JoomlArt Forums 32,862 posts

[mfcphil Friend mfcphilJoin date: September 2007Posts: 2866Downloads:3Uploads:218 Thanks: 211 Thanked: 388 times in 133 posts]

#252217

<em>@cgc0202 57363 wrote:</em><blockquote>This may be true, but if the aggrieved party wants to sue Joomlart, for one reason or another, then Joomlart is held liable. After all, the moment the company “approves” specific individuals to perfor duties that should be done by the company, paid or unpaid, they are performing duties with the consent of the company.

Cornelio</blockquote>

I personally would never offer to go into anyones site, but if I got stuck I would not hesitate to ask anyone on that list…I would ask for help and if were offered I would be grateful…They don’t have to help anyone.

[cgc0202 Friend cgc0202Join date: August 2007Posts: 2244Downloads:0Uploads:3 Thanks: 206 Thanked: 262 times in 1 posts]

#252230

<em>@Menalto 57370 wrote:</em><blockquote>Talking about me?</blockquote>

Oh, not you, Menalto. Otherwise, I would not even have requested your help, quite a few times, if I recall correctly 🙂

I guess I am just of the old school, where I consider the Moderator, not only “lean more towards the side of caution” before castigating any customer. After all, an unhappy customer, may leave — not good for Joomlart.

The epitome of a good Moderator for me, is more like the former Moderator in the site5.com Forum, Steven Byrd. There were some irate customers sometimes, including myself. He was not quick to be an apologist of site5.com, and he did not take the perspective that the company can do no wrong. Instead, he would focus in trying to find solutions. Even if he would try to present the other side, in this case, the company (after he discussed the situation with the company), he would present the other side with as much objectivity, as is possible.

At least during his time, as the Moderator, to my knowledge, he did not actively “close” or delete orpostings, even if the accusations were really quite negative to the company.

The opposite extreme, was the Administrator of the Against Censorship at Flickr last year. The moment he became the Administrator, he “edited” sometimes the postings of people (by placing notes rather than responding), the he became a tyrant completely, he would close forum threads that he did not like, then when that was not working enough, he started banning people… etc.

Cornelio

Notes:

It was mysterious how the new Admin of the Against Censorship at Flickr got his position there (we think he was placed there by Flickr itself). The Admin who created the group suddenly “became quiet”, and all the other Admins were removed. Then, suddenly this new name appeared… it is not even a name (but something else “Rippe something”), he just had a crazy avatar, and would not share his name at all. We suspected he was a plant from Flickr itself, to destroy the group.

The Flickr management was very arrogant, in trying the quell those who were very vocal in the protest against the censorship policies of Flickr. Anyway, there were more than 12,000 members who joined (in less than 2 days) — it was news all over Europe (not in the US) but in the end, the protesting members were a minority, and eventually lost the fight.

I am not sure though whether the refusal of Flickr (bought by Yahoo) to listen to the opinions of their customers is emblematic of the Yahoo philosophy, and contributed to its demise. As you know, until now, Yahoo is on the verge of losing its identify as an independent company.

[mj1256 Friend mj1256Join date: June 2007Posts: 1473Downloads:10Uploads:35 Thanks: 84 Thanked: 225 times in 118 posts]

#252238

this comes back to a thread that was discussed months back

Joomlart is a great idea. The sales are growing, the customer base is growing, the community is growing and demanding excellence (as they should), and joomlarts’ reputation is growing.
Joomlart needs to decide what the reputation is going to be. If the reputation is a negative one (and it appears to be drifting that direction) this will stop the companies growth and success. The biggest asset of this company is not its technical brilliance or the templates, its the customers. You value are your customers.

I use social media such as a forum like this to help businesses with communicating with their customers. At first they are scared about how to deal with unhappy customers. These unhappy customers are their biggest asset. You see, with out this feed back they cannot identify their companies strengths and weaknesses. They have learned to build on the weaknesses by listening to their customers and how they handle these customers is crucial to their long term success. We all know how a flame in a thread can hurt a business. So far all the attempts I’ve seen to solve the companies issues of unhappy customers has failed.

The company has some great developers and artists who should do just that, develop and create.

What is the business experience of the staff of joomlart? It appears on the surface to be quite limited. It may be time to plan for your future growth by bringing in some management and business professionals who can put joomart on the right path and MANAGE its growth and future success.

First, as a business consultant I know that a company must be scalable and the scalabilty has to be done proactively, not in reaction to the demands of the business. If you have to react, its already too late.

the second issue is indemnification, I see this company as a train running downhill with no brakes and a lawyer standing at the bottom of the hill just waiting….

third… resolving your customers issues to their satisfaction and then making sure that that issue with your customers never comes up again is crucial

fourth, in my experience,
CEO’s talk on the phone
Marketers market
Programmers program
Artists create
and managers manage

they don’t do it all, nor do they crossover disciplines and get in each others way.

let me know if you want some business help to make this great concept work and free your selves up for what you all do best — -MAKING GREAT TEMPLATES 😉

2 users say Thank You to mj1256 for this useful post

1. Hung Dinh
2. swemmel

[tempusserbia Friend tempusserbiaJoin date: January 2008Posts: 270Downloads:0Uploads:5 Thanks: 29 Thanked: 32 times in 8 posts]

#252266

Oh, my God, this is becoming really really serious thread. As all should be.

[mj1256 Friend mj1256Join date: June 2007Posts: 1473Downloads:10Uploads:35 Thanks: 84 Thanked: 225 times in 118 posts]

#252377

Boy, do I know how to kill a thread or what !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[mfcphil Friend mfcphilJoin date: September 2007Posts: 2866Downloads:3Uploads:218 Thanks: 211 Thanked: 388 times in 133 posts]

#252381

I don’t know about killing a thread, the question is have you got your original problem solved yet?

[mj1256 Friend mj1256Join date: June 2007Posts: 1473Downloads:10Uploads:35 Thanks: 84 Thanked: 225 times in 118 posts]

#252394

absolute not, no reponse, and others in the same template forum are also unanswered.

[cgc0202 Friend cgc0202Join date: August 2007Posts: 2244Downloads:0Uploads:3 Thanks: 206 Thanked: 262 times in 1 posts]

#252473

<em>@mj1256 57583 wrote:</em><blockquote>absolute not, no reponse, and others in the same template forum are also unanswered.</blockquote>

We have to be realistic, and here is a rough calculation:

The licensed (paying) members total about 20K now, and the registered total 115,163 (as of this writing)

just 10% of licensed (paying) members would be about 2K, and 1% of registered will still be more than 1K

How many active Moderators (and staff) are there? 10? 20? => or 200 to 100 posts, respectively must be answered by each. If all posts are read and analyzed very carefully, to be answered properly, it is almost a full time job to be answering the questions. If I am not mistaken, I got the impression that many of the Moderators are not really paid, but volunteers.

Sure, Moderators may have some perks, but I doubt that the compensation is commensurate with the amount of work needed to answer all questions carefully. Many customers do not know that moderators are not paid staff, so that sometimes some poor Moderators bear the brunt of the frustrations of some disgruntled customers. And, some really are not very nice. I would never volunteer with the prospect of encountering such customers.

A short one liner (which are most of the answers by the way) may be understood by experienced users who have background in scripting and programming, but a new user?

Many posters themselves are at fault, especially the new users. Many post are like these (from new users):

I got this error, please tell me what I did wrong? (or variations of that) — no link, no information about the version used, server, php, MySQL, etc.

Then, some Moderators compound the delay by responding generically:
If you need help, PM me (or something like that)
if someone answers at all.

Some would reprimand customers:
That was already answered. search the Forum. Well, it is true that sometimes we are lazy. But, the reality is that the seach engine of vBulletin(???) is not very robust — it is no Google. So, it is a hit or miss sometimes to find what you are looking for.

Search each Forum, by going through each thread? Wow! What patience, and determination.

There are more reasons of course that contribute to the situation –both caused by the policy o the Joomlart, and let us face it, us customers.

This is not the first time that this problem has been discussed. And, sometimes, it seems the most bitter postings (I guess it is bad PR, if not dealt do get responses from both Moderators and some staff members).

The bottom line therefore is that we can gripe and pontificate about the problem, but it will be here forever, unless there are more radical changes — mainly from Joomlart but also from the customers.

Cornelio

[mj1256 Friend mj1256Join date: June 2007Posts: 1473Downloads:10Uploads:35 Thanks: 84 Thanked: 225 times in 118 posts]

#252476

exactly, the customer service aspects of joomlart are not scalable. There are systens and practices that could be implemented to handle large volumes of questions. when I was involved with customer service we had in excess of 100k per day.

your right, the search engine stinks

I’m in the forum everyday, no way do I see 1000+ postings, not even in a weeks time.

I have no issue with not answering basic joomla questions. The staff should just concern themselves with template issues only. All joomla and how to build a website, create a database, and set up a server issues should be directed to the joomla forum.

joomla is not a replacement for knowing some html, php, css, graphic editing etc. somehow joomla users have gotten the impression they could build a robust professional website with out any knowledge.
THIS IS NOT TRUE!

Perhaps their should be at least 1 moderator assigned to each template forum, and when their particular assigned forum has little or no activity, which happens as the templates age, they backup the newer template forums.

erica is not that old a template and there have been no questions answered by anyone in 7 days. NONE!

in the end I usually find the solutions myself. I just thought that as a paying customer my time investment in my current project could have been shortened by a simple answer.

I am suggesting radical changes for joomart, because any success they may be experiencing will be negated by poor service. I would like to see joomlart succeed, not fail

[Menalto Friend MenaltoJoin date: May 2007Posts: 4736Downloads:0Uploads:43 Thanks: 2 Thanked: 531 times in 361 posts]

#252477

<em>@cgc0202 57684 wrote:</em><blockquote>We have to be realistic, and here is a rough calculation:

The licensed (paying) members total about 20K now, and the registered total 115,163 (as of this writing)

just 10% of licensed (paying) members would be about 2K, and 1% of registered will still be more than 1K

How many active Moderators (and staff) are there? 10? 20? => or 200 to 100 posts, respectively must be answered by each. If all posts are read and analyzed very carefully, to be answered properly, it is almost a full time job to be answering the questions. If I am not mistaken, I got the impression that many of the Moderators are not really paid, but volunteers.

Sure, Moderators may have some perks, but I doubt that the compensation is commensurate with the amount of work needed to answer all questions carefully. Many customers do not know that moderators are not paid staff, so that sometimes some poor Moderators bear the brunt of the frustrations of some disgruntled customers. And, some really are not very nice. I would never volunteer with the prospect of encountering such customers.

A short one liner (which are most of the answers by the way) may be understood by experienced users who have background in scripting and programming, but a new user?

Many posters themselves are at fault, especially the new users. Many post are like these (from new users):

I got this error, please tell me what I did wrong? (or variations of that) — no link, no information about the version used, server, php, MySQL, etc.

Then, some Moderators compound the delay by responding generically:
If you need help, PM me (or something like that)
if someone answers at all.

Some would reprimand customers:
That was already answered. search the Forum. Well, it is true that sometimes we are lazy. But, the reality is that the seach engine of vBulletin(???) is not very robust — it is no Google. So, it is a hit or miss sometimes to find what you are looking for.

Search each Forum, by going through each thread? Wow! What patience, and determination.

There are more reasons of course that contribute to the situation –both caused by the policy o the Joomlart, and let us face it, us customers.

This is not the first time that this problem has been discussed. And, sometimes, it seems the most bitter postings (I guess it is bad PR, if not dealt do get responses from both Moderators and some staff members).

The bottom line therefore is that we can gripe and pontificate about the problem, but it will be here forever, unless there are more radical changes — mainly from Joomlart but also from the customers.

Cornelio</blockquote>

Just gonna drop in with a few words here.
There is currently 5 staff members from JA working on support.
After the forum upgrade, upgrades of templates to 1.5, + a bunch of other things happening in the background here at JA things have not been as it should be.

I just sendt Hung an email which i have been writing on for the last two days on a quite a few changes that i want to do here to make things better for all members.
One of the points is to get new avatars/badges for all staff members so people all the time knows who is who around here.
For all others changes i need to get in a dialog with Hung, and awaiting answer on my email.

Personally i deal with something between 20-40 different problems/people a day, both here at the forum, email, IM and on our CRM. So some days i use 6-7 hours, other days 15 hours and this is 7 days a week.

Our moderators get a 1 year membership as compensation for their help here, so they do get something back too.

When people post here, the more info they give us, the faster we can answer them and hopefully analyze the problem there and then instead of ask for more information, which happens quite often.
Just follow and give us the info we need and we can help you out faster:
<blockquote>III. Support Rules (If you want to get support, please read instructions below so that we can help better)

1. Provide your website URL?
The reason that we ask for this is so we can check your site for the specific description of the error you get.

2. Provide information about components/modules/mambots installed?
There are many components/modules/mambots that conflict with a script or breaks the template, and this errors is not template specific and its easier for us to try to solve the problem if we know what you have installed.

3. Which version of Joomla do you use?
Time changes, and so does Joomla. There have been many changes since the beginning, and the templates are built and tested for the latest one.

4. Have you made any modifications to the template?
This is the most important answer.
Please be as specific as you can on this point, you don’t need to tell the whole process, but “I added two new modules in footer” would be enough.
</blockquote>

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