Yes, I agree. I haven’t done CS since a former life when I worked in the call center for Lotus 1-2-3…I learned to really appreciate the callers from the southern US who were much more patient and polite in their demeanour than the folks from the northeast. But our supervisor was very clear that no matter how difficult the person on the line was acting, we were the public face of the company and we had to hear them out and work with them.
This was before I’d heard the acronym RTFM but that attitude would have been totally unacceptable.
I realize that forums are rather different than phone support, in large part because you get not just people with specific problems to solve, but a broader range of general comments about a product. But still, starting with the premise that your customers deserve respect and assistance seems a good idea.
Anyway the threads I’ve seen lurking in the DT forums in the beta make it look like their attitude has taken a turn for the better. Hopefully it’s a long-term trend.
One other comment since someone above brought up Ulysses- I’ve had only positive experiences with the their support team.
They’ve also managed to maintain feature parity on the Mac and iOS for the last few years. That would be a tall order for a more complex app like DT but it does feel like DTTG has been left to languish.
The link x-devonthink-item:///85B47643-CE54-4857-825A-465A733056BC?page=4 will open a specific PDF in a specific database on page 3 or 4 (I forget if it starts counting at 1) in DEVONthink To Go on iOS or DEVONthink on macOS.
The developer is quite proud of the documentation for this new version. He’s mentioned it several times in discussion threads, and I checked it out. It’s really pretty good, so that’s a good place to start.
But the app does so many things that it is crying out for a series of screencasts by someone like @MacSparky. The trouble with DEVONthink is that any such screencast would have to be 100 hours long. I’ve used it for several years, and I still haven’t figured out just how I could be maximizing it. That’s not entirely the developer’s fault, except in the sense that the developer created an application that’s so complex.
Just for the record, I’ve had a completely different experience with DevonThink customer service. I ran into an issue with email archiving on New Year’s Eve day a couple of years ago, sent off a message to the support team, and got an answer ON NEW YEAR’S DAY.
Also for the record, I never had a problem with the UI. After lord knows how many decades wrestling with lousy bespoke enterprise software, DevonThink’s UI was practically *chef’s kiss*.
I guess it may depend on the service technician, but I’ve had an exceptional experience with their customer service. On one request, they had a plugin sent to me with a fix to a problem with my scanner after only 2 hours. They have also tried to reproduce any errors I’ve encountered and eventually solved all the problems I’ve emailed them about.
I have been using DVTPO for many years and have always found their customer service to be prompt and courteous. Their solutions to my few issues have been spot-on.
Overall, the program itself and my support experience with it has always been exceptional.
They don’t change things often just for change sake. I get the impression it has been worked on for a long time. I think all the other significant improvements are evidence of this.