Are the feedback forums, being used more for support then actual feedb

[.Ryan]

Just as my title states, I really believe that that the forums here need to be re-worked a lot. The forums that say IPS Company Feedback are getting a lot of pre-sales and support questions. >_< And that is perfectly fine, because people want answers members give them answers. So could you take the time to plan this out or rework some forums.

I think we should keep the forum structure the way it is, because its nice, and looks great. Then we need to add Customer to Customer Support and possibly a pre-sales forum for asking general questions. To keep Feedback - Feedback and Support and Pre Sales in a totally different area. Maybe something like this...

IPS Company Feedback

Let us know how we are doing and how we can improve our products and services.

Subforums: IP.Board, IP.Gallery, IP.Blog, IP.Converge

After that:

Customer Assistance

Questions or Light Support queries maybe direct to this forum, for customer support.

Subforums: IP.Board, IP.Gallery, IP.Blog, IP.Converge

I know that is the whole idea of IPS Beyond and stuff, but this is really your corporate forums, so you should have some level of support. I am not telling you how to run a forum, but it might be nice to see something of that nature just so the Feedback is not getting "spammed" in a way with support queries. Also you might want to add that "This forum is not for support", because right now 95% of it is support or errors. :rolleyes:

Thanks, keep up the good work. Any other suggestions on this?

[Brandon C]

If they add the Customer Forums back here, they'll have to bring back the Customer group! (w00t) I for one would love to see the Customer group back here and even the Customer forums back here at the IPS Company Forums. I don't think they should offer "light support" whatsoever on these forums. We are paying customers and we paid for what we got; there is no reason there should be "light support" given out. If there was, there would have to be a place to draw the line on it, and I simply don't see that ever happening. However, I do see bringing back the Customer group and Customer forums a feasible option. I voted yes for both questions on your poll. I would also like to see the Pre-Sales Questions Forum back. However, the reason I think they removed it is because that some people may have given inaccurate information and IPS wanted to restrict the Sales Questions to their ticket system for more accurate and official answers. Something definitely needs to be done about this, though - and moving the Customer group and Customer forums back here would be a great start, as well as the Pre-Sales Questions Forum. Let's see what others think about this!

[theclub]

I'm against support questions being answered here, if we did that we'd be invaded by the owners of pirated boards again, as we were before.

But pre-sales support is a must, you can't have potential customers shoved around and told they can't ask questions here.

E-mail support is OK, but is nowhere near as good as the ability to get feedback from customers and staff before you buy. And the only time I have had to use phone support, with a serious database issue that had to be fixed before the backup was overwritten, cost me over $20. Toll free phone support is only available in the US.

[stobbo]

I would like to see a forum for pre purchase questions. How Charles said they prefer this by email (http://forums.invisionpower.com/index.php?showtopic=230989) to track it to there account.

I would like to keep support away from this forum, because I believe IPS Beyond can do the job better in a seperate place.

[.Ryan]

I agree Brandon, the Customer group and forums need to be brought back in someway. Because I don't feel like posting around IPS Beyond all the time I have a question, that is really for the company. I mean and sometimes you don't want to open a support ticket because others might have your problem, or you want to see if any one else has suggestions and stuff.

Now for tricks and tips, I think IPS beyond is where they belong. But product support belongs here, I believe, because the familiar people with these forums, can answer the common questions and issues, and provide assistance.

Edit: Now who is going to call up IPS, and ask a forum related question or if you have a error. I only used phone support to see if my license would upgrade to 2.2.1 and the lady was nice about it and it took no more then 10 minutes.

[bfarber]

Edit: Now who is going to call up IPS, and ask a forum related question or if you have a error. I only used phone support to see if my license would upgrade to 2.2.1 and the lady was nice about it and it took no more then 10 minutes.

You'd be surprised....the phone's, especially after updates are released, don't stay very clear. ;)

[Tomm]

I posted this stuff in the other thread but it was closed so i guess this is the right area:

Allot of valid points here, but I maintain there needs to be a place for casual guests to come in and post some basic questions here are a few reasons

- Some potential customers just want to post not email, sometimes you just want to look at the cars in a dealership and ask a casual question or 2 and not sit down with a rep and start to dish out my info. :)

- Invision sells and promotes forums and other community and collaboration software for potential customers not to be able to as questions on a FORUM that invision is trying to sell seems a bit self defeating in a way.

- Promoting and marketing your product, simply put, by have a pre-sales section that is public, new potential customers can read threads about questions they have that may have been posted by another potential customer, there by saving there time and your staff's time by not answering the same questions over and over again by emailing. Also, by having such a section, potential customers can SEE (vs. behind the scenes emails) that Invision takes the time to answer people's questions about there product.

Such a section would work if it were organized correctly and have the proper supervision, you could get a couple mods to volunteer. There are allot of long time members here who I'm sure would love to help for free. Mods will also serve to help direct specific questions to the the right people at Invision etc..

To further organize it, just have a main Pre-sales section and a subsection under that for each product you sell, that way certain staff can just look at there area assigned to them.

They would not answer questions off hand, they would point to a documented resource or help try to format the question if the poster is unclear on what they are asking. Mods would also have a list of who needs to answer certain questions etc. Again in allot of the cases the potential customer just does not know were to get the information that may just be posted on Invisions site somewhere, so the mods would help with control and direction and not so much being the brainiac that answers everything.

If i were to PRETEND i know nothing about Invision, and come to this site i would look at the main page for general info but then i would come to the forum to see that people are talking about in relation to the product i want to buy. So i come to the the forum here and look around I see feedback on the products basically to mention what bugs they have have etc. and that about it! so from a marketing angle (sorry, I'm heavy into marketing :) ) i can see three things that I note:

- Were is there and area where i can see what kinds of questions people ask about there products??

- Hmm, all i see is a feed back section, and it just seems to mention the bad things or problems people have.

- Hmm, i heard something about IBS Beyond, what the hell is that?? I don't see any link or redirect on this forum to there, what is the relationship between the 2, it all seems very unclear?

well maybe i will skip off to some other Board software sites and see what they have....

Again I'm putting myself in the shoes of a noob above. But my point is from a marketing angle somethings have to change here.

Again just my opinion.

My bottom line here was that this forum is NOT working as a marketing tool for Invision and in a way it works against promoting the Invision products. Many of the reasons I stated above. Invision sells forum software and they should use there own forum to help sell there products, instead allot of of thing are relegated to behind the scenes, but some questions that are in the public would help cut down on wasted email to the staff if the potential customer saw the answer on the forum (in a pre-sales) forum.

Anyway Lindy did ad a redirect link so that may help a little in terms of what a new customer has to do to get answers. He wrote this on the other thread:

We used to have a pre-sales forum and it was sheer chaos. It was primarily comprised of "where can I get it for free" questions and support requests for outdated versions. Actual pre-sales questions were far and few between. What's more, our sales team are often the only ones qualified to answer sales questions and they frequent the forums maybe 2-3 times per week as their first responsibilities lie with telephones and e-mail. Allocating their time to sort through forum topics correcting conflicting information provided by other members would be counterproductive. We provide two very reliable methods of contacting our sales team - phone and e-mail. You do not have to register or provide us with any personal information to use either method. They are there to help you, not pressure you. :)

As Charles said, we prefer sales questions to be handled through one of the aforementioned methods, both for organization and the ability to personalize the level of service provided, as necessary.

We always welcome and appreciate the feedback. Unfortunately, we're not always able to accommodate. A pre-sales forum has been tried before and it simply made things worse and confusing as some of you that have been here for a while may recall. It's not something we'd like to do again. We will, however, make it easier to contact us with sales queries from these forums.

Thank you for the suggestion. :)

OK, my response to that is, that i was around in those days too and i liked that section as it did answer many questions i had, and contributing to me being a happy customer. I understand there were some issues and I can related however I offer this.

- Mods!, as I mentioned above use some volunteer mods to help with question direction and control of the section, mods don't have to answer tough questions maybe they can answer simple one like 'are Invision products free' etc.. to that the mod would say 'no there not free' here is a link to some information , thread closed! Take some of the moderation load of of the staff and use volunteer mods, there are so many 'old timers' here that that the staff know that I'm sure would love to help in that regard. Also Mods can be used in the feedback area for nothing more then to tell posters that this section is only of feedback post you bugs here etc.. thread closed. I have seen Brandon tons of time just tell people this over and over again, take the load of of him and have a mod do it.

- Misdirection, If you don't have a place for questions then people will post them in the wrong areas, thus causing staff to have address them and redirect them and close them (another waste of a paid employees time). Have a controled environment where these questions can go, have moderators keep the forum organized.

I have had alot of experience in using forum to maximize a websites (or companys) goals, I don't see that happening here. I know the staff is busy but some delgation may be needed. Use this forum to SELL your products and not to inhibit potential customers. I love Invision and want it to succeed that is why im writing all this. :)

[Mark]

I agree that genuine suggestions are being lost.

I think some form of rework needs to happen - but support forums are a big no. That is what IPSBeyond is for.

A redirect needs to be set up for IPSBeyond, and possibly a pre-sales forum.

However, if a pre-sales forum is introduced (or even if not) there needs to be more of a staff presence here - as said, many people are willing to help, you could get the IPSBeyond mods to do it if they're willing, or invite new people.

[Tomm]

I agree that genuine suggestions are being lost.

I think some form of rework needs to happen - but support forums are a big no. That is what IPSBeyond is for.

A redirect needs to be set up for IPSBeyond, and possibly a pre-sales forum.

However, if a pre-sales forum is introduced (or even if not) there needs to be more of a staff presence here - as said, many people are willing to help, you could get the IPSBeyond mods to do it if they're willing, or invite new people.

I agree with you, IPBeyond is not integrated enough in conjunction with this forum and site. A pre-sales section should be on this forum as Ipbeyond is mostly customer only so you don't want it there. So bottom line would be this forum open to the public to aid in selling the product and feedback and Beyond for support , mods and other things.

What would also be nice on this forum would be a 'testimonial' type section were customers can give feed back about invision products they had purchased and used. True you may not have some happy customers but at least if you open enough for both the positive and negitive than you show that you are open to the customer needs and are not trying to hide anything, transparency does go along way. :)

[elj]

Isn't that basically what a feedback forum is for? "Yes, I liked the service." "No, I didn't like the service."

I don't agree with having a pre-sales forum, it must be really confusing to come and get 10 different pieces of information when you only want a simple answer. I don't particulary see anything wrong with the way IPS Beyond is at the moment either (in relation to these forums) - they are seperate, and it's pretty clear that you go to IPS Beyond - there's the links at the top of the forums, and a link in the client center.

[.Ryan]

- Misdirection, If you don't have a place for questions then people will post them in the wrong areas, thus causing staff to have address them and redirect them and close them (another waste of a paid employees time). Have a controled environment where these questions can go, have moderators keep the forum organized.

That what this feedback forum has turned into. I don't like IPS at all. I mean for downloads and posting things yes its fine, but posting its too unorganized and cluttered. Here it feels loose and more of a professional environment, IPS beyond sorta feels like going into a Apple store if you know what I mean. If it was integrated more then I would use it, but there are only so many forums you can post at before it gets tiring.

[Tomm]

I don't particulary see anything wrong with the way IPS Beyond is at the moment either (in relation to these forums) - they are seperate, and it's pretty clear that you go to IPS Beyond - there's the links at the top of the forums, and a link in the client center.

Look at the face of this forum, where is the big link to IPS Beyond?????????? Am I blind? Now, i have been around here since 2004, how is a guest or a pre-customer going to know if they come here and glance at the forum? If anything some redirects like what Lindy did with pre-sales are in order. You need to put yourselves in the eyes of the customer that does not know anything about Invision of this site and forum.

Anyway, have you ever seen how many people lurk on this forum? Hundreds. So providing the correct outlets of information about the products Invision sell is a must. Alot of people are lazy (sorry to say ) and would rather look then email. Use this forum to promote your products!!, it is one thing to design a nice forum software but it is another to maximize your forum to help your company/site grow.

Again sorry to rant, but marketing is my thing.

[elj]

Point taken on that, sorry. A bigger and more obvious link would be needed. For my own point, I stopped really using IPS Beyond some time ago because it seemed (to me) to have a less professional atmosphere, and I didn't think that having non-IPS moderators helped the situation in the slightest.

Just my 2 cents (pence?) anyway.

[Coastie]

I think the IPS staff is doing a disservice to the community.

[Tomm]

I think the IPS staff is doing a disservice to the community.

I would not go that far, they are doing great job! my beef is just the way this forum is organized :) Hopefully some constructive critisim will help as well as suggestions from the forum members here.

[Ziv Grosu]

Just as my title states, I really believe that that the forums here need to be re-worked a lot. The forums that say IPS Company Feedback are getting a lot of pre-sales and support questions. >_< And that is perfectly fine, because people want answers members give them answers. So could you take the time to plan this out or rework some forums.

I think we should keep the forum structure the way it is, because its nice, and looks great. Then we need to add Customer to Customer Support and possibly a pre-sales forum for asking general questions. To keep Feedback - Feedback and Support and Pre Sales in a totally different area. Maybe something like this...

After that:

I know that is the whole idea of IPS Beyond and stuff, but this is really your corporate forums, so you should have some level of support. I am not telling you how to run a forum, but it might be nice to see something of that nature just so the Feedback is not getting "spammed" in a way with support queries. Also you might want to add that "This forum is not for support", because right now 95% of it is support or errors. :rolleyes:

Thanks, keep up the good work. Any other suggestions on this?

I think that is ok. :] I agree with you. I've no suggestions :(

[tomek__w]

The trouble is that the only way to get support is via the client centre.......

There is no support here and IPS Beyond, in my opinion, only provides some help/assistance that is sometimes 'painful' to obtain and in some cases does not even result in a resolution. As I see it a great deal of what goes on within IPS Beyond is related to the many mods that are currently available - which, as it happens, is no good to me.

It seems to me that support is something that IPS does not want to get involved with (publicly) unless it is via the client centre and, again in my opinion, they seem reluctant to use the most useful feature of the software that they themselves have actually written.

The best thing about having support through the forums is the ability to search to see if the problem has been seen before, and resolved, thus saving (me / us ?!) time and effort.

It seems to me to that not putting your own software to its best use is not exactly very professional...... If you are going to provide support to your customers then do it properly.

IPS, you have come a long way in a short time but, it seems to me, that you still have a lot to learn about running a successful company - the products are great, second to none but if you want the big boys to play with (buy) your toys you need to get other area's sorted out before they get even more difficult (costly) to resolve. As I see it the support issue is only going to get worse, especially when you release more products to market (Nexus and Dynamic for instance) unless it is resolved quickly.

Up to this point it probably sounds as though I am being very negative but I don't mean to be - much.

On a positive note:-

OK, what about raising a ticket in the client centre that then automatically creates a post/topic within a support forum. This can then be dealt with by both staff and members/customers. You get to track it and, assuming the customer who raised the ticket does not mind 'going public', customers get to see what is going on. I would also suggest that when the ticket is raised a 'tick box' could be checked to confirm that the ticket raiser agrees to the 'problem' being seen by other customers - I do understand that sometimes people want their board problems being kept private.

Gee, you could even use this as sales and marketing material - "This is how we provide support to our customers"

Also, have an option available to the peson who raised the 'ticket' to close the topic when they feel their problem/topic has been resolved.

Also, how about having a 'Common Problems' forum? This could be a little like a FAQ but related to support problems - I wonder how many times the same question has been asked over the last, for instance, 12 months and been answered by several different people within IPS - what a waste of time, effort and valuable resources.

Just my 2 pence worth

[Lindy]

I have to be honest... I'm quite baffled as to what the concern is regarding official support through the client area. It's not entirely uncommon to require support be handled in a controlled environment. Why do we ask that you submit a support request through the client area? Primarily because, apart from common errors and issues (which should be in our knowledgebase anyway) problems are often specific and require technician access to your site. If we were to open official support forums, we would have to devote more staff full-time to the forums who would bounce back and forth in-topic often only to request the customer submit a ticket anyway as we obviously cannot exchange FTP/admin information over the forum. In the end, we've wasted your time and ours and nothing to that point has been resolved. Yes, a few useful searchable pieces of information would get through that would benefit others, however, by and large, it would be specific issues best suited for the ticket system.

We understand and appreciate your reasoning, please understand ours. :)

As for IPSBeyond, if you've been following our company blog, you will know that we are working on a revamp of the site. Once complete, we will be making IPSBeyond very visible on these forums as well as on our site. Integration will also be improved as well, including the ability for moderators to move topics back and forth between the sites. :)

[Tomm]

I have to be honest... I'm quite baffled as to what the concern is regarding official support through the client area. It's not entirely uncommon to require support be handled in a controlled environment. Why do we ask that you submit a support request through the client area? Primarily because, apart from common errors and issues (which should be in our knowledgebase anyway) problems are often specific and require technician access to your site. If we were to open official support forums, we would have to devote more staff full-time to the forums who would bounce back and forth in-topic often only to request the customer submit a ticket anyway as we obviously cannot exchange FTP/admin information over the forum. In the end, we've wasted your time and ours and nothing to that point has been resolved. Yes, a few useful searchable pieces of information would get through that would benefit others, however, by and large, it would be specific issues best suited for the ticket system.

We understand and appreciate your reasoning, please understand ours. :)

As for IPSBeyond, if you've been following our company blog, you will know that we are working on a revamp of the site. Once complete, we will be making IPSBeyond very visible on these forums as well as on our site. Integration will also be improved as well, including the ability for moderators to move topics back and forth between the sites. :)

Well my point was not so much for existing customer support, of coarse, most of that needs to be private between the customer in Invision. My points were aimed at sales and common questions, What does your forum offer (beyond its existance) to maximize new sales to new customers? From a noob perpective not much in its current form, i go on the forum and the only thing i really see is the discussion of the bugs the products have. As a potential customer who is weighing whether to get IPboard or VBB i'm looking for some quick answers to some of my questions and may want to see what others have to say about the product as a whole. I may not want to email and then wait for replies when i can get some of my questions answered in the forum. I realieze some of the info i want is on the main page but i want to see what others are also asking before they buy.

You guys designed this great forum software, now you should use it to help with your sales. If structued correctly it can be done, the resources are all there. While your products are great and in general speak for themselves you need to work on ways they can speak to new customers (I know silly analogy, but still.. :) )

I know to some I might be ranting, but I would be curious to see who else aggrees with what i am saying here??

@ian_sargent good post, don't worry about seeming negative, the staff here knows we are only typing these things because we want to help invision grow and prosper :)

[Michael P]

edit. removed

[Tomm]

^^ there are always solutions :) :)

[theclub]

By providing support via your community, you can reduce your overall costs since customers are able to view solutions without needing to contact your support staff.

It seems to me that Invision encourages companies to use their forum software to offer support and feedback, then post very publicly on here as to why it's not a good idea.

If this were anything other than forum software the arguments against a pre-customer section would be valid, but how can you encourage companies to use it for that purpose whilst posting here that it's not a good idea?

[Brandon C]

ian_sargent, Tomm, and SupportersUnited - these are all good points you bring to the table. :) I support you all with your points.

[tomek__w]

Yet another 2 pence worth:-

I suppose the thing I find most disappointing about IPS is the fact that when I first looked at 'forums' almost four years ago they were predominantly used by the very young and IPB catered extremely well for this group and this impression still lingers.

Today IPS has developed what I consider to be an excellent product, and continues to do so, along with additional products that will further enhance its standing within the 'business' community. Unfortunately, I believe, they are still perceived to be catering for a group that does not fit into the current standards within the 'business' community and their 'showcase' product/site (here) simply does not do the company justice. Having said that the IPS corporate site is now looking/feeling very, very much better than it was even a few months ago and is very much a step in the right direction. I would go as far to say the site is almost excellent!

I further believe that when Dynamic and Nexus become available they (IPS) will have a suite of products that will benefit almost every organisation of more than 100 employees and there are more than a few of these

[Lindy]

Ian, I've never heard anyone refer to us as "young" - in Internet age, we're dinosaurs. :D In all seriousness though and with all due respect intended, I'm not sure you can make sweeping claims as to our experience, customer base, demographic or internal business practices and knowledge without having a full picture, which I assure you that you do not. I do know your comments are positive spirited and geared towards improvement based on your own real-world IT experience. Please believe me when I say that we do appreciate it. Nonetheless, I believe we do in fact have a good handle on what we're doing. :) To answer your point about new customers - we recognize the learning curve and have worked very hard with 2.2 specifically to offer an easier start to using the software. Documentation, more intuitive installation/upgrade routines, improved usability from within the AdminCP, etc. Additionally, there's IPSBeyond to aide the beginners and soon, a plethora of tutorials and guides will be posted to the site to further improve the user experience from a beginner angle.

Tomm, you raise a very good point, however, it's expected that feedback will generally consist of bug reports and similar. People post when they have issues, they generally don't report positive experiences (though we certainly wish they would!) Your point about a pre-sales forum is understood, but as mentioned in another topic, we've tried such things in the past and it's resulted in [potential] customers receiving conflicting information from other well intentioned customers. By the time a sales staff member reaches the topic, the prospect is thoroughly confused or has been given mis-information from others. We could certainly do a moderated forum and we may consider that at some point for commonly asked questions, however, it may be more advantageous to simply place an FAQ section on the website itself.

SupportersUnited, I don't believe anyone has stated forums are bad for support. :) What I did say is that due to the specific nature of our customer support requests, official customer support (eg. support provided by IPS employees) via the corporate forums, has proven to be ineffective and inefficient on the whole, slowing overall support for the customer and the staff alike. For customer to customer/unofficial support, we of course have IPSBeyond - whether those forums are here or there, it should really make no difference, although again, once the update has been completed, IPSBeyond will become more visible from within IPS and I think much of your concerns will be addressed through tighter integration between the two sites. Until then, please have patience... you will see that it will work out, it always does. :)


I hope that makes things a bit more clear.