We recently put out Update 4 for GiftWorks. The update was needed to support our recent release of GiftWorks Volunteers as well as fix some of the top bugs that our customers were experiencing. When updates are released the dev and support teams are on high alert. Dev watched the monitoring software for customers that install the update and have problems. Most of the updates go as planned, but there are some where things "just happen". I handled one of the early problems that came up. A customer had installed the update but it appeared a component had not been updated correctly by the installer and the customer was receiving errors. To make sure this was not a problem that was going to affect a lot of people, I looked up the gentleman's registration information and gave him a call. It's always awkward "cold-calling" a customer about issues we have detected, but this customer was thankful and more than willing to let me fix his problems. It turned out to be a fluke and a quick re-install of the update got him back on his way.
We have very detailed monitoring built into GiftWorks that let's us detect and get to the bottom of bugs before they cause too much of a problem. I only wish we had the resources to handle every customer's problems the same way--where we call them instead of the customer calling us. Who knows, maybe someday you'll have a problem with GiftWorks and we'll call you.