Free support at support.pstnet.com

[David Vinson]

Thanks for the view from the PST perspective.

About my own uses of various forms of support, I've been using E-Prime 
from early on (formerly a user of MEL Pro).  At that time PST support 
seemed to be very patchy - no way of predicting response times (days? 
weeks? longer?)
I was also not very good at formulating questions that were clear enough 
to get a good answer - instead a request for clarification and all the 
back-and-forth could take weeks.  I guess some of this may have been due 
to the relationship between between development and support during the 
lengthy beta phase..... from the user side not helped by the 
incompleteness of documentation.

At the same time the peer community was developing and becoming a good 
place to get very quick answers and ideas from people who had been 
trying to do the same things (contrast to the old PST online forum where 
most questions went unanswered), as well as suggestions about effective 
design and so on.   And all those conversations are readily visible to 
anyone who wants to go searching for them, in contrast to support 
conversations which are not visible to anyone else (perhaps this is 
different for the new forum?)

That said, I have used PST support requests for certain things: where I 
have a development problem or crashing behaviour and the obvious 
fixes/program simplification haven't solved it. About 20 or so in total, 
and since about summer 2010 I have found that responsiveness is far 
quicker and in most cases the PST support person has been able to help 
sort out the problem (or suggest a reasonable alternative).



On 15/03/2014 18:11, mccarthyeberly at gmail.com wrote:
>
> Boiler plate: While I worked as a Technical Consultant at Psychology 
> Software Tools for over four years, I am no longer affiliated with the 
> company and anything I write here is my own opinion.
>
> ____________
>
> I have wanted to ask the Google group a question for a long time now:
>
> What brings people to the Google Group for support instead of going to 
> the web support site, support.pstnet.com? Support is free for most 
> users and there is a new user forum over there 
> (https://support.pstnet.com/categories/20140047-E-Prime-User-Forum). I 
> know that there are some topics that are beyond the scope of support 
> that can only be covered here, so I'm certainly not trying to knock 
> the Google Group in any way, it is an important supplement. I am 
> honestly just curious about people’s preferences.
>
> ____________
>
> I also wanted to give you a little “behind the scenes” of being a 
> Technical Consultant at PST since yesterday was my last day there:
>
> 1) The Product Service and Support department is only staffed by about 
> four Tech Consultants plus a manager to cover the entire user base. 
> Most have bachelor’s degrees in Psychology. Besides support 
> requests/e-mails, they also handle phone support, webinars, creating 
> how-to videos and knowledge base articles, staffing trade shows, and 
> other assorted tasks for other departments. Something I love about PST 
> is the extent that my coworkers really care about the users and are 
> very dedicated to improving their knowledge of the products and 
> helping people as much as possible. (Remember, I don’t work there 
> anymore, so they’re not paying me to say this!)
>
> 2) PST as a whole has about 40 employees, all of whom are based in 
> Pittsburgh, PA when they're not traveling all over the world. I left 
> the company because I moving to Menlo Park, CA and I’m not so keen on 
> a 2,600 mile commute. Contrary to a somewhat popular belief, E-Prime 
> is not the name of the company.
>
> 3) I tend to be cautious about updating software in general (here’s 
> looking at you, iOS 6) but I am confident enough in new E-Prime 
> releases to know that if they get released to the public, they’re 
> worth the update. I was there for at least four updates. Each release 
> was significantly better than the last and was free for existing 
> users. Unless you’re in the middle of data collection or can’t update 
> for reasons listed on the download page in the website, I’ve secretly 
> dreamt of showing up outside your university’s psychology department 
> with a megaphone and a picket sign showing a link to the download 
> page. I know very well that mixed labs with multiple versions can get 
> complicated, but I also know it can get sorted out by working with 
> someone from support because I’ve done it.
>
> 4) They have a very, very competitive Halloween costume contest each 
> year: https://www.facebook.com/PsychologySoftwareTools/photos_stream
>
> 5) This Hasp key and E-Prime 2.0 CD costume was so good, it deserved 
> its own number on this list: 
> https://www.facebook.com/PsychologySoftwareTools/photos/pb.241802160683.-2207520000.1394858474./10151710229700684/?type=3&theater\ 
> <https://www.facebook.com/PsychologySoftwareTools/photos/pb.241802160683.-2207520000.1394858474./10151710229700684/?type=3&theater%5C>
>
> This reminds me, I can finally admit that I get irritated by the term 
> “dongle”. PST calls it a Hasp key.
>
> 6) I had to fight the urge to write List just there. (E-Objects are 
> capitalized in writing.)
>
> 7) There are fancy potluck lunches and a beer fridge on site for Beer 
> Fridays after work.
>
> 8) As a result of writing so many support requests, I have developed a 
> deep and abiding love for writing in the form of numbered lists.
>
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-- 
David Vinson, Ph.D.
ESRC Research Fellow
Cognitive, Perceptual and Brain Sciences Research Department
University College London
26 Bedford Way, London WC1H 0AP
Tel +44 (0)20 7679 5311  (UCL internal ext. 25311)

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