Jon,
Thanks so much for your post and explaining the issue with the email and the amount of support requests. In fact, I think I speak for others when I say that while the support issues you outline are important, the president of the company coming on and communicating this has a larger impact.
I think more communications such as these explaining how much Amazing Charts knows about very difficult bugs and what they are doing about it goes a long way toward user satisfaction.
I know this paragraph will be controversial, but there are likely many users that would not be averse to paying more per year to increase support especially if the extra weren't per doctor. I think that the two most important things which make a company successful are the product and the support. Especially when a product is similar to another, e.g. Dell vs HP or Backup Assist vs Acronis, the tiebreaker is usually support. Dell has excellent support as does Backup Assist which uses a unique style of support.
You are more than correct when you say that AC has always been a great product and an incredibly low cost. But, as the product becomes more complex with MU and ePrescribe and the upcoming PM, along with the increase in users, which, by definition, are new to the program, the need for support grows exponentially.
One thing which may be helpful would be a Survey Monkey survey asking users about support, their thoughts on any type of increase in payment to offset adding more support techs or what mode of accessing support they prefer. I know that most of us prefer ping/chat as it tends to have a quicker response and is extremely helpful with the support tech quickly remoting in if necessary.
It may also be helpful to use a strategy that other companies use whereby instead of just using an email, but have the email auto-generate a response letting the user know that AC is aware of the request. It would also generate a ticket number.
I am sure you already know this, but it may be helpful for support to increase when new versions are released as that is when the most users will require support.
I hope you find some of these ideas helpful. And, again, your to give the "state of AC" is very well received.
Having said that, it certainly does not need to be the CEO who updates us. Having a high level tech support person or developer come on once a week to inform us of where AC is, where it is going, and what is being done about any major issues such as the prescription writer would be immeasurably helpful
Thank you on behalf of all of the many AC users.
