What is your experience with the quality of technical support for advanced users?

I'll bite. I will say that technical support can be prompt with confirming they have received your ticket, and that if the issue isn't too complex, it may only be a matter of days before you get a resolution. However, it can take weeks before you hear anything back for an issue that may not be addressed on the forum or is more complex. So in that respect, I've had a similar experiences as other advanced users you may have spoken to at DevLearn. Not sure whether the issue lies with the amount of technical issues that technical support has in its queue or whether certain issues just get pushed further down the list due to other priorities. But to your point, waiting for months to get to the bottom of an issue can definitely have an impact on your organization's e-learning program. I will say that I have experienced more than I would like as have associates of mine. I will also say that it appears to be related to who you may be working with. Some support personnel appear to be more responsive than others which may be part of the issue. Unfortunately, I don't know what can be done to speed things up. So for the time being, I recommend you rely on the forum and hope for the best.  

My personal experience (and one that the rest of my team has experienced) is that Articulate's support for "complex" issues has been acceptable.

If I'm trying to do something but not going about it the right way, they'll give me the steps for how to do it properly.

They regularly ask for project files and take the time to understand what I'm trying to do and the problem I'm running into.

If the tool doesn't support what I'm trying to do they will often suggest alternative options.

Keep in mind that much of this topic is subjective to the individual. What really constitutes an "advanced user"? What is the definition of a "complex issue"?

I've seen users who have been using the tool for years but barely scrape the surface of more advanced feature/functionality, and vice versa. I've seen people who *thought* they had a "complex issue" that was actually very elementary (in my subjective opinion). 

I've oftentimes seen people who make things that should be elementary into something outrageously complex, because they lack understanding of the tool or are using inefficient workflows.

Sometimes I need to acquiesce that customer support isn't always going to be able to wave a magic wand and make every single one of my crazy ideas work. Sometimes it's not the tool that's broken but it's the way I'm trying to use it. 

You really can't do too many 'complex' things in Articulate, out of the box.  You have to really understand the program's limitations and accept the fact that most solutions are work around hacks that, to a seasoned developer, are not very polished.  You have to get over trying to make things neat and tidy and care only about the end result.

The seemingly simple effect of making a button spin when you click it is not as simple as just a few drag and drop clicks.  You also have to live with the fact that unless it's part of the trigger wizard, the interactions you want are not going to happen without a clumsy work around.  If you are used to Flash or other robust IDEs, you are in for a rude awakening.

Hey, Kwana.

The community is the perfect place to get an unbiased opinion on this, so thanks for bringing your question here! I’m the director of the support team here at Articulate, so I may be a bit biased, but I’d like to weigh in with some additional info. I think it’s helpful to break it down like this:

Is our technical support high quality? Is it fast?

Yes. We measure our team’s performance based on things like customer satisfaction score, first contact resolution rate, time to resolution, first reply time, and more, and our customers give us great marks, and of course we’re always looking for opportunities for improvement.

Who is our technical support team, and how do we treat people?

I’d recommend checking out who we are, and how we scale.

What do we do when a customer reports a bug?

Feel free to read about our bug process here.

What do we do when a customer asks for a new feature?

Click here to check out how we manage feature requests. Those can take a while to work through the dev cycle, and I think you’re seeing that reflected in some of the above comments.

Please feel free to message our team directly with any other questions about how we support customers!

Is our technical support high quality? Is it fast?
No.  No.

What do we do when a customer asks for a new feature?
You give some lip service, then ignore them.
I can go back 5 years for BASIC requests that multiple people have brought up or chimed in on that are straight up ignored.

I can understand not implementing some feature requests, but all the bugs should be fixed at the very least. Fixing bugs in a newer version and leaving them in a previous version is not a good way to encourage people to upgrade.