Technical Support Horrible

saratvemuri

We are new to Smartsheet and we are on an Enterprise plan. I had three interactions with support so far and all three have been horrible.

First one was regarding this: Populating Contact List Dropdown — Smartsheet Community. I got more information from the community than the actual support case I opened online. The interaction almost went like I was interacting with a poorly implemented AI chatbot with repeatedly asking the same question despite me explaining it repeatedly. Final conclusion on the above issue appears to be it is broken and we are stuck with manually editing since that's how they "resolved" it. They did repeatedly tell me that we have phone support option and it may be better to do that.

Second one, I thought I'd try phone support. Obviously, this is an offshore call center operating from a script. This is regarding an error I was getting when I tried to do Global Updates in Control Center. I could do any global update even though I was logged in as the workspace owner. The person I was talking to (and screen sharing) obviously has no idea what is going on and repeatedly put me on hold "to check on things" (probably chatting with tier 2). An hour trying stupid things like switching to a different browser, incognito mode etc, we didn't get anywhere. I finally had to tell her to escalate this and call me back. That was 4 days ago and no call back. So, phone support is no better.

Third one, I was trying to use Live Data Connector to pull data into Excel. It previously worked fine, but yesterday it errored out (multiple computers, different logins). Opened a case online again. Again a "bot like" response that is basically pointing me to the articles online on how to set it up (though I specifically said it was working fine previously) and strangely a link to download the ODBC driver from Microsoft for SQL server!

So, anyone know a way to get some REAL support? Obviously, the community here seems to be helpful. But the above three are specific to our account and only support can help us, but I am not getting anywhere. Is this par for the course with Smartsheet. Did we make huge mistake in selecting Smartsheet as a platform for our project management system?

Thanks for letting me vent. Any help/pointers appreciated.

Paul Newcome

I absolutely LOVE Smartsheet. You did not make a mistake in selecting it as your project management platform.

But... I will say that dealing with Customer Service can be a bit on the frustrating side (understatement).

Unfortunately your best bet is to come here to the Community or reach out to a professional services provider. There are a number of third party "Smartsheet Consultants" throughout the US and the rest of the world. Some offer different services, but I do know that some (such as the one I work with) provide ongoing support contracts. I can't speak for other consulting companies, but the way we handle it is that you would reach out to me directly, I would do everything I could with trouble shooting, and if that still didn't work then I would be the one reaching out to Smartsheet, so you don't have to.

I don't mean the above as a sales pitch either. I'm just pointing out some other options is all. If you do decide to look into a third party support type of service, by all means do your research.

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Having said all of that...

1) I responded on the post you provided a link for. If you need more details or have questions about my response, please feel free to ask away.

2) Control Center in general can be finicky, and Global Updates even more so. Are you able to share screenshots, describe the process in more detail, provide the exact error message(s), etc.?

3) If your company uses Single Sign-On, there were some changes made yesterday. There should be an announcement or two set as a "sticky" post on the main home page of the Community with more details. Also... Depending on your exact needs and if there are any security restrictions on the data... There is a way to pull live data from Smartsheet into an Excel workbook without any connectors or anything. You would publish the sheet as "Read Only - HTML" then use that published URL to "get data from web" in Excel.

There are a few "catches" though. The best way to think of it is that the Excel doc is a user. It cannot display anything it cannot see. So it has to be published for "anyone can view", and it will not pull in any hidden columns. This also only works for sheets because reports cannot be published as HTML.

L_123

Smartsheet community has grown significantly, and is extremely active. You'll be hard pressed to find a better group of responders. I used to go and pick and choose among dozens of open questions 5-6 years ago. Anymore there is hardly ever even 5 and usually those have to do with the API or something special on an enterprise account add-on.

Point being if it isn't a software error, you have a great source of help here, and you will almost always get a response within 1-2 hours

I can appreciate the difficulty with working with the smartsheet support service. I've always had better luck going through the sales rep for significant issues.

Paul Newcome

@L_123 I have noticed that too. Lately, very few questions go for more than an hour or two without getting answered, and I have never seen one sit for more than a day or two (which is rare) before it gets picked up by someone.

I go to sales reps on occasion, but being a partner gives me access to a few other resources as well that have (typically) better responses than the regular support. Even still though, I only ever use it as a very last resort.

saratvemuri

Thanks for the info and this forum is indeed valuable for normal issues. However the global update issue and the ODBC issue I am facing appears to be my account specific, so this forum wouldn't be able to help. Still no resolution for both of these issues and support tried to close one of them as resolved!. Currently on hold with support going through stupid motions because now I can't access any report or edit any dashboard without getting "Sorry, We're having trouble reaching Smarsheet..". Sheets work fine.

How do I find out who our Sales Rep is? The "partner" that sold us this solution got bought by a bigger company and their help became so bad that we essentially fired them..