Inventables Support Center

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1

Hey Everyone,

We have been investing quite a bit in building out the articles in our Support Center. We’ve tripled the size of our Customer Success team since last year and now have people working on proactive and reactive support. I was hoping to get some qualitative feedback from the community on the Support Center. Here are some questions I’m thinking about:

  1. Did anyone on the forum even know we had a Support Center?

  2. Have you ever used it?

  3. If you did use it was it valuable? Waste of time?

  4. If you haven’t used it do we need better links to it? Better search? Better categories?

  5. Are we wasting time with this online support center? Should we continue to build it out or click delete focus on more important stuff? Are there any support centers out there on the internet that you love that we should take a look at?

  6. Are you hoping it has tutorials? Troubleshooting? Tips and tricks? Videos? Screencasts?

I know there are a number of different threads on getting started tutorials and videos so that type of feedback would be good here too.

Thanks for your feedback!

Zach

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  1. Nope.
  2. Nope.
  3. See above.
  4. Guess so! :smiley:
  5. I don’t think so.
  6. Troubleshooting and tips, sure.
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I wasnt really aware of it until i stumbled across it today trying to figure out how to reflash my arduino to Grbl 1.0c
then it was great!

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More tutorials are always welcome.
Didn’t know you had a support center, just been using this forum, so far.

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I honestly think of the forum as a whole as a “support center”

This hobby as a whole would not be as enjoyable or understandable without everyone here sharing kernels of wisdom and experience.
With out the forum, my machine would be more of a dust collector than a dust generator capable of really pissing me off every time I went to try something with it.

Have an official support center I think is a good thing since it’s truly official info from the source with appropriate links to resources etc.

Zach started this thread as I was in the center trying to figure out how to do something that I was very apprehensive about, reflashing the arduino.

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  1. Yes
  2. a couple times
  3. very valuble
  4. was easy to find for me
  5. NO, having a support team is one critical factor that sets you guys apart. If i have a question about a material you sell or any other question I can call, get an answer and get my order in by end of day which is important since we use it at work.
    The FAQ was very detailed in my opinion for what it needs to do which is get you started.
  6. A video section would be nice explaining some basics and maybe highlighting different parts/ materials.
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This is all good feedback. Anyone else?

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  1. Yes
  2. Yes.
  3. It was valuable to get info quickly
  4. It’s easy to find at the top of each page
  5. I don’t think it’s a waste of time, but I think people tend to utilize the forums first, either because they don’t know about the Support Center, or because they want a response/feedback from other X-carve owners
  6. Videos/tutorials/tips & tricks would definitely be a plus, especially for those who are just starting out. Maybe even link to the videos made by forum members.
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  1. Yes
  2. I’ve tried. I wanted a guide for squaring and tuning the machine, but couldn’t find anything with basic search terms.
  3. It was not valuable for me, it seems geared toward people who are thinking about buying a machine, not owners.
  4. The search is not great. At least some basic spell-guessing and synonym searching would be great.
  5. Well don’t delete it. It’s useful for people trying to decide if they want an X-Carve. It’s an awkward position for you as a company to provide official help for people wanting to stiffen an axis.
  6. I’d want to see tips/tricks, general CNC/machining terminology, and tuning procedures.

Lots of people have created excellent threads covering most anything we owners want to know about. Collect some of the most useful entries and commission the creators to make an official version with video and photos.

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This is awesome feedback. The team internally that is working on the support center is going to be reading through all of these responses. If other people have feedback we are happy to hear it. Thank you all for taking the time to share.

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  1. Did anyone on the forum even know we had a Support Center?
    No
  2. Have you ever used it?
    No
  3. If you did use it was it valuable? Waste of time?
    N/A
  4. If you haven’t used it do we need better links to it? Better search? Better categories?
    Yes, would be good to highlight its presence in the Assembly Instructions.
  5. Are we wasting time with this online support center? Should we continue to build it out or click delete focus on more important stuff? Are there any support centers out there on the internet that you love that we should take a look at?
    I don’t know that you’re wasting your time, but the Forum is pretty great as a support center. Might be good to have the support guys monitor that and to also have a chat option.
  6. Are you hoping it has tutorials? Troubleshooting? Tips and tricks? Videos? Screencasts?
    Easel tutorials are conspicuously lacking. Videos seem to work well.
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Hi Zach,

  1. Yes

  2. Yes

  3. I think it could be more complete. There is a lot of information missing and tips on how to set up the machine propertly after assembly.

  4. It needs more in depth information

  5. I don’t know

  6. Yes.

On another subject, @Zach_Kaplan, do you currently have issues with support, via email ? (Like overloading, or problems receiving emails…) I have been using it with great response times in the past 3 months, but this last 2 weeks I sent several emails with different questions and I haven’t had any reply, at all. And that’s weird (given the super fast reaction time in the past)

Thanks!

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@MartinLombana thanks for the feedback. That is weird. There must be some sort of filtering issue because we have doubled the size of our Customer Success team over the last month so you should be getting even faster responses not none at all. I’m going to send this to the head of the department to investigate what’s going on.

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Thanks,

If you want (if you are not able to see it in my profile), I can send you via private message the email adress from where I’ve been sending the emails (although is the same as in the past contacts I’ve made).

Thanks,

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Hi @MartinLombana in addition to emailing the head of the department I also looked up the case history.

It looks like you emailed after hours on Friday, 27th (we are in Chicago and were closed for the night). Then you emailed over the weekend.

Yesterday was a federal holiday (Memorial Day) in the United States so our office was closed. You will receive a response today. I think you might live outside the US so I can understand that you didn’t realize the time zones and federal holiday schedule here in the US.

Sorry about the delay. All the messages were received and they will get back to you today.

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Hi Zach!

Indeed, that can be the case for the latest emails, but there was one that was sent 12 days ago.

I didn’t get any reply, and I reported back 7 days ago specifying that I had found the issue. There was a gap of 6 days in between with no response (Not that I mind now about that one, because I found the problem by myself, but just in case and for your information).

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Have you been checking your Junk email box? Sometimes my email service diverts emails from Inventables.

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Yes I did. This email was in an email thread. I opened it several times, and today as well (before reporting to @Zach_Kaplan) and there was no reply.

But you are right that sometimes they can get into spam. I think it happened some times. But I always look there :).

1 Like