Backlash Grows From High Cost Poor Quality Adobe Technical Support

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.

What Value Are MadCap Users Getting With Var?

Var and the remainder of the original RoboHelp tech support - Raul Ramos and Jason Eberwein specifically - were the heart and soul for building eHelp Corporation’s Small Company Division ASP award winning Technical Support Community for two years in a row from 2002 to 2003. Macromedia had wone the same Technical Support award in 2001 and 2003 in the Open Division.

Clearly, Macromedia and eHelp were both very dedicated to the customer support and quality of product that we as Technical Communicators desire. This was directly in adherence to the cluetrain principles I cling to in modern software development.

RoboHelp users are not alone in their complaints - look at PhotoShop’s community disgruntlement!

And it looks like Adobe now has a consistent recipe for how to handle all of their software users. I’m surprised that point releases for products such as Captivate and RoboHelp are not made; rather all changes are wrapped up in the next release.

Adobe Creative Suite CS3 Support Costs Increase By 642% » Pro Photo Show

Kinda like Gas, pay more, get less!! Adobe raises cost of Creative Suite tech support from $249.00, to $1600.00

So today we bring up the topic of tech support.

A year and a half ago some buyers would choose adobe over Macromedia because to put it simple Macromedia robbed us blind for support, and Adobe offered a year of support for the entire creative suite for around $250.00…

…Today the scene has changed, and we find that there is no longer Macromedia. It seems that it makes things easier for Adobe now that there is a lack of competition. Virtually none to be exact. So in a gesture of “growth” Adobe has decided to take up where Macromedia left off. For the new Adobe, the wave of the future is to… ROB YOU BLIND FOR SUPPORT.

… But when a company like Adobe takes advantage of the fact that they no longer have to compete, lowers their level of customer care, and charges thru the nose for support, that they should make readily available to persons buying their expensive software. WE HAVE A PROBLEM!

…How much is it? Well now at Adobe you can pay per instance for support at only 39.00 a pop. Or you can buy 5 incidents for just $175.00. Then there’s the silver (core) level of support that gives you a year of unlimited support for the entire Creative Suite for a mere $1600.00.

That’s actually not all. In other parts of the company Adobe has been cutting some corners by starting to use offshore call centers. Many of us have already had the experience of calling Adobe customer service and getting a representative who can barley speak your language, and does not even begin to know what you want, or what their talking about.

What we’re seeing here is a corporation that has absorbed so many different product revenue streams that it cannot move as nimbly as the separate companies could.

This strategy tends to give consumers a poor value proposition: either you buy the support in advance and end up getting basically all of your patches in the next version or you take your chances with a single copy. Additionally, risk averse product management influences the Adobe management staff scramble to be attached to high priority products, lest their job be outsourced. This breeds a paranoia above all else; when you know that there is someone in India who can attempt to do your job for half or a third the cost, what is the value you place in your skills? How hard do you have to work - sixty or eighty hours a week?

How many Adobe stateside employees now work twelve hours a day, just to prove their worth and not be outsourced? After all, the entire RoboHelp technical support was recently laid off, who’s next?

Best bang for your buck - Flare over RoboHelp. Best future proofing for innovation - Madcap Software over Adobe.

It’s my opinion, based carefully on my analysis of the market, that RoboHelp is no longer the market leading HAT tool. In terms of innovation, Flare is consistently ahead of the game. Additionally, their support is derived from the same open-source, transparent philosophy which was awarded consecutive ASP awards while in use at eHelp.
Bottom line comes down to  where are you going to spend your money - with a company like MadCap that is promising a point release every development cycle who employs stateside technical support veterans like Vartouhi Galpchian - or with Adobe, who gradually sucks all the innovation out of their products and moves at the speed of a crawl towards adoption of Web 2.0 principles?

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