[paulD]

Please take this post in the way it was intended, which is to provide some feedback and thoughts on my experience with Mobione and this forum.

I’ve been using different software packages for many years now and find it very odd that you do not engage at all with your users. The only engagement comes from answering technical questions on a forum. For tech company dealing with software you have no Facebook presence and minimal twitter or any social media which involves or interacts your users. In the 15 months I’ve been using Mobione I don’t think I’ve ever received an email, newsletter or anything from you guys……. Which is just odd.

And what’s with the raffle for the Tardis?

There seems to be no attempt to build a community around your products at all, which I personally think is crucial to raising the profile of your products. Just go take a look at how products like Corona sdk and Unity do it with a vibrant website, community and resources. It makes your forum look sterile and uninviting. Even small things like, your product is to build mobile apps and web apps, but your mobile site is, well………. A little dull to say it politely.

I think due to the nature of how designers and developers work we like to feel part of the products we use due to the fact it takes time and effort to learn our tools. You just don’t get this here. You just got to look at the feedback section on the forum and most suggestions get the stock answer of …… passed to management for consideration or added to the dev teams bug list. There never seems to be any follow up and time and time again users bring up old threads from 12 months ago asking for further news. A roadmap of updates would be really nice. Doesn’t have to be set in stone but a rough idea what updates you guys are working on would give us a nice warm fuzzy feeling. Personally I get a feeling that once myEclipse gets a visual editor Mobione will be phased out.

Even in the showcase section, not once have you guy’s commented on any user apps built with Mobione. Not saying you need to roll out the brass band and high five every app built, but just a “hey looking good,” once and a while might look like you guys are vaguely interested in what we do with your product.

Things are better on the forum than they were 12 months ago but still there are many, many threads which go unanswered. I am aware that you guys are probably incredibly busy but from an outsiders perspective it just looks like you can’t be bothered which is not the case. Having to wait 2 or 3 days for a reply when it’s a commercial project is tough going sometimes.

Really enjoy using Mobione its a great product, but you guys kind of suck when it comes to marketing, communications and dealing with your users.

Paul

[support-michael]

Paul,

Ouch! There is a lot of truth in your constructive feedback. So I’m not going to argue with any of your points especially the community outreach. I have shared your comments with our marketing team. Additionally I included some background comments below about lack of a roadmap and tech support performance.

On the roadmap topic, it is sort of a damned if you do and damned if you don’t. We stopped publishing a roadmap about 2 years ago for the specific reason that they handcuffed us in some cases. Specifically we changed our roadmap by deferring some features and replacing them with others that we felt were much better for the community at large. Well we caught serious hell from users that felt we screwed them over by deferring the feature they cared most about. Without the roadmap have been able to move lots of features around in the delivery plan in a way that we believe has been more beneficial. Just say’n… Will be discussing internally how we can better balance commitment and flexibility going forward.

Lastly on the support topics, Octavio and I as well as the 2nd tier dev team strive to close as many support cases per day as possible. It’s pretty challenging. Our 1st priority is addressing any cases that appear to be product bugs. After that we have lots of how to program xyz UI pattern or technique requests. If you scan most support cases they start off with an ambiguous 1 line “my program doesn’t work” or how do I do create a nontrival xyz application. Then we have to play 20 questions going back and forth extracting “precise” info to get an accurate picture of the real problem. These take time. In other cases we may escalate a case to the dev team. These guys already have a full day of requirements and the we drop cases on them which extends their day even longer. We try to share info as quick as we get it but sometimes it takes a little while to address. And then sometimes we have cases that are just dumb waste of everyone’s time that never get closed… Our near term goals are to reduce the 20 question problem and facilitate getting better initial problem report.

Ok wrapping up now. What I can share is the company has some big plans for 2014 that I expect will address everyone of your points. Have a great weekend.

Wayne
Genuitec Mobile Team

[paulD]

Hi Wayne

Thanks for responding. Thanks for your understanding and I hope you didn’t think I was being overly critical of you guys. I agree with you on the support side and understand fully that it is very challenging trying to address and prioritise everyone’s issues. You have helped me out on a number of occasions for which I am greatful for.

But I think you have almost a chicken and egg situation here. Because you only address the technical issues and not reaching out to your users there is never that self help which comes with having a engaged user base, users pitch in and help out sorting out other users issues. Things have got better on that front with guys like Cincyplanet, Yann, stickleback and others helping out. Foster relationships like those and it will decrease the amount of heavy lifting you guys have to do in the long run.

Initiatives like theses don’t have to be expensive and time consuming. Sometimes little things can be the most effective. Things like having a webinar when you release a new version showing the new features with Q and A with users at the end. Especially for things like the new test centre. Competition to design the next mobione mobile site with some sort of prize?

Not all things will work but it’s worth trying some things…..

Have a nice weekend guys

Paul

[paulD]

Got this through the email today……………… little things guys, little things…. 🙂

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