how to contact support?

Lionzinio

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/191181#Comment_191181

Linozinio…. That's what I get when people walk all over me

Lionzinio

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/191188#Comment_191188

It's great that NI are making efforts to make basic things like customer service and being able to contract support staff better for customers who have paid them money for the products they make.

It would be greater still if they hadn't buried the 'Contact Support' links so far down into their site that it was necessary for them to produce a page expressly designed to tell people how to actually contact support.

Instead of doing that, maybe the solution is just to put a really big link on the first support page that actually allows their customers to connect with a human being. And provide enough human beings to enable that connection to be quick and effective.

If they did that, maybe those complicated pages telling people how to get in touch with customer care wouldn't be needed.

Good customer care costs money but is effective and builds your brand. Bad customer care is like punching people who want to give you money in the face repeatedly.

DiosGnosis

Have we tried clearing Download Folders, caches, running disc frag…etc?

No telling what some of the websites we visit these days are putting on our machines…

I'm no programmer, but is it possible any Cookies from some of these sites are encumbering our updates?

PK The DJ

I suspect the "how to contact support" page was deemed necessary due to the sheer number of people coming on here and claiming there's no way to contact support, or that they don't know where it is etc. etc.

Rather than actually use the support area to research their problem, they just come straight on here and moan about not being able to speak to someone - with no mention of what the actual problem is.

Lionzinio

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/191241#Comment_191241

I suspect it's a bit different based on my experiences.

I suspect people go to NI's support pages (which are easy to get to because of the Support item in the main menu), they look for answers that might help. And when they don't find the answers they need, or they're fed up with a chatbot that just feeds them the same knowledgebase articles they've already seen, and still aren't being given a route by which they can explain their particular issue to anyone, they get immensely frustrated and angry and try to seek out any way to contact anyone in NI.

That's why the community boards are full of their posts and NI are quite happy to dob off these 'customer support' requests to unpaid NI users who might be nice enough to want to help.

The reality is that good customer care costs money and, like every tech company, NI doesn't want to spend money on providing services which are hard for them to justify. Customer care doesn't bring in revenue, but it does compensate for the corners that are shaved when companies don't effectively road test their products or bother to produce adequate manuals or instructional material required for their customers to actually be able to use their products.

And the positive sides of good customer care, the reputational benefits of having people feel that your company cares about them and wants to help them when they need it, the coherent feedback and intelligence gathering that customer service can provide, those don't appear on the balance sheet. They just appear when fewer people start buying your products and you begin to be seen as a tier 2 or tier 3 company.

PK The DJ

We can only respond to what's written.

If they honestly do know where the support page is, have been there, read all the relevant articles, used the chat bot etc. they certainly don't give that impression.

Ideally they should write something along the lines of "Hi everyone. I've been having an issue with [details of issue go here] and I've looked through all the support articles. Unfortunately the articles don't cover the issue so I asked the chat bot, who also couldn't help - so now I'm posting here to see if you can assist me. My system setup is [details of hardware and software go here]."

Instead we get "How the f*** do I contact f***ing support?????!!!!"

We're supposed to ascertain from that what the problem is? Or that they've looked through the help pages?

😲

Sunborn

The problem starts with what you see in the image below:

After going to the support page, many people expect to find the solution in front of their eyes…
They can not even imagine that those "images" (Account, Native Access, Product) are in fact links that you must click to enter a main support directory! 😏

Spoiler Warning

What's wrong with humanity these days…? Previous generations had far-far more imagination and far-far more intelligence and they used to think more and explore more… 😋

PK The DJ

Really? IMO if the user is incapable of some simple navigation on a web page, maybe they shouldn't be using a computer. 😁

musicmick

You know PK you're really starting to annoy me now. Quoting me as saying f*** and f***ing when I used neither. I used only 4 **** no f and certainly no f***ing word?????!!!! What exactly is your problem with me? Interestingly with regards to your last comment, I'm a computer programmer who makes solutions for GLOBAL investment banks so I think it's safe to say I'm qualified to use a computer. You have no idea what I went through to contact NI so curb your sanctimonious enthusiasm. If you read this thread correctly (careful, there's the occasional big word) you'll find I'm not alone in my frustration at NI.

By the way, are you an actual DJ, as in the very same PK the DJ serving North London?

eSSgEE

Cheers folks, this is my first post in this forum, and the only reason for posting is actually to second the emotional statement of frustration of the original poster. I am an NI customer of the first hour, have been ever since, was never in need of support. Now I actually am, after decades of being a customer. As everybody would do I'm trying to get in touch directly - not possible. Ok, fine, a chat bot will do. Or will it? I described my problem (32 products of komplete 15 not showing in native access) and was then told, that 4 customers are on queue before I would get help. Sure, no problem. So I wait, for an hour. Just for fun I would type "can you please give me an update on the status", just to receive "3 customers in queue" directly followed by "4 customers", so I'm asking "what is it, 3 or 4, and how can it increase, and so you helped 1 customer in 1 hour?". And guess what, I then got the reply "7 customers in queue". So, long story short, it is at this point in time simply impossible to contact the support. And that does not even address the fact that the chat conversation, of which I have funny screenshots of course, is a very very disrespectful way to treat customers. Just be honest and tell me that at this point in time there is not support for whatever reason, but to give false information and let people wait to be contacted by support, when in fact the chat bot does nothing to actually connect you, is really bad service. Frankly, I would never have thought to write such a rant in my life, but this is just extremely frustrating and not in line with what I was expecting from NI - but maybe that is just because I never needed support before - who knows…

PoorFellow

@Jeremy_NI , the above (eSSgEE) needs N.I. customer care commenting.

Jeremy_NI

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/191411#Comment_191411

Hey @eSSgEE and all other users that might be in the same situation. Really sorry to hear your troubles with contacting us. We're currently having issues with the chat and trying to get this fixed, it's not our intention to turn you away or give you false information. We just disabled this feature for now, I've also pinged my colleagues, someone should get back to you.

The chat will be closed during the weekend so you will be able to submit a request without waiting too much.

Uwe303

Hello,

had similar experience yesterday but at least later I got an email and now I'm in contact with support, in my case many products are in demo mode, i tried on 3 computers so I guess it's a problem on natives servers.