Serato DJ Pro General Discussion

Talk about Serato DJ Pro, expansion packs and supported hardware

Serato Support Improvements Discussion

Serato, Support
Aaron E 3:21 AM - 30 May, 2014
Hi everyone

Aaron here - Support Manager.

Serato Support is changing for the better. Last year we completed a full review of our Support channels and processes and identified a number of aspects that really needed updating.

We have in fact changed a number of things behind the scenes already which have helped us deal with ever increasing volumes of help requests in a more timely manner. The most exciting changes though, are yet to come.

The first change that regular users of Serato Support will notice soon, is that the serato.com forum help areas will be re-directed into our new ticket management system. Existing forum help areas will be archived for searching, but will be closed to new help requests. This will happen Tuesday, the 2nd of June at 10am New Zealand Standard Time. You will be able to continue to comment on existing help threads until they are closed

There will be very little difference to the process of getting help. When you click on a serato.com button to get help, you will be directed to a form like always, but it will be a slightly different form. The key difference after submitting your request will be that your help request will no longer be public - you will be in a private discussion with a Serato Support Product Specialist.

We are confident that this change to how help requests work will result in better support, faster. An additional hoped for side-effect is that this will also help clearly separate help and support from general discussion and feature suggestions.

We have great areas for the community to get together for these purposes and hope that those who currently spend a lot of time 'connecting' in the help areas will spend more time being active in the general areas. There are also a significant number of users who ask for help out in the general areas and don't get the attention they need.

This is the first public-facing step towards getting everyone in the appropriate place, receiving the support they need, quickly. We have more to come and are really looking forward to sharing that with you when the time comes.

If you have any questions or concerns, or you just want to give us a shout out, hit us up in the comments below.

Cheers all

Aaron
3:26 AM, 30 May 2014
Discussion moved to Serato DJ General Discussion
3:27 AM, 30 May 2014
Discussion locked by Aaron E
3:33 AM, 30 May 2014
Discussion unlocked by Aaron E
fofo 7:53 AM - 30 May, 2014
Bro I've used my mates DDJ-SX using the same mac for a night and it didn't happen
carnage 9:01 AM - 30 May, 2014
Do you really think this will help? A vast number of help requests get answered by members before serato even respond. And could this lead to multiple copies of the same help issue, instead of allowing members to search to see if someone else has discussed the same problem?
Ragman 1:09 PM - 30 May, 2014
Quote:
Do you really think this will help? A vast number of help requests get answered by members before serato even respond. And could this lead to multiple copies of the same help issue, instead of allowing members to search to see if someone else has discussed the same problem?

That's because as vast number of help request are posted in the wrong place.
Serato, Support
Aaron E 7:51 AM - 1 June, 2014
Quote:
Do you really think this will help? A vast number of help requests get answered by members before serato even respond. And could this lead to multiple copies of the same help issue, instead of allowing members to search to see if someone else has discussed the same problem?


Yes, we really do think this will help. We want help requests to receive Serato support as quickly as possible and are working on better ways for people to find the information they need to help resolve their issues.

Cheers
Aaron
Dj lafont 11:26 PM - 4 June, 2014
does anyone knows wend there's going to be effects on the mic i'll be nice to have some effects like echo on a live party thank you for your support.
Serato, Support
Aaron E 12:48 AM - 5 June, 2014
Hey Dj lafont

Being able to have effects on your mic channel largely depends on what hardware you're using and how the audio chains through the unit.

I don't mean to be a pain, but it would be good if we can keep this particular thread focussed on the Support process changes we have announced.

Probably your best bet would be to jump in the feature suggestions area serato.com where our products team spend a lot of time. They'll let you know whether this is possible for your hardware and if it is, whether it is being planned to be implemented.

Cheers
Aaron
Dj lafont 7:15 PM - 5 June, 2014
ok thank you
nik39 12:46 AM - 6 June, 2014
Hey Aaron, thanks for the explanation.

Quote:
We have great areas for the community to get together for these purposes and hope that those who currently spend a lot of time 'connecting' in the help areas will spend more time being active in the general areas. There are also a significant number of users who ask for help out in the general areas and don't get the attention they need.

How would your change help these users? People will still just post here.

Quote:
There will be very little difference to the process of getting help. When you click on a serato.com button to get help, you will be directed to a form like always, but it will be a slightly different form. The key difference after submitting your request will be that your help request will no longer be public - you will be in a private discussion with a Serato Support Product Specialist.

We are confident that this change to how help requests work will result in better support, faster. An additional hoped for side-effect is that this will also help clearly delineate help and support from general discussion and feature suggestions.

I also don't see how this will improve the quality of support. Nobody's perfect and I have seen mods giving doubtable to wrong advices, and other users jumped in to correct and help out the mods. This would all not be possible anymore.

Being able to search through the help forums is a tremendous help for those who are able to search, and who are willed to search, because you will get your answer instantly. This won't be possible anymore :(

It may look like Serato is trying to hide something. In the past you guys have been very open with the good and the bad stuff (you can't have one without the other eh ;) ), and we users really appreciated it. Currently I don't see any added value for us users.

Just my critical 2 cents ;)
Culprit 4:12 AM - 6 June, 2014
Quote:

Being able to search through the help forums is a tremendous help for those who are able to search, and who are willed to search, because you will get your answer instantly. This won't be possible anymore :(


I agree, sometime's we users figure out the fixes before the mod's or hardware suppliers do, even some features they don't know exist, for example

serato.com

yep...
Serato, Support
Aaron E 2:09 AM - 10 June, 2014
Hey nik39 and Culprit

I was hoping you guys would stop by here at some point :)

We are always working on better support guys! But seriously, we have experienced a significant increase in support volumes since the launch of Serato DJ - and no, it's not because SDJ is buggy.

Our userbase growing dramatically and the introduction of a license system have both led to a situation where we have been snowed under at almost all times (but particularly following releases), even as we have added new members to the team.

We have spent a lot of time drilling down into the details of what has been happening and it became really clear that our channel infrastructure was groaning, slowing us down considerably. When you have support staff under pressure, there is no denying that you can easily get some slippages in accuracy, but even with this pressure, our support remains excellent to a level matched only by a few. We have both data and anecdotal evidence to back this up.

The decision to have help threads exist just between support and the user rather than out in the open was essentially made for us when we chose our new management system. We thought about it long and hard, but decided for a few very good reasons that this is a good way forward.

We remain totally committed to being as transparent with our users as possible and have some good plans for how we are going to be even more engaged with users out in our general forum areas and any other places where Serato users want to talk with us. In fact, one of the key benefits of this change is that our team will have more time available to get involved in 'non-help' areas.

We are fully aware that people will continue to ask for help in general areas, but we have a multi-pronged approach to this:

- We will make it easier for users to create help requests (particularly when they are in general forum areas).
- We will spend more time guiding people from the general areas into our help channels.
- We will give people quick answers to simple questions wherever they may turn up.
- We will actively engage with users more frequently out in our general areas.

This isn't marketing speak either. We genuinely want our users to have the best experience possible and have spent considerable time and energy researching, discussing, planning, and implementing what we think will deliver this.

We really appreciate guys like you being involved on serato.com and have plans to develop cool ways we can interact further (as and how you guys want to, of course :), but more on that in a bit...

Cheers for the feedback guys!

Aaron
nik39 2:53 PM - 16 June, 2014
Hey Aaron,

thanks for the responses.

Quote:
We are always working on better support guys! But seriously, we have experienced a significant increase in support volumes since the launch of Serato DJ - and no, it's not because SDJ is buggy.

Yes, Serato is on the right path - back again :)

Quote:
Our userbase growing dramatically and the introduction of a license system have both led to a situation where we have been snowed under at almost all times (but particularly following releases), even as we have added new members to the team.

We have spent a lot of time drilling down into the details of what has been happening and it became abundantly clear that our channel infrastructure was groaning, slowing us down considerably. When you have support staff under pressure, there is no denying that you can easily get some slippages in accuracy, but I maintain that, even with this pressure, our support remains excellent to a proportion matched only by a few. We have both data and anecdotal evidence to back this up.

We're all humans and make mistakes. It can happen and I was not trying to implicitly say that Serato is making more mistakes than the average. You guys still have a good support.

Quote:
The decision to have help threads exist just between support and the user rather than out in the open was essentially made for us when we chose our new management system. We thought about it long and hard, but decided for a few very good reasons that this is a good way forward.

And that's exactly the question here.. what are these "very good reasons"?

Quote:
We remain totally committed to being as transparent with our users as possible and have some good plans for how we are going to be even more engaged with users out in our general forum areas and any other places where Serato users want to talk with us. In fact, one of the key benefits of this change is that our team will have more time available to get involved in 'non-help' areas.

Again, that's not the point. It is good to see Serato staff around the General area. But I don't need support staff to hang around in the General area ;) I want those who are able to share the more "interesting" information, those who are able to take decisions and how prioritize our wishes.

Quote:
- We will make it easier for users to create help requests (particularly when they are in general forum areas).
- We will spend more time guiding people from the general areas into our help channels.
- We will give people quick answers to simple questions wherever they may turn up.

You mention that you will do this... but I don't see the connection with the planned changes.

Right now one could have the impression that with the change Serato is trying to hide something. I would like to understand why the current way does not work anymore, and how the new way will improve:
1. support times for the user
2. ability for those users who want to help themselves by researching and using the search function to find a solution instantly (not having to wait for an operator ;) )
3. workload for the support guys
4. improve transparency

It would be nice if you could elaborate on these topics, but I would understand if you could not share more information publicly. ;)
Serato, Support
Aaron E 9:24 PM - 16 June, 2014
Quote:
It would be nice if you could elaborate on these topics, but I would understand if you could not share more information publicly. ;)


Hey man, no problem at all. I'm totally happy to talk through these.

Quote:
Right now one could have the impression that with the change Serato is trying to hide something.


Nah, we're not trying to hide anything, more the opposite really. The change is all about making it easier for users to find the best information and get the best help. You and I probably wouldn't be having this chat if we weren't totally committed to transparency in this regard.

Quote:
I would like to understand why the current way does not work anymore, and how the new way will improve:

1. support times for the user
2. ability for those users who want to help themselves by researching and using the search function to find a solution instantly (not having to wait for an operator ;) )
3. workload for the support guys
4. improve transparency


No problem.

1. Our old channel management was not very... manageable. As a team, we were spread across multiple environments, none of which contained the functionality we needed to do our jobs well. As a result, we were slower than we could have been and needed to consolidate all our external channels. The best options available for doing this all required tickets between users and support to be private. We did initially think about integrating all channels into our help forum, but this wasn't possible due to the architecture and requirements. Our web team also quite sensibly pointed out that they are not specialists in this field and it would be better to not re-invent the wheel.

Our new channel management has cut average response times by almost a half, and we're only just finding our feet at the moment. We expect to be able to help people even quicker as we explore the full functionality.

2. The other significant aspect of our new system is that it helps us build a new help portal. Much like we now have store.serato.com, there will be support.serato.com with it's own 'home page' helping get all our best information right out in front of our users. We're currently working on this in the background and are looking forward to taking it live later this year.

3. The guys are loving the new system. We simply wouldn't have been able to handle our current volumes with our old channel management. Nor would we have had time to develop the longer term projects we've been working on. We're humming from the change and are just getting going :)

4. There isn't anything inherent in the change that will necessarily improve transparency, but there is on balance no lessening in this regard either. Sure, there won't be new visible help threads as of a week and a half ago, but the entire archive is there. Another more important aspect, is that we will be able to let users know about any emergent or trending issues faster. One thing that particularly frustrated us as a team with our old system, is that it was very difficult to get good messaging through to everybody who was experiencing an issue.

The AMD-specific djfx.dll issue with SDJ 1.3 is a good example. Once we figured out that there was a consistency to the issue, we wanted to communicate with everyone we could to get further information (and eventually run tests of the fix with). Given that by then, the user group was split across ~180 threads, we spent a huge amount of time corralling users together and managing a couple of 'main threads'. Even then, we still had users popping up all over the place freaking out. It was a bit chaotic to be honest.

Our new system would help in a situation like this in two ways; better management of incoming help requests, and better visibility of the issue and official information through the new support home page. Sometimes greater transparency can emerge through clearing away the clutter, rather than sharing every detail of every conversation ever.

Thanks for the questions man. I've personally been thinking about this a lot for the last year or so and I'm just happy we're at the point now where we can start to talk about it with you guys. We've got a lot more planned and transparency and integrity are two things we're keeping in mind at all times.

Cheers
Aaron
hersh20 2:04 PM - 18 June, 2014
Guys, its simple really please PLEASE increase the contrast of the scroll bars in the crates/tracks area of serato DJ. its very hard to see the small bubble for scrolling in a large or "all" crate...
Serato, Support
Aaron E 8:54 PM - 18 June, 2014
I'll pass that on for you hersh20 :)

Have you started a feature suggestion thread over here serato.com The products team keep an eye out in that area so it's a good idea to gather support there to get their attention.

Cheers
AlxRyde 7:06 AM - 28 June, 2014
In addition to Hersh's comment, any chance you can increase the size of the scroll bars in general? I'm using SDJ with a touchscreen laptop, and it would help a whole lot. I already have little difficulty using the touchscreen for FX, opening REC/FX/SP6, and even instant doubling tracks. Scroll bars are kind of usable right now, but bigger ones would make them totally viable in its current state.
soundboyz 5:04 PM - 29 June, 2014
Why is Serato DJ CPU goes RED while using it on Sixty One mixer every-time i try to open Safari web browser or any other web browser. Can anyone tell me what is causing the High CPU usage.
Serato, Support
Aaron E 10:47 PM - 29 June, 2014
Hey AlxRyde, I'll feed that back into the interface designer for you :)

@soundboyz - this can be for a lot of different reasons I'm afraid, and almost always specific to your setup. The best thing to do would be to open a help request here: support.serato.com

I'm going to lock this thread off here guys as it seems like we've covered the support channel change.

Anyone needing help, plese open a request here: support.serato.com

Cheers
Aaron
10:47 PM, 29 Jun 2014
Discussion locked by Aaron E