Customer Feedback

[craigf136]

I was just reading the following topic

I thought it was a little harsh on IPS. I've been a customer since 2006 and I have personally always received superb levels of service from them and they do a sterling job in what is a tough market. I don't always agree with some of the changes implemented but they know the direction that they want to take. They stand out from the crowd and I would just like to say, well done and keep up the good work. I for one appreciate it.

[TheSonic]

Thanks for posting... 100% agree... 

I know, there was sometimes situations i was not that happy, but they got it resolved and i never felt they don't care....

[Tom S.]

I agree as well. They usually are very helpful. I only wish their support tickets could handle code level questions. That would be a dream. 

59 minutes ago, craigf136 said:

they do a sterling job in what is a tough market

Honestly, I haven't found an another company that's in the same league in terms of product offering. They offer almost a complete package. CMS, member management, store/payment system etc.  I've tried looking out of curiosity and haven't found anyone that offers the same options and quality. If you know of one please let me know.

I learnt in economics class that monopolies are bad for consumers. Curse you IPS!

[Woodsman]

I am a Packer Backer through and through and I will always stand behind them.

Both Green Bay and IPS have their qualities as well as the downfalls. For every mistake made the learning curve tightens up and lessons are learned. Consistency.

Like Green Bay Invision deals with these issues as they arise. Not always in our time frame or our liking at a particular moment but in the end it is usually in a big way.

To be quite honest after 4.0 went live I personally felt it should have stayed as beta and 3.4.9 should have come out instead. I was really learning to dislike it.  Now comes 4.1.

While in beta preview I honestly thought OK now they are ready for the rubber room. What are you thinking? This will never fly. Surprise!

4.1 at this point has not only impressed me in a big way as it is right now, but I can also see where the barriers of the past limitations, will soon be without restraint.

[Martin1980]

Why starting a new thread as the previous one has been closed? 

[craigf136]

1 hour ago, Martin1980 said:

Why starting a new thread as the previous one has been closed? 

Starting it because I actually have an open ticket at the moment, they are doing a great job and reading that closed topic it was a bashing from one customer to IPS (which can be down heartening) and I wanted to just say thanks for the work they do,

[Day_]

Another here giving IPS support some love, the amount of times they've rescued my site, can't thank them enough. Never felt ignored or they've left me with a broken site.

Anything I've gone to them with has come away fixed.....apart from the editor but 4.1 has sorted that out perfectly. 

My only complaint would be I don't think they quite understand that the customer is always right  

The software is being used across all types of sites and different age groups, we understand our communities, I'm not sure you do, we get the moaning (constructive feedback) on a daily basis and some of the changes being made are not user friendly at all.

Please listen to our feedback a little more is all I'm saying, not saying you never listen to feedback and I've seen some of the changes you made based off it but boy did people have to fight for it! 

Just give us more control over how communities look that's all I'm asking, especially with the activity stream, we know our users more, please don't force things on us and leave us to the mercy of 3rd party plugins developers.

But support side is top notch, I have my favourites you know who you are! Having dealt with Xenforo and vBulletin they are streets ahead. I think time zones might catch a few users out, thinking they are being ignored, being in the UK I've noticed the best time is around 7pm for support

[Winning]

I'm glad your experiences have been good.  So were some of ours, until they weren't.  The forum software itself is a great offering in the market, no doubt about that.

[Sam A]

On 21 October 2015 at 10:30:17, daveoh said:

Another here giving IPS support some love, the amount of times they've rescued my site, can't thank them enough. Never felt ignored or they've left me with a broken site.

Anything I've gone to them with has come away fixed.....apart from the editor but 4.1 has sorted that out perfectly. 

My only complaint would be I don't think they quite understand that the customer is always right  

The software is being used across all types of sites and different age groups, we understand our communities, I'm not sure you do, we get the moaning (constructive feedback) on a daily basis and some of the changes being made are not user friendly at all.

Please listen to our feedback a little more is all I'm saying, not saying you never listen to feedback and I've seen some of the changes you made based off it but boy did people have to fight for it! 

Just give us more control over how communities look that's all I'm asking, especially with the activity stream, we know our users more, please don't force things on us and leave us to the mercy of 3rd party plugins developers.

But support side is top notch, I have my favourites you know who you are! Having dealt with Xenforo and vBulletin they are streets ahead. I think time zones might catch a few users out, thinking they are being ignored, being in the UK I've noticed the best time is around 7pm for support

BIB: The customer is not always right, however the customer is always a customer and it should be best practice to try and keep them as such so they don't end up going elsewhere.

[liviu2004]

I paid my reactivate license, about 24h ago. Thought that paypal transfer should give a faster activation, unfortunate not. I wonder how long it will take. I am not so positive about this.

[CalvinK]

I would also chorus that the customer is rarely correct - I say that after many years in a customer service role.

However the customer does understand its community better than IPS - and sometimes design decisions are made sometimes without consideration of the potential impact that has on communities. Actually, I might be a bit unfair there. I'm basing it on the recent View New Posts/Activity Stream design decision, which was more a communication issue than anything. In relation to that, IPS could have better explained that View New Posts would still be possible, and taken feedback on how to address the problems some users foresaw with their communities. Having said that, some community admins made a mountain out of a molehill over it and also should accept that most forum software will have changes and they are not forced to update straight away - perhaps they could have helped affected users by showing them how to use the new features.

As for Support, I read the topic and felt my head shaking. It was not the same support that I have experienced with IPS. The vast majority of the time the software works, and when I have had an issue I have had exemplary service from the support team who have fully investigated issues and at times made code level changes to fix issues. I like how Invision is assertive about things - instead of pandering to every whim. IPS has previously had phone and official forum support, both of which have been deemed as unnecessary. I also agree with that. A technical help phone service will not help your issue be resolved any faster, all it does is invite people to argue with IPS Staff when the customer is trying to get help with a Suite that has loads of unofficial modifications on it and they are told that unofficial mods are not supported.

Also, in relation to the number of tickets, it is pretty ridiculous to describe a service as "atrocious" when you've had a delayed couple of tickets in however many years it was, and Lindy was right to point that out as it is unfair criticism. However some customers would no doubt be unhappy unless they were palmed off with something for free as "compensation". Again, I like that Invision apologise for what happened but don't pander to the whim of the customer.

[Winning]

Instead of debating whether the "customer is always right", which I suspect most of us can probably agree is a ridiculous statement if taken literally, can we focus on a specific example, using just one of the multiple incidents that had me so upset that day.  To this day we still haven't received an explanation of why data was lost, what type of audit they did to determine how such a thing happened, or what they've done to prevent such an occurrence in the future.  Put yourself in my shoes:

1. Do you think it's unreasonable to expect these very basic norms in the industry to be met when you're paying a company to host your data?

2. If a company can't be bothered to do that after they've lost your data, would you trust them?

3. I think I can say with 99% certainty that no one would have ever told me we lost data if I hadn't have noticed.  Can you imagine how someone in the tech industry might find that atrocious?

I've attached an example of an incident from our Microsoft Office 365 Enterprise dashboard.  Or here's how Amazon responded when they lost peoples data in 2011.  To be clear, I wasn't expecting anything even remotely close to the professionalism of those examples, nor was our data loss as serious, though it certainly could be if I was trusting IP to host a site that engages in online transactions.  All I was expecting was maybe a single paragraph email acknowledging the extreme seriousness of losing someones data, with an explanation of what was done to prevent it in the future.

4. In the absence of that, do you think it's also reasonable for me to guess that there's probably a fairly good chance that nothing has been done to prevent it from happening again in the future?

[tAPir]

I say - Bring back Jason. He often knew I had a problem before I did, knew who or what broke it and fixed it LOL. ALL the support reps have either fixed my problems or escalated them to someone who could.

I imagine it would be a grind to lose data but the only time I've lost a lot is when I thought someone else was doing backups when they weren't.

[Lindy]

On November 4, 2015 at 6:42:45 PM, Winning said:

Instead of debating whether the "customer is always right", which I suspect most of us can probably agree is a ridiculous statement if taken literally, can we focus on a specific example, using just one of the multiple incidents that had me so upset that day.  To this day we still haven't received an explanation of why data was lost, what type of audit they did to determine how such a thing happened, or what they've done to prevent such an occurrence in the future.  Put yourself in my shoes:

1. Do you think it's unreasonable to expect these very basic norms in the industry to be met when you're paying a company to host your data?

2. If a company can't be bothered to do that after they've lost your data, would you trust them?

3. I think I can say with 99% certainty that no one would have ever told me we lost data if I hadn't have noticed.  Can you imagine how someone in the tech industry might find that atrocious?

I've attached an example of an incident from our Microsoft Office 365 Enterprise dashboard.  Or here's how Amazon responded when they lost peoples data in 2011.  To be clear, I wasn't expecting anything even remotely close to the professionalism of those examples, nor was our data loss as serious, though it certainly could be if I was trusting IP to host a site that engages in online transactions.  All I was expecting was maybe a single paragraph email acknowledging the extreme seriousness of losing someones data, with an explanation of what was done to prevent it in the future.

4. In the absence of that, do you think it's also reasonable for me to guess that there's probably a fairly good chance that nothing has been done to prevent it from happening again in the future?

I'm not downplaying your concerns, Winning. It is very unfortunate when data loss occurs and although it hasn't occurred in years and we take every feasible step to prevent such, we do still feel terrible when it does. That said, this was not a mass incident, there was "only" a few hours of data loss (naturally, none would be ideal) and 10 people out of the thousands we host. It was a pretty specific and isolated incident, hence why we didn't do an Amazon-esque press release and mass bulletin. Individual site owners were manually contacted -- you were not because you already had an open ticket related to the underlying issue, which was addressed. It was a database instance issue that rendered a few select databases unrecoverable and they were subsequently restored per protocol. There's of course nothing that can be done to prevent it in the future - that is, of course, the point of retaining snapshots as unfortunately, technology is not always perfect. I apologize that you were not provided more detailed information -- in your other topic you indicated it was the "least of your frustration" and you never responded to your support ticket asking for more information. We would have happily provided it. 

Again, I want to be clear in that I'm not downplaying any level of data loss - I do, however, feel you are being misleading to others both in this topic as well as your original. In an event in which there was catastrophic failure and mass impact -- of course we'd create an appropriate incident summary release. In this case, you noticed a SQL error (which of course is regretful to be sure) and our technicians resolved it (and the other 9 it impacted) - contacted others and updated your ticket accordingly. Admittedly, the communication in your ticket specifically could have been improved and we'll certainly address that. 

We offer enterprise solutions with complete failover database protection and database snapshots every few minutes, however, that is not feasible to offer in a retail Community in the Cloud package at a $20-30 price point. All CiC clients, regardless of package type are completely backed up and protected at least daily - we do take your data very seriously and I'm deeply sorry and troubled that you feel otherwise. 

I've offered, several times now, to speak with you privately. I've welcomed you to e-mail, PM, submit a customer service request and even to provide me with a contact number so I can call you. You've rejected all invitations to converse and there still is no support activity on your account. You indicated in your other topic last month that "you're running to another company." As much as we hate to lose a valued client, it does seem like this is a losing proposition for all parties. As a final gesture of good will, I will refund your most recent payment in full and give you a month free to make a smooth transition for you and your community. I realize you're adverse to our support system and would prefer telephone support, but I will take the liberty of starting a support request on your account for you so you can e-mail back and forth and let us know how we can assist in the move - including informing us of your cutover date so we can provide you with the freshest data possible. 

I'm very sorry we were unable to better meet your expectations; I wish you the utmost success with your next provider. Once again, please watch for support area correspondence regarding transition information and let us know of any further related questions or concerns.