Knowledge Base

Email support is better than phone support

Question

Why don't you offer technical support over the phone?

Solution

We love providing great solutions to problems (as quickly as possible). We believe that great solutions often require:

• Experience (on our part)
• Documentation on past solutions to similar problems
• Collaboration with peers
• As much information about the problem as possible (screenshots, PingPlotter graphs, error logs, etc.)
• The time to review the problem in detail
• Good communication from the person with the problem
• The ability to test the proposed solution
• The ability to communicate the solution effectively
• A timely and empathetic response (and possibly even fun)

We've found that with the technical nature of the problems we encounter, phone calls miss too many of the above points. For this reason, we only provide technical support via email (our support ticket system), or our forums.

We've written (and continue to write) hundreds of articles, guides, and documents on best practices to provide you as much immediate help as possible. We have easy in-program support ticket submission to automate the collection of pertinent data when you ask questions. We also track every conversation we have (via email) in our support ticket system - and have conversations dating back to before 2002. We have a dedicated support team that handles requests as the top priority every work day.

We do understand that there are some situations where a phone call may be better. We're more than willing to accommodate this if its needed. Be sure to shoot us an email explaining your situation beforehand, and then we'll be happy to set up a time to have the right person call you from there.