submitter and more to come. We do have a good number of clients that want to be completely hands off other than moderation -- that's one of many reasons we offer our Community in the Cloud service. When you opt to self-host, you're also opting to self-manage to a large extent.  I hate to reduce it to a numbers game, but we couldn't sustain providing $500 in support on configuring PHP, MySQL, uploading/replacing files, troubleshooting database crashes and other non-IPS specific issues with a standard $25 renewal. So - the solution is to either raise renewal costs and double/triple our support capacity which would penalize those with solid hosting that don't demand much of our support or draw a proverbial line on what we can and can't support. The line is admittedly blurred at times, but we do strive for and have a reputation for overall stellar support. I'm very proud of our support team - they're a great group of guys.

As always, I maintain an open door policy - please feel free to contact me with any customer service concerns. I regularly review and make policy and training adjustments accordingly. 

[jackflash]

19 minutes ago, Lindy said:

I can empathize with your concern, Morisato and I wish I had a better sure-fast solution. We field hundreds of support requests a day (literally) and by and large, most of them are third party or self-hosting related. There are occasions when legitimate IPS-related issues fall through the cracks (and that bothers me as much as it does you) as the 45 tickets before yours were caused by installing an out of date modification, outdated server software or a poor quality VPS crashing in the middle of a MySQL query. It's certainly no excuse for what amounts to poor service and please trust that we're doing everything we can to improve on this.

As a client, a couple things you can do is be very specific when you're encountering an issue that you need us to reproduce. Often, people don't want to bore us with details -- but we prefer that - bore us! Everything is relevant. Tell us what OS and browser you're using, specific accounts and/or content impacted, exact steps to reproduce and equally important - what you've recently done to your community -- even if it's as simple as a theme edit. If support indicates they're not able to reproduce your issue -- be more specific how to reproduce and you're always welcome to ask directly for it to be escalated; they're required to do so. 

Regarding uploading fresh source files -- unfortunately, that is often a part of the diagnostic procedure. There are hundreds of files within the IPS suite -- all it takes is one to be out of date due to being missed during an upgrade or similar. Often, a fresh upload resolves many concerns - similar to thinking your PC is on the verge of demise and a reboot brings everything back to life as it should. So it very often is the solution. I can understand you expect us to do that for you -- unfortunately, we've had to find a balance between providing superior customer service and maintaining a level of efficiency that allows all clients to get fair and equal support. In the past, a simple fresh file upload could turn into a half-a-day event. Client provides a "special" FTP account for us but it doesn't have access to the appropriate directories to upload. A few "try now"'s later and they can upload, but it stops midway through -- client forgot to whitelist our IP on their firewall. Those kinds of things can become an enormous time sink for support and ultimately, other clients suffer unjustly.  

Finally, speaking generally - when IPS4 was developed, we tried to go for more self-help features. Semi-automatic upgrades, the support tool and ticket submitter and more to come. We do have a good number of clients that want to be completely hands off other than moderation -- that's one of many reasons we offer our Community in the Cloud service. When you opt to self-host, you're also opting to self-manage to a large extent.  I hate to reduce it to a numbers game, but we couldn't sustain providing $500 in support on configuring PHP, MySQL, uploading/replacing files, troubleshooting database crashes and other non-IPS specific issues with a standard $25 renewal. So - the solution is to either raise renewal costs and double/triple our support capacity which would penalize those with solid hosting that don't demand much of our support or draw a proverbial line on what we can and can't support. The line is admittedly blurred at times, but we do strive for and have a reputation for overall stellar support. I'm very proud of our support team - they're a great group of guys.

As always, I maintain an open door policy - please feel free to contact me with any customer service concerns. I regularly review and make policy and training adjustments accordingly. 

Quite frankly, the addons (hooks, etc.) have been the root cause for MANY of the problems with my board that I've filed tickets for.  Having been on warranty side of an auto company, root causes are hard to find because of mods, tunes, version changes and the like - it's very similar.  Moreover, the investigative part in solving problems consumers A LOT of time and resources. . .it ties staff down.

With that being said, I've always found IPS to be quick and professional in solving my blunders.

Customer service is never an easy proposition.

[Rheddy]

Tell me about it, @Lindy . I'm well aware of how much trouble it can be and when ineffectual customer support responses occur, many of us are resorted to posting the problems on the support forums. I'm not criticizing IPS Support but there seems to be a lack of it among some of the support staff. It isn't until we start posting on the support forums regarding problems that we're having when either yourself, Brandon or some of the regular IPS Staff who frequent the forums are kind enough to advise us in the right direction in dealing with a potential issue.

Eventually, I seem to get the problems worked out but usually, by utilizing support tickets and the support forums, the issue tends to get addressed.

[David..]

I've also noticed an increased response time with IPS support since the release of IPS4. As some said above, it's probably due to the fact that the support team is being hammered with new support tickets everyday. So, hopefully the response times will go back to normal once everything settles down with IPS4.

And re-uploading IPB files has solved my problem(s) more than once after support told me to do so.

[Izaya Orihara]

On Saturday, January 9, 2016 at 3:35 PM, Cloud 9 said:

You have to remember that with the new release and constant updates and new stuff the support staff may be more stretched than normal, they are only human and doing their best.

I want to add that we cant keep using this as a potential defense. New releases come out all the time for various products/software but we are now heading towards I believe 8-9 months since IPB4 was released gold. I could sort of understand it back in April 2015...Everyone was upgrading, Eveyrone was a bit excited, bit too impulsive, a bit too confused at times.....and that would cause a rush.

But now that we are well into the 4.1.X branch and heading towards a year since initial release, I do have to say support response time has increased. This isn't something new though. Not a dig at IPS but the support (While my issues normally do get resolved) has never really been speedy to me and it does seem to have increased with IPB4 as far as wait times.

My main issue isn't so much the fact that it takes ages sometimes for a reply(and lord knows on a Weekend, if something catastrophic pops up, there's a good chance you wont here back till Monday) I can deal with longer response times.

What often bugs me is when the longer response time is coupled with a similar experience like @Morisato explains. I'll find myself already answering a question I anticipate them asking in my initial response only to get asked it in the response Eventually, it would of course get dealt with but at times I feel like time is wasted and that tickets aren't thoroughly read. Not always but from time to time.

6 hours ago, Lindy said:

Finally, speaking generally - when IPS4 was developed, we tried to go for more self-help features. Semi-automatic upgrades, the support tool and ticket submitter and more to come. We do have a good number of clients that want to be completely hands off other than moderation -- that's one of many reasons we offer our Community in the Cloud service. When you opt to self-host, you're also opting to self-manage to a large extent.  I hate to reduce it to a numbers game, but we couldn't sustain providing $500 in support on configuring PHP, MySQL, uploading/replacing files, troubleshooting database crashes and other non-IPS specific issues with a standard $25 renewal. So - the solution is to either raise renewal costs and double/triple our support capacity which would penalize those with solid hosting that don't demand much of our support or draw a proverbial line on what we can and can't support. The line is admittedly blurred

As far as raising renewal prices(or the product prices themselves), I personally wouldn't mind if this meant that the company would then be able to expand to add more resources for the support team.

I just want to say that I am a huge fan of the product and company overall(I think my history in several places, proves that lol) and I generally don't have many complaints or unhappy moments with the product itself...but I do find myself frustrated at times with the support because IPS is a bit more complex and not exactly newb friendly to admins who are not well-versed with tech.

Unfortunately also Lindy, you have individuals on other platforms(I am sure you know who/what I am referring to) who use this as a means to attack the product, the company and potentially try to deter people away. It is an issue, yes but when you have angsty and often times melodramatic people with an obvious agenda labeling support as inadequate compared to another forum software's support or labeling the support community as inadequate compared to Forum software B's support community, in the long run it does hurt the product's image.

If IPS does find it a bit much to try and support hosting requests that fall out of the grand scheme of things, I'd like to see  a push for a more open and active support forum. Often times I find myself coupled with waiting a long while for a response, coupled with having to deal with a lack of notice to my support topic.  While I know IPS does offer their own hosting, I'd love to know more about hosts where my fellow clients had amazing or poor experience. Who they recommend? who they recommend I steer clear from? Who they are using and why they are happy.

We are not exactly allowed to discuss this and often are suggested to go to WHT or other places....While I get the sentiment behind it, I have to also say that this is where that openness and more liberal nature of the company could do wonders. I made a topic on this the other day about being more open.

1. Because it can benefit individuals more and it can certainly bring even more activity to the support forums and likely also get people's issues handled better.

2. It also removes that misconception that people aren't getting support or aren't getting adequate enough support.

I Can appreciate the fact that IPS4 is making things more self-help. It forces me to learn and not be so reliant on support but at the same time, at the end of the day....We pay our renewal fees for support and it seems many people have noticed a stark difference with support Pre-IPB4 and Post-IPB4 and that is something that needs to  be rectified sooner than later, in the best way possible.

[Luis Manson]

11 hours ago, Lindy said:

client forgot to whitelist our IP on their firewall. Those kinds of things can become an enormous time sink for support and ultimately, other clients suffer unjustly.  

regarding this, in the panel where we enter our credential, why not add a "test connection" button ?

[Lindy]

6 hours ago, Izaya Orihara said:

Unfortunately also Lindy, you have individuals on other platforms(I am sure you know who/what I am referring to) who use this as a means to attack the product, the company and potentially try to deter people away. It is an issue, yes but when you have angsty and often times melodramatic people with an obvious agenda labeling support as inadequate compared to another forum software's support or labeling the support community as inadequate compared to Forum software B's support community, in the long run it does hurt the product's image.

The support forums here are unofficial peer to peer. Users of "Forum software B's" tend to be comprised more of hobbyists and power users and they largely support themselves with staff filling in the gaps. Generally speaking, IPS clients want to focus more on the community itself and less on the nuts and bolts of the software that powers it. In fact, only ~5% of our client base even visit this community. We serve different demographics so it's an apples and oranges comparison, really though I certainly understand how the comparison is drawn. Most of you don't particularly want to get your hands dirty -- and that's perfectly ok; that's why our primary mode of support is via the client area. We used to provide official forum support and very little was accomplished that didn't go to a ticket anyway. The challenge we face is many want the best of both worlds: Community in the Cloud level service in which one needn't be concerned about the inner workings of FTP, PHP versions, server configs, etc. with the financial benefit of "cheap hosting." From a user standpoint, I really do empathize -- you bought software and you want it to work just the way you like it. From a company standpoint, providing technical support for others' hosts and environments is just not sustainable.

As for the support forums - you folks determine how active or inactive they are; we can't force participation.  We're happy to make them world-viewable, but of course that's not going to increase participation and they're closed off based solely on client feedback as there was concern amongst clients providing free support to those who didn't pay for it, while they did. If you have suggestions for improvements, however, we're certainly open. 

Quote

If IPS does find it a bit much to try and support hosting requests that fall out of the grand scheme of things, I'd like to see  a push for a more open and active support forum. Often times I find myself coupled with waiting a long while for a response, coupled with having to deal with a lack of notice to my support topic.  While I know IPS does offer their own hosting, I'd love to know more about hosts where my fellow clients had amazing or poor experience. Who they recommend? who they recommend I steer clear from? Who they are using and why they are happy.

We are not exactly allowed to discuss this and often are suggested to go to WHT or other places....While I get the sentiment behind it, I have to also say that this is where that openness and more liberal nature of the company could do wonders. I made a topic on this the other day about being more open.

1. Because it can benefit individuals more and it can certainly bring even more activity to the support forums and likely also get people's issues handled better.

2. It also removes that misconception that people aren't getting support or aren't getting adequate enough support.

I Can appreciate the fact that IPS4 is making things more self-help. It forces me to learn and not be so reliant on support but at the same time, at the end of the day....We pay our renewal fees for support and it seems many people have noticed a stark difference with support Pre-IPB4 and Post-IPB4 and that is something that needs to  be rectified sooner than later, in the best way possible.

There are many places to discuss hosting - this just isn't one of them. We're relatively open and transparent here, but allowing promotion and discussion of hosts is akin to a car dealership allowing others to hand out Uncle Bob's Auto Service fliers in their parking lot. It's just bad form. Further, we don't hide the fact we would prefer everyone use our CiC service. It's better for us from a support standpoint, it's better for the client from a one-stop, no middle-man standpoint. Everyone wins. We understand it's not for everyone, you just need to dig a little deeper to research alternate providers.  

Thanks for the overall feedback.