Avid Forum

Today is a celebration of sorts. It is not often that an e-mail from Avid makes me gripe and giggle at the same time, but this one did. It read:

Subject: (Avid Community) Post Approved: Re: 4Gb card on a 2Gb Lanshare
From: "Avid Community - Automated Email" ForumAdministrator at avid.com

The post was approved and is ready to be viewed at the URL below.

Subject: Re: 4Gb card on a 2Gb Lanshare

http://community.avid.com/forums/p/61877/346745.aspx#346745

Thanks,
Avid Community team

It has only been 209 days since I made that post and now, finally, it got approved. Wow!

Why, you would ask, did this post have to be approved in the first place?

A couple of days prior to making this posting I had a bit of a... shall I say... difference of opinions with one very vocal member of Avid Community, which first resulted in far-fetched mean-spirited speculation about me and shortly after yours truly was committed to moderation without any warning or explanation. Meaning that from then on my postings had to be manually approved by someone on the moderators team before they could get trough. Which they have been not. Until today that is.

Not willing to leave this matter unchallenged I inquired the Forum Administrator of the reasons for such apparently unfair treatment, who have never responded back but forwarded my issue up the chain of command for soon after that I did get an e-mail from Marianna Montague saying:

"Mike forwarded your email to me as I manage the online community forums and the moderators who support them.
I checked your account and I do see that you are moderated but I don’t see any indication of why and who moderated you.  I will investigate further.

Moderation occurs when the Rules and regulations you agree to when you joined are violated.  They are: ..."  and so on concluding in "If you know more, please feel free to communicate that to me.  If I don’t hear from you I will report back once I find out."

I responded with my explanations and long silence from Marianna followed. Ten days later I sent a reminder and got lots of apologies along with assurance to "report back as soon as". And that was it.

Avid Technology, Inc. now has two Vice Presidents with a word 'Customer' in their titles. One is Kirk Arnold, Executive Vice President of Customer Operations and second is Beth Martinko, Vice President of Customer Success.  This undoubtedly constitutes renewed focus on the customer. Even the greeting on Avid's main number 1-800-800-AVID will welcome you to "Customer success". Not "Customer service" as it used to be, but success. I am a bit puzzled if I should consider letting a posting trough 209 days late a success. It did get trough after all, so it must be a success. But somehow I can still get no satisfaction from thinking that.

Between grand managerial ideas and a little lowly customer operates a whole company. In the end, success or failure of those ideas depends on how satisfied the little customer is with the operations of the company in every seemingly puny aspect. Or one can try measuring success the old-fashioned way - by the company's stock price.