If you were the President of a PLC manufacturer?

What would be your reaction to the number of posts regarding your products?

  • Very encouraged

    Votes: 10 22.2%
  • Encouraged

    Votes: 13 28.9%
  • Concerned

    Votes: 8 17.8%
  • Discouraged

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Very Concerned

    Votes: 5 11.1%
  • Very Discouraged

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Indifferent

    Votes: 3 6.7%
  • Other

    Votes: 6 13.3%

  • Total voters
    45

Stephen Luft

Lifetime Supporting Member
Join Date
May 2002
Location
South Portland, ME
Posts
671
I wanted to get some input from the community.

If you were the top person at Allen Bradley, Siemans, Automation Direct or any other PLC manufacturer and you visited this forum and saw the number of "how to" questions being asked about your products...what would be your response? (how to program; how to wire; how to do this or that, where do you find...etc.)

I personally would be very concerned that this number of people have questions that technical support should be able to answer, yet, they are going to another source to find answers. As the top man, I would have to begin questioning the support we offer our customers...How accessible are we to our customers?

I attempted to do some research on this but was limited by the search capacity of the forum. The maximum number of results you can generate from a search is 500. I tried searching for threads whose subject included the terms AB, AD, Allen Bradley, Siemans, etc..., unfortunately, all maxed out at 500. I had asked Phil if there was a way to obtain this information, but there wasn't.

I look forward to hearing what some of you have to say regarding customer support.

Thanks for your assistance.

God Bless,
 
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It could mean that:

A)Your equipment is cutting edge and allows engineers to push the envelope resulting in alot of posts.

B)Your documentation is lacking, thereby generating a large number of questions.

C)Combination of above.
 
I don't find there customer support very easy to use. I called a few times but it's always an automated machine then you get lost with all the selections then when you finally get where you want to go your on hold for awhile. I think the website is pretty bad too everytime i search for something i have a hard time finding it.
 
It could mean that you sell such a huge amount of product that a small percentage comes here for help. That small percentage still adds up to a lot.


Conversely if there are few posts, maybe you have few customers.

Personally, I feel that your post is a an attempt at back-handed advertising.
 
I'll reiterate what I said in THIS post:

  • When you call tech support, you get ONE person on the other end... :(
  • When you call PLCS.net, you get a conference call with HUNDREDS of people on the other end... :)
🍻

-Eric
 
The fact that there are a lot of questions about a given brand could be a result of

1) large market share and extensive installed base

2) really bad documentation and/or tech support

If I were a manufacturer I would find out if it is Number 1 or Number 2 that is generating the posts. If it was 1, I'd give sales a bonus. If it were 2, I'd can somebody's butt.

One thing that old farts like me have to keep in mind is that the learning methodology of younger engineers is different. Most of us old coots would read manuals, and if that failed we'd contact our distributor with whom we had a personal relationship. He knew we were competent professionals, and we knew he knew. There was no stigma to asking questions or displaying the gaps in our expertise.

Younger guys don't seem to work the same way. The personnel in the field fluid, they haven't developed personal relationships, and they haven't had the chance to develop the confidence that comes with battle scars and time on task. It seems to me that they jump to the web for an answer as a first choice, not as the last chance. They get to remain anonymous, they don't have to develop the relationships, and they can often get a faster response than they can from overworked, distant, and impersonal phone tech support. They can also get faster help, in many cases, than from reading the manual and with less effort.

I don't know if this is better or worse, but it is different.
 
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I think it depends on the questions being asked...

If there are a lot of "easy" questions being asked then the documentation is lacking, but if there are a lot of much more advanced questions being asked it may just mean that engineers are pushing what is possible using your products which I see as a good thing.

If there are a lot of "I use brand X, but I'm thinking of switching to brand Y" questions I think this is a good thing if you are brand Y, but a bad thing if you are brand X.

Also if there are a lot of "I tried tech support, but they didn't know, didn't answer, gave me the run-around, etc" types of comments this is a very bad thing.

Just my 2c
 
If I was the president of a big time company producing PLCs, I would order some numbers guy to do a cost/profit analysis of my customer support. The result should be that this site is better and cheaper, so maybe I would consider supporting it. But that would get in the way of the non-commercial nature of this site, as you should be aware of, Stephen.

One of the problems about this question is the nature of the questions, as has been pointed out by some of the other posters. I have just finished a project work analyzing a community with no more than 57 members and only about a thousand posts. It took me three weeks to finish it (I only worked on it for about 2-3h per day). And I didn't even take the quality of the posts in to account. Imagine what a profound study of this forum would take! So anybody just 'visiting' here can only get a very small glimpse of what really happens here. The quantity doesn't tell you anything, it's the quality that does it. Besides, a lot of the questions don't say anything about the product, but the hell a lot more about the poster.

Kind regards,
 
Tom Jenkins said:
One thing that old farts like me have to keep in mind is that the learning methodology of younger engineers is different.

...

Younger guys don't seem to work the same way.

...

I don't know if this is better or worse, but it is different.

Speaking only for myself, but thinking on my short 28 years while reading your post I think you are dead on correct about the differences of how the "younger" generation learns compared to the "older" generation. I know I'm prone to posting a question here or on AD's forum if I can't find what I need in a PDF manual pretty quickly (does anyone actually read the paper ones anymore?). Most of the time I get an answer just as fast posting here as I would calling tech support, but if it takes 45 minutes to get the answer then by posting here I get to accomplish something else for 40 minutes while I wait for the answer (it takes me about 5 minutes to get here, goof off a minute seeing if someone else has already asked, compose an intelligent question, and hit submit); if I call tech support I've just blown 45 minutes of my day working on a single question.

My gut feeling is that each generation is asked to accomplish more with less (time, money, etc). I don't think that the more with less is a new trend, but each new generation has to find ways to play catch up to the "older" generation in terms of knowledge and experience.
 
marksji said:
...the differences of how the "younger" generation learns compared to the "older" generation.
I think "younger" generation is better defined as "has always had the internet" generation. When I started, you ONLY had the paper manuals (which you read THOROUGHLY!). A call to support was a last (and only) resort.

PDFs are a wonderful thing. At our old shop, I had shelves and shelves of catalogs. When we moved to the new shop, I decided to toss everything, and I don't miss it one bit... (y)

Which brings up another point... A company's online presence has a LOT of influence on my purchases. There is no reason not to have every single catalog, manual, etc. available online as a PDF. When researching new items, I skip right over manufacturers where I can't easily find documentation online. Even if that product seems PERFECT for my application, lack of online info will cause me to look elsewhere. Sites that require registration to access documentation is also very annoying... :mad:

🍻

-Eric
 
Marksji,Quote"but each new generation has to find ways to play catch up to the "older" generation in terms of knowledge and experience."

You can catch up on knowledge (maybe) but you can't on experience or wisdom, only time will get you there. With alot of hard work of course. IMHO
 
In my opinion I think I would be more concerned with "the lack of questions" pertaining to my product(s). I am not sure I can explain this properly but here goes.

PLC's in general are relatively new considering the fact that each year more features are combined to do more things. Many have stated it is not rocket science....no it is not but it can involve engineering, high-level math, physics and other sciences depending on the application.

AB, Siemens and Omron probably dominate the market(s), in general, for a variety of reasons. I can think of 2 main reasons more questions would be asked about their products than others.
1. They sell more units and in some cases there may be differences on instructions and capabilities between the different models/versions.
2. They add or have "high end" or new features which many are not sure how to use efficiently...in many cases there is documentation but in some cases its not always understood or just poorly written. This is what I was refering to above with sciences, just because a person can write a program does not mean they fully understand the application or what is involved.

To add to that I would look at the questions to determine the "priority" issues;
1. Product failure
2. Support problems
3. Are the questions more relevant to "HOW TO" than problems with the product

This has no real bearing on this subject but it falls into marketing and the generation thing. How many remember the PET ROCK? It was a just a polished rock but marketing (it was created by an advertising expert) made it the thing to own. I made 25K at the state fair selling those things....would you believe I also sold the Pet Rock Training Manual with almost all of them.

The point of that story is; if people are asking questions or talking about a product they are either using or going to use it.
 
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You also have to remember that this forum would not be the only source of information for the president. He would also have his own sales information.
If I was a president of a PLC manufacturer, I would keep someone (or a team) on this forum to gather information and work out what was going on. Only by keeping an eye on the forum would you know that AB is always too expensive, Siemens has bad manuals for non German speakers, and that no one trusts soft PLCs (for example only, none of the above is necessarily true).
I think this could be a good tool for any PLC company, as long as the temptation to market is resisted.
 
Steven,

With all respect, I dont think it necessarly means anything either way. It could be poor documentation, or poor support, or in the case of AB costly support. Or it could be LOTs of users with LOTs of applications questions, which arnt the responsability of the manufacture anyway.

The thing is, I belive that it's not up to the PLC manufacture to actually program your application, or to read the manual aloud to you...Many of the "questions" on these fourms are just that type...

If you remember the thread "Learning by Doing" This thread went on for months with hundreds of posts, and I dont remember a single post that detracted from the PLC manufacture.

So if your going to use a post to "grade" you product or tech support look at it this way:

Questions regarding PLC and spicific application = good.
Questions regarding clairification of issue covered in the manuals = bad.

That's my take on it.
 

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