Improving Support

A few years ago I was working as a staff photographer at a daily newspaper in Lawrence, Kansas. I was helping my friend and mentor, Bill Snead, out with a portrait and his subject was quite self conscious in front of the camera. Noticing the situation, Snead took action.

“When you look bad, I look bad. And I don’t like to look bad,” said Snead.

It was a simple, yet powerful statement that essentially transfered the success of the photo shoot from the subject to the photographer. Consequently, the subject relaxed and Snead worked hard to make great photos. In the end, the photos came out great. It was a brilliant move. A double win.

At Graph Paper Press, we work hard to build beautiful WordPress themes and we understand that the success of your website depends greatly on the support you receive from us along the way. When questions pop up, we help you out. When you find an issue, we get it resolved. After all, when you look good, we look good. Looking bad isn’t an option.

Improvements

So earlier this week, we implemented small changes to improve our support system to make sure you get the answers you need, fast.

  1. Fix or FAQ – This is a new policy we’ve instituted internally. It essentially means this: If our users ask the same questions over and over again, we must be doing something wrong. If that’s the case, we’ll fix it. Otherwise, we’ll mark it as a FAQ entry or make the thread public.
  2. Public or Private – Also a new internal policy. All support tickets are now a private two-way conversation between you and our support team. Some users we’re occasionally posting sensitive data in our forum, which was public. Our support team does have the ability to make a private discussion public. We will use option to highlight quality, resolved discussions. This will make our support forum far more useful for finding answers.
  3. Clearer Support Policy – We’ve clarified our support policy and made it available on the homepage of the support forum for easy reference.
  4. New Customization Options – If you don’t know code, but want to customize your WordPress theme, you have two options: If you need a small change that requires coding, you can hire a Tweaker. If you have lots of changes and need full-blown site customization, you can hire a Customizer.
We’ve also made posting new support tickets is now much easier (see our ContactRegistration and Dashboard pages).

3 Tips for Fast Response Times

When the initial question our customers ask is helpful, we can provide a fast response time, which helps to solve the problem in as few steps as possible.

  1. Write short, concise questions. One sentence is ideal.
  2. Post one question per ticket.
  3. Always provide your URL.

Our goal for customer support is simple: Make sure all questions are answered as fast and accurately possible. We hope you find these small improvements helpful. If you have ideas for improving on what we’ve outline above, we’re all ears. After all, when you you look good, we look good. And that is our goal.

15 responses to “Improving Support”

  1. Scott Indermaur Avatar

    Sounds great. I must say that this week I emailed, posted on forum and tweeted and received no support (just one response on the forum that was no help). I ended up hiring a freelance wordpress guru to solve my issue since a fast response was needed and I wasn’t hearing from GPP. Even 3 days later I never heard a response and closed the forum thread yesterday when I had it resolved. Frustrating…

    1. Graph Paper Press Avatar

      Hi Scott,

      Looks like we failed here. I’ll chat with our team about this. That said, it does look like Rick (our support guy) responded 31 minutes after you posted your question:

      http://support.graphpaperpress.com/discussions/widescreen/3101-help-needed-today-hopefully-site-acting-odd-and-big-promotion

      Please ping me next time (we’re Facebook friends I believe) and I’ll have someone look into it immediately next time.

  2. Reto Avatar
    Reto

    I dare to say: my impression is also, that support is inconsistent and worse than before, when topics where public. In one case I didn’t get even got a reply for a month (with several inquiries, also by email) until I gave up – on a problem, which seemed like a bug to me (portfolios not password protected but viewable for the public in instamate).

    1. Erik M.. Avatar
      Erik M..

      nice words for an inexisting support. we do have open cases since weeks – this post about improving support is ridicule.

      has your problem with instamate been solved in the mean time?

      1. R Avatar
        R

        you are right, this blog post is a bad joke.

        and no, they closed the case with instamate. That means you can’t publish password-protected portfolios for clients …. but they do not seem to be interested in fixing bugs. I don’t know whats going wrong at gpp lately, but it feels to me like an empty house, where nobody lives in. I have been punished for beeing loyal to them with uncompleted projects. Have enough of that and will certainly cancel my subscription.

        1. Graph Paper Press Avatar

          We fix all bugs that are reported. Our support team incorrectly closed your thread. I apologize for this. As I mentioned above, Instamate does support password-protected entries, which you can see here: http://demo.graphpaperpress.com/instamate/portfolio/wedding-photography/

    2. Graph Paper Press Avatar

      Hi Reto,

      I searched through our support forum for your question and it was marked as “resolved” incorrectly. I have let our support team know about this and that it should NEVER happen again.

      Instamate does in fact support password protected portfolio entries, which you can see here:

      http://demo.graphpaperpress.com/instamate/portfolio/wedding-photography/

      The password to enter the post is “password”. My guess, without seeing your website, is that you have a plugin activated that is causing the conflict.

  3. Reto Avatar
    Reto

    I dare to say: my impression is also, that support is inconsistent and worse than before, when topics where public. In one case I didn’t get even got a reply for a month (with several inquiries, also by email) until I gave up – on a problem, which seemed like a bug to me (portfolios not password protected but viewable for the public in instamate).

  4. Lois Reed Avatar

    I work primarily with photographers and artists. I tried, in vain, to contact you via the website to inquire about child-themes, etc … in an effort to see if I could work with you. I have heard nothing back. This thread does not ease my mind either.

    I think that your work is beautiful, but this is my bread & butter and I can’t write a decent proposal, or speak with clients if I get no feedback from you.

    I will stick with photocrati in the meantime and hope that you get your support on track.

    I do think you may be losing more potential buyers by setting it up so that we have to pay before asking important questions

    1. Laurie - Happiness Engineer Avatar
      Laurie – Happiness Engineer

      Hi Lois,

      Questions sent through the website are redirected to our support forum, and I don’t see any questions from you – either answered or unanswered. If you wouldn’t mind sending it again, I’ll keep an eye out for it so we can get you the information you’re after. 🙂

      Thanks!

  5. Lois Reed Avatar

    ok – can someone pm me via fb so that I can work with your themes? I simply have developer questions. Thanks much. (I have no idea where my other comment went, so if we can move it over to a place I can find it, I would be much obliged)

    1. Graph Paper Press Avatar

      You can email our support team at support (at) graphpaperpress (dot) com. Messages sent via our contact form are also redirected to our support team:
      https://graphpaperpress.com/contact/

  6. Ktyak Avatar
    Ktyak

    I’m considering buying the Full Frame Theme, but want to know which of the page/post level Share/Add It plugins on WordPress.org does it work happily with ?

  7. friv 10 Avatar

    This is what I’ve been looking for. Thank you!

  8. cecilia Avatar
    cecilia

    instame question :

    Do you still have to keep your computer open for scheduled posts to be posted to instagram?

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