I just spoke to Tracy Wilson, the director of Adobe's customer care organization. We had a conversation last month after my article on problems with customer support for users of Connect Professional as a hosted service.
In our first talk, Tracy acknowledged that Adobe realized they needed to improve and restructure their support methodology, especially for hosted service users, which is a new delivery model for the organization. She said that they had embarked on an 8-month project, speaking to 2000 customers worldwide about experiences and pain points.
They then restructured their internal (Tier 2 and 3) technical support teams to build regional centers of excellence, hire more technical experts, and get more direct hands-on experience with customers. They are still building to full strength and competency there, with an Acrobat Connect team based in Ottawa, Canada. One of the early priorities was a faster response time to escalated problems.
In the meantime, they have started working on Tier 1 changes, which is the first line answering every incoming customer call. That's a larger problem, because it affects every product and every call all at once.
The operations team is working on a better self-service online resource for letting hosted customers find answers themselves. There are people assigned to building a larger, more streamlined online knowledgebase and search system.
In today's call, Tracy updated me on changes addressing the problems I had encountered with what Adobe calls the "entitlement process." That's the thorny question of whether a caller is on a support plan, checking for customer ID, and the like. This week they have made changes so Connect customers on a Bronze or Silver support plan can call directly to Technical Support without going through an Entitlement gatekeeper. The support rep will determine who you are and get you set up appropriately without shuttling you to another department. Then they can move on to answering your question. That will certainly help with some of the problems I reported.
Adobe has not yet resolved the critical need for instant in-meeting help though. If a host or an attendee is trying to get into a meeting and having problems, they need a way to get quick connection help without any of that entitlement rigmarole. Tracy tells me that putting a process in place for that situation is high on her list and that she'll give me updates as they make additional changes.
It's nice to hear that the company is taking an active interest in these problems!
