With the recent release of 2010.1 we now have 8 supported versions of ePublisher in the market, plus there are still a few customers who have yet to upgrade from unsupported versions.
When you log a support call, or are chatting with either Customer Service or your Account Manager, it helps us help you if we know what version of ePublisher you are running.
Yesterday we announced the release of ePublisher 2009.4, the culmination of what has been an exciting year of product development here at WebWorks.
In keeping with our standard policy of a two year rolling support window , this means that ePublisher 9.3 is no longer a supported version and is now officially classified as a Legacy Product.
This marks the passing of an era as we have now moved from products based on an incremental release number to supporting products based on a quarterly release cycle and easily identified by the date in which they shipped.
Earlier today I sat down to write the latest issue of our Channel Partner Newsletter and thought it would be fun to look back at all we’ve acheived in 2008.
Turns out that it was a lot….
And somehow in the middle of all this we also managed to find time to reconfigure and redecorate our entire office space!
If 2008 was full, we anticipate that 2009 will be even more exciting (although without the office makeover), with new initiatives being planned, more industry participation, increasing communications, and a growing sense of community with both our partners and our customers.
Thanks to everyone who made 2008 such a great year for the WebWorks team. We all look forward to working with you in 2009 – and beyond.
Still waiting to hear from either Customer Service or your Account Manager about that ePublisher 9.3 request you submitted? You are not alone. Some of our customers may have noticed that it took a little while to hear back from us when they requested upgrades to ePublisher 9.3. In fact, some customers are still experiencing delays. So why is this happening?
The simple answer is that we used the release of ePublisher 9.3 to try something new in our internal process.
Coupled with a greater than expected demand for upgrades, we created a process that simply tried to do too much.
ePublisher 9.3 included a slight change to the licensing model that we hoped would streamline the process and make it more manageable and easier to administer for both ourselves and our customers. It seems to have had the opposite effect. We also decided to use the opportunity to do a data point check on customer information in our new Customer Relationship Management tool (making sure we had names, contacts details, product version, maintenance status and license information all up to date etc.)
The result was that what had largely been an automated process before has become a mix of automation and manually checking and verifying each request. While this has lead to improved quality and more accurate information in our customer database, it means that the process has slowed down considerably. Add in the demand for ePublisher 9.3 and our system became overloaded.
Over the last few weeks we have reviewed the process, made some changes, shifted priorities and the backlog has been substantially decreased, but we still have a backlog. The number of 9.3 upgrades we are processing each day is now being matched by the number of requests.
So we are reviewing the process once more, seeing what we can change, plus we are adding more resources to help alleviate the problem.
We are still in the process of upgrading our customer service capability. Our goal is to provide outstanding customer service, something that we regret has escaped us in the past. We are now striving for that goal and will not settle for less than achieving that goal. In the meantime, we are still learning, and dealing with some unexpected challenges. We are grateful for the patience and support that our customers have shown and look forward to smoother operations in the very near future.
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Last week we launched our 2007 Customer Survey asking all our customers and prospects to share their views on our products, their experiences of dealing with the WebWorks.com team and their plans for the future. The survey only takes about 5 minutes to complete and has become a valuable tool in helping us fine tune our products and services to meet our customer needs.
A lot of the questions on the survey are things that we talk to our customers about everyday. We have set ourselves the goal of treating our customers as partners and opening up the lines of communication. We are always open to comments and a simple “how are things going?” question during conversations has helped us learn a lot about how you are using our products. But with over 4,000 customers spread across 30 countries, it is physically impossible to have personal contact with everyone, as much as we’d like to. So the survey gives everyone an equal chance to share their thoughts.
So far even though the number of people who responded is more than last year, it is still a small percentage of the user community.
One of the early respondent used the comments section to ask the question “Do you really want to know what I think of your products?”
Yes I do.
They more data we get and the more feedback we receive from you, (and I read every single comment), the more we can tailor our services, products and processes to meet the needs of the majority of our customers.
So click on over and let us know what you think.
The survey will remain active until January 2nd, 2008.
As I head out for the long holiday weekend, I just wanted to wish all our customers, partners, and friends a HAPPY THANKSGIVING.
We are still riding the wave of excitement generated by RoundUp and have some great things planned for the coming months and on into next year. But we haven’t forgotten the rest of 2007. I am currently putting the final touches to the latest edition of THE WORKS newsletter, the promised 2007 end-of-year Customer Satisfaction Survey, and some updates and new content for the website. All of which should be rolling out starting next week.
