Please feel free to remove this post if someone feels it is inappropriate.
Well, I just got new email about Roon’s new “Mastery Series” that will provide me two emails each week with “hints, hacks, or features that’ll help deepen [my] understanding of Roon…” Excellent!
But here’s a thought. Maybe putting more resources into Roon-provided technical support might be a better use of the Team’s energies at this juncture.
Lately I see a lot of Roonians turning to various Facebook Roon user groups for assistance, saying that they’ve waited for days and weeks without responses from the Roon Team to their posts in the Support section. Or that support offered by other members in that forum seemed not terribly helpful as it is often limited to the narrow scope of another users particular experience, or not actually responsive to the particular issue a user is experiencing. (And could anything be more frustrating than for or five fellow users jumping in to inform a person experiencing an issue that they have experienced no such issue in years of using Roon? What is a person having difficulty supposed to do with that “information”?)
I also see quite a number of unresolved posts in the Support section that have been up for a few days or more with many views, only a few replies, and no input from Roon staff. I think we all understand that Roon’s Technical Support staff is small and works extremely hard to meet the demand (or at least I hope we all do), but that’s just the point; the model Roon has relied on to provide product support is getting overmatched by the reality of what a growing customer base using a diversifying array of features seems to require.
I have been the beneficiary of a great deal of wonderful help provided by both Roon staff and this Community’s volunteer moderators and I am truly grateful for their expertise. I’ve also received a lot of generous offers of ideas, thoughts, and, well, guesses, by friendly fellow users generously giving their time in a great spirit of community. But I think Roon is outgrowing this model. And, while I know many folks here will applaud this new initiative, frankly a Mastery Series of email tips only seems to highlight Roon’s struggle to meet growing pains with seriousness.
This, of course, is only one users impression. I offer it earnestly but with humility.
A while back I posted something that I think is similar in spirit. Roon’s scale is butting up against some of its practices is my best (educated but inferential, not informed) guess…
(Though I suppose I ought to say, I have no objection to Roon running marketing and onboarding content; they have a lot of new users, they should be brought in to the realm of those who know enough to love Roon. It doesn’t have to be either/or, and I’ve run enough organizations to know that if someone says “stop doing thing X” that that doesn’t enable me to do thing Y. Doing thing Y is the important thing.)
This is exactly the point. The community-of-helpful-diy-folks was fine for the days when Rooners tended to be former Squeeze-LMS types, but Roon markets itself as something much more sophisticated and polished. It seems to me like it should be ready for prime time at this point.
I found it sort of amusing that there was an email to tell me they were going to send me emails. Why not put a sample tip in the announcement email? Otherwise it’s useless.
Does anyone here think the decision makers at Roon are going to say, “Gee, I wish we had thought of that”? They know what their support resources are and the statistics on solving problems in a timely manner. They obviously have some growth objectives in mind with the Roon Mastery Series. I don’t think one has anything to do with the other.
The resources to run a twice weekly knowledge enhancement email to subscribers would be less demanding I would imagine than adding meaningful resources to a customer support service. Roon has to a large extent relied on the generosity of other users to help resolve many issues that arise. Does this compare to a fully fledged support service? I think we all know the answer to that. My own experience dealing with product service providers from established companies in recent times has been pretty dismal particularly during the Covid era. How many large organisations have outsourced customer support where you get poorly trained people running through a set menu of questions and responses? Many of the telecoms, airlines, banks, software providers etc have gone this way. There are some companies that do provide good customer support but they seem to be the exception rather than the rule ie Apple. One of the main drivers for this shift away from quality support is simply the cost involved is seen as prohibitive. The return on investment is simply not there. So if you can make a good product that satisfies most of your customers most of the time then those that you lose through minimum customer support are accepted as casualties of the business model. Would we be prepared to pay say 20-30% more in subscription charges to Roon for a top quality customer support service? Once again I think we know the answer to that one.
There have been plenty of products which had great user enthusiasm for a terrific experience that fell off a cliff because frustration with support issues that once were isolated began to snowball. I’m guessing that that OP’s concern and mine is that the product and support are fairly inextricably linked and growing signs of frustration (which could be in line with, below, or above rates of user growth - we can’t know) might cause issues for the core product over time. Roon’s business is Roon’s business, 100%/. But I really truly hope that they keep the train on the tracks as they grow, as more “less sophisticated users” jump on the bandwagon, and as product complexity grows. I and many others have rebuilt listening around Roon, and. speaking for myself at least, am trying to express concern for some of the symptoms, express a thought based on experience for how other companies have successfully dealt with similar symptoms. I can’t know if any of the key folks will read this, and I’m not going to tag them because I think they spend plenty of time on here anyways and already have had the chance to hear/read my thoughts. But it’s not “none of my business”. As a customer of many enterprise products, one of the key conversations with vendors always resolves around support models, capacity and SLOs/SLAs. Even when you’re not experiencing any issues currently you are wickedly attuned to the service experience of other customers. Roon is not enterprise software but is way more “enterprise-like” than most of what any of us use in our homes. Does anyone else operate a [commercial software] server (other than perhaps Plex) or a server with dedicated hardware clients, let alone one that is particularly network demanding within our own private 4 walls? I’m sure there are examples (there are lots of very technically sophisticated people here), but not a lot. I want Roon to succeed and thrive - because it’s great. And my hope that they scale their systems and processes in ways that are consistent with the business scale they have (and seemingly inconsistent with the rising user complaints here and in off-forum user groups) is part of my vote for their success, because I’ve seen it be very high ROI investment (if complex) for lots of scaling luxury or masstige brands.
Quickbooks [cough cough] for like its entire existence. Worst company ever!
Definitely better, more knowledgeable support… but they still are horrible at times.
I know someone who has an unresolved ongoing issue between Apple’s payment system and intuit quickbooks and has not been able to access his company since oct of 2022, Apple blames quickbooks. Quickbooks blames Apple.
I told him to call Solve it seven.
At any rate, I’m not picky about support. Some people really get all steamed up when they have to wait a day.
I don’t really mind the Roon support system. I like the community assistance too, but that is another area some people get really steamed up about.
The emails, don’t mind them either. You can opt out if you want. If it solves/sheds some light on some grey areas for a small percentage of users then that is great.
I’d like to consider myself quite Roon saavy but I know there’s a lot of features I don’t utilize or some I probably don’t even know are there and I’ve been using Roon for 7 years. I’ll give the emails a read. Maybe I’ll learn something.
The Mastery Series is quite obviously aimed at new users who require help getting things the way they want them. Having them be able to reference something easily has the potential to reduce their need for support. Also the skill sets required to produce those articles don’t exactly overlap with the support team. It isn’t like they will be too busy writing articles to support users. This is all a bit of a storm in a teacup in my opinion.
Ok sorry if I’m confusing things. I don’t mind one bit about the emails. I am hoping that there gets to be more “professionalized support” given the characteristics of what Roon is selling. I’ll bow out. I agree the emails are not a trade-off nor a symptom of anything amiss - and could, to one poster’s point, help avoid some support requests.
Hmmm. Perhaps the title of my post is too clever by half. I was just aiming to get a little attention for my real point. (Or perhaps a few folks in this space are of the sort who believe “Frankenstein” is actually a story about a guy who assembles a monster? )
I had hoped Roon’s announcement of their new email initiative might provided a way of highlighting, by way of contrast, what I believe is a growing problem: The growing gap(s) between what Roon offers, Roon’s growing and diversifying customer base, and the way Roon manages support (including the ready accessibility of information).
I certainly don’t, Jim. But here’s the thing, I also think that if Roon’s Community forum is the only avenue to finding support for the product and also is the only means by which Roon users can air dissatisfactions (large or small) with their experience with Support, then it would probably be bad if that forum’s voices were to become over-represented by those who may be reflexively hostile to any suggestions that the source of some problems or issues might be of Roon Labs’ own making. Can we at least agree on that much?
As @Johnny_Ooooops said, Roon’s business is Roon’s business, and If this is or will be Roon’s business model, then so be it. However…
I honestly don’t know the answer what we would all give to this, Brian. I know I would accept that value proposition. Though I am far from what anyone would profile as the well-heeled “audiophile” who would happily piss fuel on the bonfire of my own vanity about my high-end audio gear, I am a hi-fi enthusiast who, having long ago been an early adopter of the old and way ahead of its time Logitech/Squeeze line – and a longtime clinger to its transformation into user-supported legacy-ware – absolutely loves Roon and what it provides. I am simply growing frustrated with how difficult it is becoming to find solutions to problems. For a long time I was willing to live with the frustrations of LMS, but that was/is a FREE product and service; a DIY ethos is in its DNA. I have less equanimity about fritzing around with problems that arise every second or third update. So the answer to your hypothetical is, for me: I would gladly pay more for a better product-support infrastructure.
Precisely.
I would agree with the storm/teacup metaphor if this really was the point, Henry. I hope you will consider that I’m not actually upset about that tradeoff. I’m expressing concern (and a bit of frustration) about the growing difficulty in accessing support – a growing difficulty that at least some users are apparently also experiencing.
That’s all I meant to express. I apologize if the approach was inept.
Same as I feel.
But not all people like to wait (more days) and they did pay for a service that doesn’t meet the expectations. And marketing today sets high expectations (not roon but everywhere so it tends to get by default)
I agree. But my concern is that Roon’s marketing offers a view of a product that can be used with ease on a wide variety of platforms. Understandably, Roon does not want to limit its customer base to people with strong IT and netwoking skills and needs to appeal to users who are less technically inclined or who have limited time for, or interst in, monkeying around figuring out how to solve problems of a technical nature – at least not without reducing their overall satisfaction with their user-experience.
Having tried out audirvana and a few other music-management solutions (to replace what I valued LMS for), nothing comes close to providing what Roon offers. But for me, that’s a two-edged sword…
I guess i should throw in one more point. I’m nothing but supportive of the team which is very hardworking and busts their butts every day to ensure that Roon users have the best experience they can. Just because wait times are long and people are frustrated, it’s not the “fault” of anyone who’s trying hard to fix things. It’s a systemic issue. We owe the team who are working hard every day an enormous amount of gratitude. So if anyone’s reading this, please know that it’s not an implied or intended or veiled or any kind of critique of individuals or teams, but rather a hope for resourcing, processes, tools and structure that can help you all keep all Roon’s customers satisfied. There are lots of ways of doing that.
I have to second this. My concerns go to systemic issues, not to any of the individuals or teams of people at Roon. I have the utmost respect and gratitude for all the teams and individuals at Roon, all of whom are extraordinarily generous with their time, professional, patient, and skillful. Thanks!
Wonderful filled with valid points from many different sides of the issue.
Along with a growing user base in need of more responsive customer support Roon is facing other issues, many of which are beyond their control.
First there is the issue of Roon simply not working for a given user. By not working I mean that there is no music playing and there needs to be a rapid response by Team Roon to get the music playing for that user.
Then there are the issues where Roon is working, as in the music plays, but Roon is falling short of its full potential. I’m referring to what appears to be a flat out refusal by the artists and record companies (are record companies still a thing?) to provide meaningful metadata to the music streaming services for many of their releases. Since everyday it appears that Roon is binding itself tighter and tighter to online music streaming and Roon continues to market their mastery of metadata this creates a product that is falling further and further from its full potential.
A Roon user who also subscribes to either Tidal or Qobuz (and often to both as I do) is now paying close to $50 a month for a badly broken user experience.
I realize that this post is somewhat off topic however just remember that no amount of customer and technical support is ever going to resolve the lack of metadata issue and good metadata is what makes Roon shine.
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