You heard it reported by me on MonkeyPi first regarding the RoboHelp technical support layoff. The web traffic complaining about price increases of Adobe’s products while the perceived quality of service (QoS) in support decreases has been sharply on the rise. Technorati and Google both easily find Adobe users who are simply not happy with the QoS they’re receiving post-purchase. I have close to eight years direct experience working in the Technical Support field, and I will start discussing the Tech Support trends concerning me about how large companies handle user support in the very near future.

Click below the fold to read the specifics about the Adobe Tech Support. In other Tech Support news…

MadCap Software, competing with Adobe for the HAT market, has recruited several of the industry leading eHelp/Macromedia/Adobe Technical Support members.

The focus on support is crystal clear with MadCap’s recently emailed press release:

Aug 7 2007 —- FORMER ROBOHELP / ADOBE SUPPORT MANAGER JOINS THE MADCAP TEAM —-

In our continued commitment to providing the very best technical support available in the industry, and in support of our increased customer adoption and growth, we are very pleased to announce that we have recently hired Var Galpchian as a new addition to the MadCap team.

For those familiar with Var, she was the former long-time RoboHelp Technical Support and Customer Service Manager for eHelp and continued to be an integral part of the support organization at Macromedia and Adobe.

Var joins her former colleagues at MadCap software after a recent Adobe restructuring of US-based technical support. We are very pleased to welcome Var back to her original family in helping MadCap provide customers with world-class support and customer service!

I’ve known Var Galpchian since she hired me back in January 2002 at eHelp. I had to beat out 254 other applicants for the position, and she told me that I had written the ‘best cover letter she had ever seen’.

In short, Var Galpchian’s the best leader I’ve had the pleasure of dealing with outside the cockpit of a Navy Combat Jet.

Var was the hands-down best boss I have ever had. She was blunt when necessary, an advocate for the customers within the eHelp structure, and her tracking mechanisms she implemented for eHelp for product requests and bug tracking helped make RoboHelp what it was. I rated her as the best boss ever in 2006 on her Linkedin.com profile.

And yes, she’s chewed my ass before when I needed it. She’s also had my back and the rest of Tech Support / Customer Care when repping us to the executive team.

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Silke Fleischer has a good concept here. One common request I’ve had for Captivate was to output only .swfs linking to several other single .swf files. I used a click box to take care of this issue and had to optimize the output like Silke mentions here. I’ve run into issues with how to link from file to file within Captivate 2, and I’ve had requests from clients for single .swf files so this procedure will become important.  Quoted from http://blogs.adobe.com/silke.fleischer/2007/08/creating_a_single_swf_with_ado.html :

Silke Fleischer: Creating a Single SWF with Adobe Captivate 3

adobe captivate,captivate,flash,elearning,Computer Based Training,CBT,swf,single file output,output,robodemo,camtasia,software simulation,web 2.0,.swf