[ale] Red Hat replies to support gripes

[Tucker Balch]

I sent e-mail to Kit Cosper at Red Hat about the support problems some
of us have been griping about.  I thought the group would be interested
in his reply. --Tucker

P.S. They're hiring....


Kit Cosper said this:
Message-Id: <199611112112.QAA14501 at redhat.com>
To: tucker at cc.gatech.edu (Tucker Balch)
Subject: Re: RH is taking a beating 
In-reply-to: Your message of "Mon, 11 Nov 1996 15:38:23 EST."
             <199611112038.PAA10858 at lennon.cc.gatech.edu> 
Date: Mon, 11 Nov 1996 16:12:11 -0500
 From: Kit Cosper <cosper at redhat.com>

 Thanks for the note.  I'm still a Red Hat employee, although
no longer a full time, salaried one.  However I will respond to your
concerns.  First, please understand that this is not meant as an excuse,
jsut a note to let you know how things are on this side of the connection.

        Red Hat 3.0.3 was a great success from a sales standpoint, I
handled about 90% of all support for it by myself.  As demand grew
so did support requests (many of the people we are reaching now are
not only Linux newbies, but computer newbies) and we were able to get
some additional casual part-time help.  Average support turnaround
was under 2 days.  As 4.0 approached we began advertising for additional
support staff.  We have continued to advertise (and still have 2 full-time
positions available, if you know someone interested who is qualified! :-).

        Sales of 4.0 have been staggering.  Along with that so has the
volume of support mail.  *many* of the problems we see are answered
in our errata (which is why I put that bit in our manual... :-)
but we must still take time to reply to those customers.  This takes
time from the issues that are not covered in the errata (or FAQ)
and increases our response time.  Over the last several weeks
there have been a few things that exacerbated the problem.
-Our website died, no support or registrations could be handled.
-A new registration numbering system was implemented that the system
wasn't aware of, no registrations could be processed.
Now turnaround times are at *least* a week, often more.  We just 
don't have the resources to handle the load.  I reiterate, there
are 2 positions available for qualified applicants.  

	We're trying, but there are only so many hours in a day.  
On a typical day my support mailbox grows by 5-10 messages net.
No matter how many I reply to there are 5 or 10 more at the end of
the day than at the start.  

--Kit


--
Kit Cosper             Red Hat Software, Inc.                   "Bah." 
    "We are the people our parents warned us about"    --J. Buffett