Unpopular opinion: Okta's customer support has really gone downhill.

I've been implementing and managing Okta integrations for enterprise clients for over five years, and I've always been a staunch advocate for their platform's technical capabilities. However, I feel compelled to share a concerning trend I've observed across multiple client engagements in the last 18 months: a significant and measurable decline in the quality of Okta's customer support. This isn't a one-off bad experience, but a pattern that is beginning to impact project timelines and the stability of mission-critical identity workflows.

The core issues I'm witnessing are:

* **Escalation Path Obscurity:** Previously, technical roadblocks could be escalated to a solutions engineer with deep API knowledge. Now, ticket responses often feel like they're from a first-tier support team working from a script, unable to grasp complex integration scenarios. For example, a recent issue involving a custom SAML 2.0 implementation with non-standard attribute mappings cycled through three agents who repeatedly asked for the same basic logs before finally, after a week, conceding they needed to "consult internally."
* **Degraded Technical Depth:** Support agents appear less familiar with the product's own evolution. I submitted a ticket regarding a conflict between the `okta` and `okta-admin` Terraform providers for a specific policy resource. The response was a generic link to the general Terraform documentation, demonstrating no awareness of the known issue discussed in their own developer community forums.
* **Increased Resolution Time:** Simple API issues, like a 429 rate-limiting configuration question for a high-volume SCIM sync, now take days instead of hours. This forces us to implement workarounds based on community guesses, which introduces technical debt.

This creates a tangible burden. We are now factoring in longer lead times for any Okta-dependent integration component, as we can no longer rely on swift, expert support to unblock development. The community forums (which are excellent) are increasingly becoming the *de facto* primary support channel, which is unsustainable for paid enterprise tiers.

Has anyone else managing large-scale, custom integrations experienced this shift? Specifically, I'm interested if others have found effective strategies for navigating the new support landscape, or if there are particular "magic words" to use in tickets to reach a more technical tier faster. The platform's power is undeniable, but the erosion of its support foundation is a serious risk to its viability for complex, business-critical implementations.

API first.