This forum is too cumbersome. Please look into alternative forum systems

[rlivingst]

This forum seems like it came out of the 1990's. I know that it didn't, but it seems really difficult to navigate compared to other forums like Zendesk. I guess I'm just complaining, but I don't really like the way this is set up.

[CnP.Support]

Thanks for the comment. We review ZenDesk but based on our research VBulletin is the most flexible platform. We are using their latest release - of course there is always room for improvement and we will consider your suggestion.

[Shari]

I have to agree with rlivingst. The search works okay, but the way the subjects are categorized does not seem intuitive. I think some re-organization might be in order. I would like to see a section for each of C&P's features such as autoresponder, forms, settings, etc. I am working within Salesforce, and I suppose others aren't, which sometimes makes things confusing for both types of users. I know there's a forum section devoted to SF users, but even that does not seem intuitive.

The other thing I'd like to see is a support phone number and a Live Chat feature. The phone number (which I think C&P had but is discontinued) would be the most helpful. Even if we had to pay per call it would be of help for some problems that simply take too long to figure out how to explain in a post. Let's have some tech people on call with ability to see our screen so we can really show our problem. And adding more tutorials (simple but detailed) would also help. If you want to find a company that does support, forums, and video tutorials REALLY WELL, check out www.ynab.com.

I am scrambling to get C&P set up properly, quickly, for our year-end fundraising campaign. E-mailing and posting on forums is too slow for my needs, especially since it usually takes at least a day for someone to answer my question. Then I have to write back, another day. Soon, a week or more has gone by, and because I haven't explained my problem well enough with typing, I still don't have a clear answer. And I'm quite good at figuring things out.

Plus, I tried to attach a Word document to show the e-mail I was having a problem with, and the upload would not accept my document. I spent a half hour creating a pdf, which then I opened in Photoshop to make a .jpg of. And I had to make sure it was under the size limitation of C&P. This is ridiculous.

Thanks for listening. I vote for a support phone number!!!!!!!!!

P.S. I don't think it helps that I'm on the west coast and start my workday at 1:00 pm. By then, C&P on the east coast is probably about ready to end their day if they close at 5:00, so that adds another day to my wait.

[CnP.Support]

Shari,

Our challenge with support is simple and one that we are trying to fix in a fair fashion.

We had 3 modes of contact: Email, chat and phone

Our clients used to send email, then call and leave a message and then come on chat and work with a support engineer. Using Chat and Phone was creating delay in responding to earlier emails meaning those that emailed us first were not getting a reply since phone and chat was occupying majority of support engineers time.

We did an analysis of support calls and over 99% of support issues could be solved using simple step-by-step instructions. An email takes 30 seconds but a call takes 30 minutes since most people want to stay online while their issue is solved. This was causing major issues with getting back to our clients on time.

We had a couple of choices- either come up with premium support for a fee or try to enhance our email support for free. For now we are trying to resolve all issues with email and if needed call the client and screen share to fix the issue. We still provide phone support but we call the client rather than receive calls. So far, since the change, we have managed to answer all emails in a timely fashion and majority of clients are happy.

There are a couple of other ideas that we are working on for 2013 but it is too early to discuss. It is our goal to have satisfied clients and try to provide assistance in a timely and cost effective way.

Since you are working with Salesforce I hope you appreciate the extent of the following: Click & Pledge has premiere support with Salesforce and pays $2000/month for the support. The response offered by Salesforce for premiere support is 24 hours. That means by paying $2000 a month we get email response in 24 hours. We can't call anyone and they only call us if needed after 24 hours. What is interesting is we offer the same thing for free and our clients complain. The same expensive support options are always offered for our mail server and various applications that we use-- all are a several thousand Dollars and 24 hour response time.

We are trying to make it easy for our clients and just ask for help from you to help us keep it affordable for everyone. Free is the best we can do for now.

[Kent]

Hi C&P Support Team,

I have to echo most of the concerns here. While support has been helpful, it's only been person to person, and as Shari has noted, that is not easy to set up. These forums and resources are so difficult to search and navigate, and just haven't proven useful - I STILL have not been able to roll out Click and Pledge (and it's END OF YEAR) because of various launch issues.

I wonder if C&P has thought of tackling one root issue I have noticed. The system is incredibly cumbersome to get set up and a lot of the options that seem perfectly intuitive - for example, adding a mailing address to my donation form just in case people are wondering about that - are not.

I feel like I hear a lot about new features - swiper, mobile - when so much of the basic get-started stuff is lacking. As the support dept. pointed out, some of the stuff that happens is incredibly complex. So maybe this isn't possible with Salesforce specifically, but perhaps with a simpler/more intuitive user interface or making tools easier to manage, you could cut down on support requests in the first place!

Thanks
Kent

[CnP.Support]

Kent,

Thank you for your comments. We have never said that phone support is not available- that by no means is true. We only ask that before calling you submit a ticket at: http://help.clickandpledge.com and explain your questions. Let us know your phone number and ask that you need to see a walk through. Our support will call you and walk you through everything.

Salesforce implementation is quite easy- all you have to do is connect Salesforce to your instance. Only 1 step is required and that is adding Salesforce to the administrative portal. One customization that we ask everyone to pay attention to is "Contact Matching" in the C&P Setting. We recommend "Semi-automatic" mode.

Now for customization:

I am sure you use Excel - do you use 100% of features? If so you are the only one. People don't use more than 20% of any application and lookup what they can do when they have a need to do it. Our application is the result of many requests from consultants and clients. We integrate our clients needs into all of our releases and are always listening to our clients for new ideas. Salesforce is capable of doing a lot and majority of features are not necessarily of any value to you. We all use what we need and ignore the rest. Over time our needs grow and we look for products that can grow with us.

We can gladly give you a complete demo of all that our app is capable of if you need it.

As for this forum:

Forums, by their nature, are for geeks. I personally don't call any company's support and try to work through forums for a number of reasons. Of course I may be considered a super geek and one cannot expect that from everyone and frankly we don't expect that from our clients. The mission of this forum is to provide a medium where our clients can interact with each other and answer each other questions. Unfortunately for a forum to reach that level of cooperation it requires a critical mass of people that wish to participate. We don't have that level of interaction from our clients yet but we are hopeful that one day we will have our clients answer questions- for now we are answering all questions here. Forums are great since while looking for answers one can learn new tricks and get new ideas. The collective can offer a great resource for learning. To learn form others is why I personally love the forums.

At Click & Pledge we rely on your success for our success. Our cost structure is based on your transactions and naturally that makes us a direct partner with you. We benefit when you prosper so it is to our benefit that you succeed. Our support is designed to answer you in a timely manner and you can take advantage of it if you post your questions to http://help.clickandpledge.com.

Now let's see who is who in responding to tickets!

Our support engineers handle http://help.clickandpledge.com and they respond to your tickets as they are received. If they have questions or need to resolve a technical issue they will talk to the developer team. The forum is managed by the developer team and not by support. Answers to forum questions are posted by lead developers and those that are involved with the platforms. We encourage people to use the medium that best suits them. Forum works best for us since the answers are always displayed and everyone can benefit from them whereas the support tickets are private and not seen by everyone. A lot of product ideas are coming from the forum.

As I said earlier please submit your ticket to the help system and one of our support engineers will contact you.

Let us know if we can be of any further assistance & we look forward to hearing your ideas on how we can improve our system in a cost effective and timely fashion.