(Updated – 29th December 2018)
Why Are You Not Answering My Support Requests
An often heard cry for help heard in the Facebook groups across the WordPress community. It’s also heard in our very own support system and frankly, sometimes people are right.
At Elegant Marketplace, we offer first line support for all our developers. It was a decision made when we first started and although sometimes tough to keep up with, support for the products we sell on our Divi Theme and WordPress Marketplace is paramount. Sometimes, like all support systems we ‘let’ people down, we don’t acknowledge in a timely manner when we have received a ticket and sometimes tickets get lost in the melee. But, providing support is and always will be a double-edged sword.
Of course we, like others, want to offer the very best in support of our themes and plugins. We ask our developers to answer a few of the more complex ones and we can handle the rest. We have a 3 man support team and to be honest considering the number of sales, our support system is not overwhelmed too often. We did have a situation on Black Friday weekend where there were a few issues relating to doubling up on orders and we have addressed 99.9% of these queries within 48 hours and are happy that things are getting back to the normal, please unzip the file before uploading or please ensure you are using the latest php version type of support replies.
We have noticed within the various Facebook Groups that more and more people are complaining that Elegant Themes support is not getting back to them. Of the reasons we have seen, most are related to actual design queries – we find this all the time as well. Support for products must be limited surely to just errors on the theme – if you are using a child theme or a layout from another developer, perhaps it would be better to ask the developer to fix your issue. If you have amended your theme with one of the many (and in our view not very good) CSS editing tools, then maybe you need to look at what you did before screaming hell and high water at your support person.
As a Marketplace we can only do our best to support the actual products we sell along with any minor queries on css or coding that you may have added or had added by your developer. We also know that the old phrase – disable all plugins one by one is as frustrating as it can be and is tantamount to saying ‘Have you turned off and on again’.
As a Marketplace we also get the odd complaint that something is not working on a plugin or theme. This is generally user error or a user trying to get a plugin to do something it is not designed to do. We have asked all our developers to be as clear as possible in the product description and in any installation documentation that is provided – this will inevitably reduce support calls.
Out of 30,000 customers gained over the past years, we have received just 1000 support requests – that is not a bad percentage – we, of course, realize that just one unhappy customer can damage our business so we try our very best to make everyone happy.
The Divi Community is young, it has grown exponentially and support is always available in the various Facebook groups, generally, in a polite, considerate manner – we work hard on that in The Divi Theme Users Group and we know other groups are working to improve the attitude of some of their members too. Our Group has and always will be, Divi focused and we will also offer support on the various page builders that are now sprouting out into the community – Elementor being just one that we like a lot.
Basically, if you are going to ask for support on any issue – be as detailed as possible, be ready to hand over an admin login to the support crew and be patient. Rome was not built in a day and nor should you expect your website to be, despite the hype.
As a community, let’s get behind all the good things and be aware that, if we as individuals or businesses experienced the growth that The Divi Community including developers, guru’s and of course Elegant Themes – it may take a little while to catch up – providing support is expensive – let’s make sure we get the best out of it by asking the right questions.
Comments as always are welcome – be nice ☺
What Facebook groups do you recommend?
As we manage and maintain Divi Theme users group obviously we recommend that. (There is another group of a similar name just set up a month or so ago so watch out for that one as it got populated very quickly and may not be genuine) Divi Help and share is also a good one along with Divi Developers.
Of course I completely agree with this post. Support can be a daunting part of the work we all need to provide, but it is extremely important. If anything, it helps you to make your products better, and can tell you to elaborate more on some topics, to avoid unclarities and questions in the future. My experience with EMP support is great, no complaints whatsoever.
However, I have used ET since way back when they first started out (and Divi wasn’t even born yet), I embraced Divi from the very start, and I found that ET support didn’t quite keep up with the growing community.
No harm done, I go the facebook groups with my questions, but I do wonder if that good for ET as a company. Having other people, users mainly, take over the biggest part of support may look convenient at first, but it prevends ET to learn about what makes the people in ‘their’ community tick.
I also think you are very right on the point that ET support is there for ET support. So referring to questions one might have on the theme itself, not CSS, not failing plugins (other than ET’s own plugins). Right now it is kinda messy: you ask a question on CSS, and sometimes you get an answer which really helps, and sometimes you get told that they don’t support CSS. It might be useful to have a straight policy on that.
Anyway, I am grateful for ET, for Divi, for any support I get when I need it.
My two cents…
Good post. Support can be “interesting”. It can be easy to be snide when replying to a question but I see most keep their cool and try to remember what it was like when they started.