Anyone else getting very slow responses from tech support?
Holiday maybe? It’s the lunar new year.
Bruce
That would account for the last few days.
I’m primarily getting a sense of where they sit when it comes to responding to issues.
Seems good on the forums, as a few of the teams seems active here.
I am guess if you operate a business on a bullet, you’ll want to own a backup Bullet. There is not a lot of global support.
Obviously farmers markets and home roasting would not need a backup roaster as they are generally flexible in up time.
Idk, with the way the company asks us to upload all of our roast data or use a third party hack, all for the reasons of “support”, they don’t seem so responsive on support aspect.
and with forums, us customers seem to help take off a load on the RnD and tech support by answering questions and giving user feedback. Seems like we are helping the company, but they are still growing. the issue is that we have all seen startups ask for customers to have faith and then a few years go by and they get bought out, and all the good faith and trust goes out the window.
Would like to see some change implemented now before it is too late and it gets acquire by some big corp. This is the only time we have direct communication with this company, it is not going to get better or more open. this is the best shot we have at communicating change we’ll ever have.
At this time, they are pushing me towards gas traditional roaster, but i’m still a few months out from pulling any triggers, as i could imagine using two Bullets (+1 backup) for total 3) and RT4 with partial automation on 240v roasting full sized batches. But it is a ton of work, and competitors will have access to anything i do through AI machine learning bots that a competitor can buy and undercut someone like me invested in bullets or aio, roasting on thin margins. it is as if Aillio is undercutting their own customer. I am interested in the AiO, as it has some interesting features, and Aillio seems focused on reliability. Might not be too difficult to sell the bullets to home roasters and pivot to an AiO. But then you have a much more expensive machine, and tech support becomes more critical.
…and just incase anyone thinks i am giving aillio a hard time, don’t!
There are some incredibly reputable companies that suffer from customer support issues. In their case it comes down to prioritizing larger coffee companies, and they don’t have as much time or support for small companies roasting a couple thousand pounds a week. So, it all comes down to where the company’s focus is, and that reflects in customer support.
Also, I have a positive look towards Aillio, and see some potential if they can change a few small things to accommodate craft roasters. If not, they are leaving the door open for a competitor, while also being undercut in the home roaster segment once another company begins to make cheaper versions. Which is why i believe they are moving towards a more tech driven model as they can potentially drive higher margins and carve some security for themselves in AI data driven business that is less susceptible to simple competitors and small margins. AI small batch craft roasting has just started. Will be interesting to see where things go. i feel relatively confident it will replace most roasters.
Hey,
Our support team is based in Taiwan, so if you are based in the US, there will pretty much be guaranteed a day delay due to the timezone.
As far as now - it is Lunar New Year, so most people are out as we were around Christmas. If your support request is software related, we have an “on-call” engineer that is responsible for answering community questions and on slack where we are most active.
I used the website tech support. There was no mention of slack or on call anything. where do i find that? thanks.
Basically what is happening now is that I’ll type a message and several days later i’ll get a reply. I write a follow up question for clarification and then i get a “yeah that should be the case” reply, which doesn’t make my follow up for clarification very clear. So now i am on to another few more days for a follow up to that? I have a business to run, not spend two weeks getting something simple figured out.
The link for the public slack is here (for hardware, you should still go through normal support): Slack
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Is there a basic email or telephone option?
thanks
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For software? You can go through the normal [email protected], but those are escalated to us by the team in Taiwan.
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Ok, then i am already using that email.
But there is still the issue of long wait times for tech support.It kind of makes sense if everything is going to a queue, and then getting escalated. That sounds like a lot of work for the staff at aillio, while be frustrating for all involved. Most tech issues have follow up questions. I hear you on the slack thing, but not everyone wants to build a dependence on yet another app/platform. Hopefully there will be a way to modernize your tech support so that once a customer is on an issue it can then be resolved a little faster.
Hey, sort of progress. The aillio support team now sends out an automated email about their holiday going on till Jan 30th.
The upside is that they are communicating. This is huge, it helps customer expectations. (also it is good to get some time away from work)
The downside for the coffee industry is that Christmas and January are some of the busiest times and when support is most crucial.
But just wanted to see if anyone else has experienced this, and if this was normal. it isn’t the worst, but is certainly something to consider when running a business.
once their holiday is over i’ll check in with them and see what their goals are in their approach to servicing the coffee roasting industry vs being a manufacturer. certainly good to have that distinction, but whenever a product is sold as a primary tool for another business, the service side becomes more critical. So it will be interesting to hear their take.