Where's the support team?

[nodle]

I don't feel like the guy was out of line, just asking for some communication of a ticket received. If anything, Xenforo should have an automated system that says we have received your ticket and we will promptly get back to you as soon as possible. I know when someone sends me a business email, I send back a short message saying that I have received your message. It's just courtesy. Additionally, having the issue on the Cloud hosting, to me, suggests that you would want to resolve this ASAP, as it could give a bad name to your cloud hosting among prospective customers. Plus, with the response given the way it was from a staff member, I know I would be written up for that response, because it's not good customer service. Anyway, best of luck to you in getting your problem solved.

 

[thumped]

Having an open support ticket from November isn't great and if it were me, I'd be expecting some kind of feedback/interaction, but deciding on 28th December that now it's important, and expecting a swift response over the new year period, is more than a little bit unreasonable.

 

[Paul B]

To clarify, the ticket was opened 9 November and I responded 10 November.
There was no follow up until 28 December - 48 days later.

For more than 10 years I have dealt with tickets out of hours (0900 -1700 Mon to Fri) even after midnight, at weekends, on public holidays, and even every time I have been on vacation abroad - I purposely took my laptop for that very reason.

I take a few days off in 10 years and this is the result.

Glad to know the many thousands of hours I have put in over the last decade in my own time have been appreciated.

Never again.

 

[Hobbes]

To clarify, the ticket was opened 9 November and I responded 10 November.
There was no follow up until 28 December - 48 days later.

For more than 10 years I have dealt with tickets out of hours (0900 -1700 Mon to Fri) even after midnight, at weekends, on public holidays, and even every time I have been on vacation abroad - I purposely took my laptop for that very reason.

I take a few days off in 10 years and this is the result.

Glad to know the many thousands of hours I have put in over the last decade in my own time have been appreciated.

Never again.

Paul, I want to be clear that this is not about your personal workload, past dedication, or time off, all of which I respect. Everyone deserves vacation time, and I recognize the effort it takes to support a product over many years.

That said, the core issue here remains unchanged: there was no communication. A brief acknowledgment in the support ticket—even a simple note indicating limited availability or that the issue would be reviewed after the holiday period—would have prevented this situation entirely. Instead, the ticket remained unanswered, which left us with no option but to seek visibility through the forum (which has been very eye opening based on some of the other comments here about the quality of customer service.)

As a paying customer, my concern is not how support coverage is internally structured, but whether there are systems in place to communicate expectations clearly when coverage is limited. That responsibility should not fall on the customer to infer or discover after the fact.

It is also unfortunate that this thread was allowed to become adversarial, with commentary from non-staff members who were not involved in our issue and had no insight into it. Direct communication from staff earlier on would have avoided much of this and kept the discussion where it belonged—within the ticket itself.

My intent has never been to diminish individual contributions, but to advocate for clearer communication when support is needed.

That remains the only issue being raised.

You may defend yourself as much as you'd like, but this was very poor communication and very poor customer service.

 

[Slavik]

I guess in the checks notes 14 years that its never been an issue, its now an issue.

Will leave a sticky note next Christmas for those who need it.

 

[smallwheels]

Never again.

Honestly: Fix the processes on XFs side and implement a proper ticket process with automatic replies and be explicit about availability of support. The main issue would have been avoided then and implementeing something like that is neither rocket science nor expensive. It is an absolute commodity that even very small companies have implemented today.
But obviously the first thing is to accept that there is an issue with communication and that neiter @Hobbes nor anyone else attacked you personally or expects you to work 24/7/365. It is the process that got criticized but as long as you perceive that critique as a personal attack on you there is no way to improve (and no reason as well). The unprofessional statements in this thread aside it is exactly what @Hobbes said:

You may defend yourself as much as you'd like, but this was very poor communication and very poor customer service.

It is understanding and accepting reasonable customer expectations and creating a process to serve them w/o overworking yourself. It shouldn't be that hard to acknowledge that something went badly wrong in terms of this support incident. Is is not about justifying what has happened and continuing in exact the same way but about improving that in future something like that does not happen again. I can imagine your frustration when there's barely a "thank you" for countless over hours for many years but when something goes wrong and you are not even there things get turbulent. I can imagine how it feels to secretly proved best effort support even over the christma period and then there is an unhappy customer.
There is one golden rule: Communicate early and explicitely to manage expectations. Can you imagine how annoyed and frustrated @Hobbes must have been to post the matter publically? Can you imagine how much trust he had in beforehand that he went for XF Cloud? Can you imagine how much of this trust is now damaged or vanished? Can you imagine how much damage a thread like this (including the answers of XF staff) creates with other customers let alone potential customers? It is up to you to ignore all that and to continue, saying "I did nothing wrong" or to take this incident as a trigger improve the communication situation with tickets for everybody in future, leaving less stress for you as well as for the customers. Can't be that hard.

 

[smallwheels]

I guess in the checks notes 14 years that its never been an issue, its now an issue.

Well: Communication or better the lack thereof (and sometimes the very rogue tone and attitude) has been an issue for years on many levels and been raised as an issue countless times. Hard to believe that this has been unrecognized, especially over the last months. But also before that - have i.e. a look at this thread:

Thread 'Current state of XF and the participation of the XF Team'

Sep 21, 2022

Hello,

I am concerned about the current state of XenForo and I am starting this topic to see if I am overreacting or if my concern has some merit to it.

I always try to be helpful, supportive and positive on here. So the last thing I want to do is to start a drama. On other sites I have a more direct and sharp tongue, but on here I want to be a part of a warm-welcoming family. I feel like I owe it to XF and all forum owners. One day I help someone out, another day someone else will help me out. Give and take. We are on the same boat, this way everyone benefits. But lately I am struggling...

• sbj
• Replies: 150
• Forum: Other XenForo discussions and feedback

• 
• 
• 

 

[Paul B]

It is also unfortunate that this thread was allowed to become adversarial, with commentary from non-staff members who were not involved in our issue and had no insight into it.

He's talking about you @smallwheels

But then it was inevitable by posting here and making the issue public.

That's my last comment on this issue and possibly my last comment in this forum.

 

[Hobbes]

I guess in the checks notes 14 years that its never been an issue, its now an issue.

Will leave a sticky note next Christmas for those who need it.

He's talking about you @smallwheels

But then it was inevitable by posting here and making the issue public.

That's my last comment on this issue and possibly my last comment in this forum.

Comments of this nature are unprofessional and do not reflect well on the company—particularly in a public forum where current and prospective customers may be evaluating how support concerns are handled.

Rather than constructively addressing the issue, these remarks continue to downplay legitimate concerns and introduce a tone that comes across as dismissive. That is not conducive to resolving the matter, nor does it align with the expectations of a customer seeking paid support.

The conduct displayed here has been disappointing and unprofessional. I will be addressing these interactions privately with administrative staff so they are aware of how this exchange has unfolded.

At this point, the focus should return to resolving the underlying issue and restoring clear, professional communication. Chris from XenForo has now begun responding to our support ticket as of this morning, and I will be continuing the technical discussion directly with him.

My objective throughout this process has been straightforward: to receive clear, direct engagement on a paid support matter and to move forward constructively.

That said, the tone and handling of this thread have reflected poorly on the company’s public support presence and have unnecessarily complicated what should have been a simple support interaction.

Good day (or not.)

 

[Chris D]

We’re back up to full speed today, as is common for most businesses. We have contacted the customer today in order to progress the ticket.

For reference, I think it’s important to clarify the timeline. Although the ticket has been open since November, our last reply was on November 10 and we didn’t receive a response to that until December 28; a Sunday between Christmas and New Year.

Could we communicate holiday support times better? Maybe so, though this is an isolated complaint that we’ve frankly never experienced before in our history, so if there are lessons to be learned from this then I can assure you we will learn them.

In the meantime, given the issue is now resolved (or resolving) I feel like the thread has served its purpose.