Blackaud support

Yes, it's very frustrating.

Agreed; support was stellar a few years ago even if it did mean longer wait times… I could accept the delay because I knew that when I was finally connected with someone, they would be very knowledgeable and capable of assisting me. I would gladly return to those days instead of the current support experience.

Blackbaud has also removed the "Submit a Case" tool from our support website, so now even if we have a question that is not time-sensitive, there's no way to submit it apart from waiting to go through the chat or phone queues.

It doesn't matter to me where support is located as long as the representatives have been well trained on the product and can communicate clearly.

I'd recommend that everyone pass on their feedback on support to their Customer Success Manager. Hopefully if enough voices are heard, improvements will be made.

I agree with Erin. The support used to actually connect with us and solve the issue. Now we end up with cases that are open for weeks or months. Someone on my team actually asked me if I could skip starting a case because it was just a waste of time.

"let me do some research and I'll respond you via email." Is the answer I've gotten for almost all my calls this year.

I am having the same experiences as described by others. The assumption is that I haven't looked around on my own and tried various remedies for problems. That is super frustrating.

My latest problem has to do with credit card updater not working properly, but the answer to my inquiry was all about how I have to reach out to the donor because the updated did not do what it purports to do.

What I really need to know is, if I cannot rely on BB to update information in my database, then what do I need to do to 1) bring this to Blackbaud's attention to get the issue corrected? and 2) stay current so that people that are showing up as paying by credit card in my batch are not actually then sliding off our radar?

This is a lot to track when a tool is supposed to be doing it.

I completely agree with the points being raised. I often share with others how exceptional the support team is, and I truly value their assistance. However, I’ve noticed that when I call with an issue, I am frequently asked to walk through the steps I’ve already taken—sometimes multiple times—only to be told the matter needs to be escalated. While I appreciate the idea of “teaching as you go,” this approach can unfortunately be at the expense of the customer experience. It seems there may be a gap in how these processes are being carried out, and it may be worth reviewing to ensure smoother and more effective support.

When we first acquired Blackbaud the service was so much better. In the last 3 years it has become progressively worse. I have mentioned it several times to our rep but with no avail. It takes days to sometimes get issues resolved when it used to take hours. There is no urgency on their part and sometimes I have to figure it out myself. When I have to speak to them I have a great difficulty in understanding them because most support staff have limited proficiency in english.

Now, when I call I literally tell them what to do (based on my own knowledgebase research) and they follow the steps without any knowledge of the system/product.

This has been the worst part for me.

And the answers just pointing me to KB articles are bad enough on their own, but it's 2x worse because the AI bot already does that! And why does it do that? To redirect us away from live agents, for issues that we can't figure out via the KB (not that it actually helps - if I'm going to support, I've already looked through the KB!).

I also usually have to repeat myself several times. I can tell they're following a script (I've seen the same wording verbatim in multiple chats) just asking the same questions I've already answered when I described the issue,

At this point, I'm only opening chats as a way to get a follow-up answer later - I know I'm not gonna get resolution from the chat itself.

We are having the same, negative experiences with support. Like Mary mentioned, I used to know the names of the support people assigned to our area/product and knew that if I saw one of them on the case, I would get an answer/resolution. Now when I open a case, it is rarely resolved during the initial chat/call and I often get asked if I've done x, y, or z — all of which I already indicated in my response form that I did before opening chat. The initial AI bot is not helpful and just delays the help that I am looking for. I have been using the system for over 5 years and did the initial implementation on our campus. I know many of the quirks of the program and the unexpected places that you sometimes have to look within the system. If I am opening a support ticket, it is because something is truly not working. I find myself less and less likely to reach out to support because the level of help has declined.

Just chiming back in on this. I just opened a case on a high-level technical issue. The first email reply: asking met to repeat ALL of the details I explicitly included when opening the case, including screen shots.

The second reply: directing me to a KB that is not applicable and covers an entirely different situation. We are now on hour 3 of a student unable to log into BEM and we are still wading through non-applicable KBs (which I already ruled out on my own before opening the ticket).

This is such a tremendous waste of time, energy and resources. Given the opportunity I would gladly wait on hold for an hour knowing I would reach someone like John in Scotland who would actually solve the login issue (or rapidly diagnose as something he couldn't solve and properly escalate) instead of this frustrating, pointless back and forth. I know this student is going to be without her LMS for days now while the agent determines they don't know what to do - this is no way to function.

May as well pile on: I submitted a ticket that explicitly spelled out what was happening, where to go and what to do to replicate the issue, and included screenshots. The first two responses I received from support were KB articles that had nothing to do with the issue I raised. It took me asking for the ticket to be reassigned to a different support rep to get the message across, and when it was finally received the ticket was just kicked right back to the original support rep. So that was three days' worth of frustration to alert Blackbaud to what was an obvious database bug.

I agree with @Christine Zaremba that whatever training Blackbaud thinks is sufficient for support reps is, in fact, laughably inadequate. Half the time, even escalating a ticket doesn't accomplish anything (and that's when you are even allowed to escalate a ticket - more often than not the Escalate button doesn't appear, and when it does you're looking at another day of delays). This isn't a training issue. It's a deep-rooted philosophical choice that Blackbaud has actively made to devalue their own product. There's no reason whatsoever that end users feel like they need to be the ones educating support reps about the product that support is, uh, supporting, but clearly that's what is happening.

Call me skeptical, but I will believe any improvements when I see them, and not a second before. Until then I get much better help from colleagues at other schools than I do from the product support that we actually pay for.

"One explanation for the current state of support agents' limited knowledge of the products is that many previous agents were promoted to other roles in the company - product development, etc."

That's not an explanation. It's an excuse, and a flimsy one at that. I mean, good for the people who were promoted, but that doesn't make a bit of difference to end users, and Blackbaud's kind of saying the quiet part out loud here in that they are moving the more useful people to other roles and leaving the hoi polloi to deal with the leftovers. So they know that the experience is downgraded when these high achievers move on to greener pastures, and the organizational response seems to be, in as many words, "welp".

Also, I don't have time to spell out feedback. In many cases I've already dealt with it and I'm not interested in regurgitating what I've already detailed, at length, within the case itself. Their "survey" doesn't actually address the core issue: how to retain quality support reps and, when those people move on, how to pass that knowledge on to their replacements.