Pretty much this.
Really, it depends on whether there’s a workaround and what are you going to do for me now.
I was once in a job that was not entirely dissimilar to yours. Escalating something to development could have meant that we would fix the problem right away, it also could have meant that we would fix the problem for the next release - 6 months away, or it could have meant that your bug was going to be assigned to the developer who never looked at, much less fixed, his bugs because he was convinced that his code was always perfect, but that was still the best shot of getting anything done.
If I have a workaround, I’m going to be ok. If I don’t, while I appreciate that someone may be working on something, it doesn’t really do me any good.
I chose “Yes,because I don’t generally trust technical support’s analysis of a complex problem.”
I have about 11 years of IT experience, about half as a developer, and half as a analyst/consultant. I also have a BS in Computer Science, and a MS in IT & Mgmt.
I’ve found that generally speaking at most places, the tech support guys are only trained to basically triage problems, and handle the “walking wounded” type of problems. I can almost always figure those out myself, so if I call tech support, I’m usually calling with at least a 2nd level problem and more often a bug or serious misconfiguration issue.
Interesting responses - I greatly appreciate it. My concern was that this sort of dialogue with our customers was undermining tech support, but I’m relieved to see that doesn’t seem to be the case.
In light of the positive responses I’m unlikely to change things but I will make extra sure to stay in consistent contact with the customer through the process. I definitely don’t want to give people the ‘screw off’ vibe.
They don’t have to be frequent updates, necessarily, just within the time frame you gave at the last one. “I’ll be in touch” by itself sounds like you’re getting the kiss-off. “I’ll get back with at x time to let you know what we’ve found” sounds like you actually plan to call me back, even if it’s going to take a while.
I use a software package to prepare immigration forms, and it annoys the crap out of me when I run into a bug that reveals that the software isn’t set up to handle a) extremely common formatting issues, or b) not terribly uncommon legal issues.
For example, if a box on a government form requests dates, for example every entry and exit a person has made form the U.S. in his/her entire life, the form should allow me to input approximate dates and/or a text summary, because the vast majority of people who have come to the U.S. more than a couple of times don’t remember every single date. Please don’t treat me like an idiot by saying that in the several years (I think around 10 at this point) your software has existed, my clients are the only people who don’t remember every single moment they spent in the U.S., and for crying out loud, don’t tell me I’m the first person who is annoyed that the entries/exists field defaults to “never,” particularly after I have just entered years and years of U.S. residence in other parts of the database. If you haven’t fixed that bug by now, you’re damn right you should escalate it to the developers!
Same for citizenship status; as almost everyone who reads this board knows, it’s entirely possible to be born a U.S. citizen outside the U.S. So if I enter a client’s birthplace outside the U.S., but enter that the client is a U.S. citizen, your database should not force me to enter the client’s date and place of naturalization before completing the forms for him/her to petition for permanent residence for someone else. And if your database is still doing that, you’re damn right you should escalate the issue to the developers, as above.