I don't know if I'm faster than the phone. It is almost all I can do to
stay on top of it. Obviously, if there is a mad rush to move to email, it
is going to increase response time for email and increase it on the phones.
The load has to go somewhere.
Generally there is one person on email, and several working the phones. But
we also get more calls than email...
I really don't know, but I'm reluctanct to encourage everyone to start using
email because right now we don't have a good system in place to handle it.
And that would mean developing one, and in the meantime everything would
suffer. (And I'll bet that that would send people back to the phones in
some silly yo-yo move.)
>I tend to prefer that, anyway, myself. (And of course, if someone didn't
>respond from support@livingston.com, I'm not beneath using the addresses of
>the tech support people on this list! ;-)
Tip: If anyone emails support questions to 'megazone' I simple hit 'bounce'
in Elm and send it to 'support' and delete it. Since I handle the support
mail, for the most part, I feel that a few people are trying to jump the
line by sending it to me personally. Since I sort my mail by time sent, they
end up in the list right where they would have been. If I played favorites
and answered mail in my box first, I *know* that over time I'd get more and
more people sending me mail directly.
>Brian/Carl: How do you guys feel about support via email?
It is perfectly viable. If someone prefers email, use it. Note: Please
don't call *and* send email to open a ticket, you waste time on this end
since right now there isn't a good way to link phone calls with email to
open a ticket. So you may end up having two people work on the same problem,
when one could be working on something else. And if we do see it is the
same thing, we respond in *one* medium. So if you call and send email, and
get email back, you won't be getting a call, so don't wait for it. If you
really *want* a call, just call (we never respond to a phone call with
email unless you request it).
We've had people do both, get a reply from me in email, and then call a week
later yelling because they "never got a call back".
The email was their reply.
-MZ
-- Livingston Enterprises Technical Support Phone: 800-458-9966 FAX: 510-426-8951 support@livingston.com <http://www.livingston.com/> 6920 Koll Center Parkway #220, Pleasanton, CA 94566