These are all good thoughts! We've been looking at some of them, and I'd like to communicate some of our thinking. Please don't in any way take this as promises, the last word, or pushback - just thoughts from ongoing discussions as we seek to improve.
The vast majority of your support questions are probably either (1) from new users
A fair number, yes, but, last year we added the free Jumpstart call that is offered to all new clients. This certainly does require support resources, but, it's proved to vastly diminish the routine new-client questions we used to get, as well as getting new clients up and running faster. Naturally, new clients still do request many tickets, but they're no longer mainly routine, as discussed next.
or (2) questions that lots of people have.
That used to be true, but these days is much less so, because the overwhelming majority of common questions are found in our support docs. Most of our clients want answers NOW, and if a quick search of the doc gets them that answer, it's faster than any support ever could be. We routinely see whole categories of question vanish when a support doc is added or extensively updated - an ongoing effort where, yes, there is much more to be done, but they've come a long way.
You're no doubt familiar with the concept of macros, canned responses, and support scripts that are used for common support-ticket questions. While we do have such things, there are very few of them that are useful for providing actual answers, because nearly all of our tickets are slightly unique and require actual research and consideration.
Can you train people more quickly on those questions and throw them into the fray
Even an apparently simple question can often contain hidden and non-obvious complexities, a very common example being "Why was this booking charged X?" There are so many factors that go into it that what seems like a simple calculator-question not uncommonly ends up with the engineers digging in the code, and a doc update to cover an obscure corner case with some particular channel. Therefore, we have to do thorough training on topics; newer staff answer tickets that appear to fall into a topic they've been trained on, and pass over tickets on other topics for more senior staff.
I was introduced to OwnerRez by a guy on Fiverr
I'm not super familiar with Fiverr myself, but I'll take a look. However, I do understand your point. The Unofficial OwnerRez Facebook Page is a similar great resource for expert advice, and we know of other knowledgeable OwnerRez assistance provided via TaskRabbit. In fact, we've hired staff discovered in both places. :-)
We've long thought about an OwnerRez training credentialing program, something like MSCE certification, or as you note, Intuit. There's a lot of steps to get there, but it would absolutely be valuable to have a list of known, trusted, independent experts we could recommend. If we put our name on something, though, we want to make sure we can guarantee the quality and performance.
You can tell people where they are in the queue.
Well, this kind of harks back to your point about putting newer staff on easier questions. We do this to some extent - at a certain level of training, when they've proved competent in some areas but not yet others, they can seek out tickets in the queue that are within specified parameters and answer them. But this necessarily means that where you are "in line" doesn't automatically speak to when you'll get an answer, because you might be skipped over by an agent that's not yet trained to be able to handle what you asked.
I wasn't aware at all that you could actually get a phone call with someone.
Generally, we encourage emails, because those will nearly always get a faster response - our calls are scheduled in advance. If you ask for one, you'll get one, but it may be a few days. This scheduling is done via the ticket system though, not a standalone scheduling page.
For burning questions, either a per-call fee.
This is a regular topic of discussion. Without going into details, we believe that, if we promise to provide something for a special fee, we owe it to our clients to do it well. So if we are going to offer paid priority phone support, it better be top-quality (which means only highly experienced and knowledgeable staff) and it better be available promptly (which means we'd better have plenty of staff to meet the demand).
While we seek to provide fast excellent service, I would rather provide excellent service that is slower than we'd like, as opposed to fast service that's not very accurate or thorough. That said, recent delays will not remain as they have been.
