Continuing the discussion from Support from Hell because that thread has been closed…
Today I found out (at least part of) the reason why Wyze support is SO HORRENDOUS, wastes staff (and customer time), which of course wastes a ton of money for Wyze & customers.
A “support agent” actually wrote the following in the first paragraph of an email “reply” to an issue I’m desperately trying to resolve. (Their 3rd reply - the 3rd time their support folks have NOT included ANY info relevant to my issue.)
“Please note that support agents do not have access to your log submissions and cannot view or use your logs during the troubleshooting process.”
You might want to re-read that. I had to read it several times because it makes absolutely NO sense. Why would a company pay people to do support if those paid people ARE NOT ABLE TO READ WHAT THE ISSUE IS?! I mean… WTH?!
For a couple years I’ve been done with Wyze. I keep putting off the switch to one of their competitors. But I am SO done with them. They’ve never shown any interest in assisting customers. After they get money from a sale, they have no more use for us. Which means, all of us who’ve jumped ship are sharing our Wyze horror stories so that nobody else gives money to Wyze.
Your “logs” are debug logs for engineers. Support agents are not Wyze engineers. When you generate and send a log from your app, it goes directly to engineers. Engineers review your log based on your interaction with customer support. The logs are tied to your customer support interaction via the support ticket number.
Aside from the places logs end up, I like many, are disgusted with what Wyze has become. As the company grows, support goes in the opposite direction. It used to be decent and has completely shifted. It’s sad. I’m still deep in their ecosystem but will start looking at an alternative, well established camera and related gear company WITH great support. Farewell Wyze.
Have you seen an app log? It won’t make any sense unless you’re familiar with the application logic, source code and/or error codes. App logs don’t help the support agents.
If the support agents were capable of understanding the logs, they wouldn’t be support agents, they’d be developers/engineers. The debug logs are not in English and won’t do them any good at all.
Having said that, When Gwendolyn worked for Wyze, they said Wyze was looking into updating their log system to give some access to more employees, possibly even some support staff, and potentially making improvements where Engineers can more easily leave notes attached to the logs to give a short explanation about what the log shows, etc. That would be a welcome update at some point. But in general, there is no need for level 1 support staff to see the logs, they couldn’t understand what the debug logs say anyway.
I think it could, but there are so many variables involved, including…
Can the engineers explain what they’re doing to resolve the issue in a way that makes sense to the support staff?
Are support staff able to translate (if necessary) the technical jargon in a way that makes sense to—and satisfies the needs of—the customer?
What’s the customer’s level of technical knowledge?
There are so many sub-levels in there at all three tiers (engineer, support agent, customer), and by that I mean that some customers actually are engineers, some support agents demonstrate with their responses that they’re not particularly skilled at reading and comprehending the true nature of a problem, some engineers may be so into the weeds that their forte is decidedly not communicating in layperson’s terms, etc. The success of any such process that allows engineers a channel to communicate to customers is going to be highly operator dependent at all levels. I think this is a fair summation:
Honestly, sometimes when I’ve generated and submitted logs (as in when Jason requests them for specific issues in Fix-It Friday updates), I’ve been explicit in the follow-up ticket to note that I do not expect a response from Support, because I don’t expect them to resolve the issue and I especially don’t want them telling me again about a process that doesn’t (and probably won’t) exist.
I don’t know if I’m just bumping into the right kinds of topics recently or not—and as I’ve written elsewhere I don’t know what their particular roles are—but I’ve been really pleased to see such active direct engagement between Wyze Team members and users in the Forum recently. This gives the impression of developers directly communicating with customers in soliciting logs, sharing firmware updates, and trying to actively solve specific problems.
On a related note, I really like this post:
I’ve linked to it directly and also paraphrased it at times when trying to explain to other Forum members how the log situation works (at least as I understand it). It seems that something like this would be a good candidate for a stickied and/or stand-alone Tips & Tricks topic to have for easy referral when trying to explain to other Forum users how to create and follow-up with logs.
