Please Explain Your Handling Of Analytics To This Very Frustrated Customer.

Solar2D General Questions/Discussion
#1

Hi Corona Labs Staff,

  I’m really trying not to break forum etiquette or beat a dead horse here, but the way your company has handled this analytics transition has been very disappointing and doesn’t leave me with a lot of faith in your ability to provide adequate customer service going forward.  

Couple of quick notes:

  • I’m not here to troll.  I’ve been a paying (pro) customer for 2 years.  LOVE the product.  Review my forum posts for the last 2 years and you’ll see I’m quite reasonable, helpful and constructive.
     
  • I’m not here to make an empty threat about switching to another product because, quite frankly, it’d be a very empty threat.  I don’t have the time to invest in learning a new platform and I’m not convinced anything else out there can compete with Corona right now.  But I expect that within a few years, competition will be much stiffer and you’re going to need to keep loyal customers happy by providing excellent customer service in addition to your awesome product.
     
  • HUGE KUDOS on launching cloud AND starter edition AND a new public build in the past month.  I TOTALLY GET that it’s a boatload of work that you’ve been doing.  However, some REALLY SMALL things could have been done to make this SO much easier on your customers.

Here are my questions regarding your handling of analytics.  I’d greatly appreciate a response so that I understand where you guys are coming from and so that I can get a feel for what type of service you deem acceptable in the future.

  1. Why was there no lead-time announcement that we wouldn’t have access to analytics for an extended period of time?  We could have have written down important numbers before the shutdown and, with enough lead time, made sure to enable flurry on apps where we HAD to have numbers.
     
  2. Why did you leave the analytics page up during this downtime?  Couldn’t you have easily put up a page that said, sorry guys, we have to take down analytics for a while?  I went multiple times, assuming a quick outage or issue on my end, before searching the forums and finding out analytics are down and would be for a few more weeks.  At least two other customers reported the same experience on the forums, and I’m assuming a boatload of others are still scratching their heads or passively observing  (see http://forums.coronalabs.com/topic/33457-analytics-does-not-work/?hl=analytics and http://forums.coronalabs.com/topic/32938-analytics-are-down/?hl=analytics )
     
  3. Why did you acknowledge poor communication with an apologetic tone (http://forums.coronalabs.com/topic/32938-analytics-are-down/?hl=analytics), set a *hopeful* expectation for late this week, and then continue to communicate poorly by…
  4. Not respond about historical data and interim data (which had been asked a long time prior and was asked once again)
  5. Not reply to anyone asking what was up when it wasn’t delivered late this week?  

Thanks for taking the time to read this.  It wound up being a bit of a novel but I felt the need to explain how truly baffling/frustrating this has been relative to my entire experience with Corona leading up to this point.

-Joe

#2

Totally valid points above made by Jedi, agree 100% and I am pretty much in the same boat.

#3

jflowers45 - You make absolutely all great points. I have nothing to say other than that I do apologize. We will do better going forward. In all honesty, taking down analytics was a quickly made decision because of some stuff that is not worth going into. But we underestimated the effect to some people and the time it would take us to get things back up. Our fault.

Now, when I said that things should be up on Friday, I was serious. But of course we slipped a little. I checked in on this earlier today and it does look like this will be back up tomorrow (Tuesday) sometime. I will check in on it first thing in the morning and will follow up.

Again, sorry about this. We have not handled it well.

But I am extremely appreciative of the reasonable way in which you have brought this up. Thank you.

David

#4

David,

  Are you not answering the question about whether we’ll have historical data as well as data from the in-between period because you don’t know?  Has it not been decided?  Why is that answer so hard to get?  

#5

I believe we will have data in there starting March 26.

#6

do you know if the ‘old’ data will still be available or is lost permanently?  (e.g. from before March 20). 

#7

Unfortunately we had to make a clean break and there will be no old data.

#8

ok.  That sucks bigtime, but I get that you have business decisions to make and appreciate finally getting an answer.

#9

Sorry about the delay in answering fully.

#10

it’s a lesson for the future :wink:

#11

Totally valid points above made by Jedi, agree 100% and I am pretty much in the same boat.

#12

jflowers45 - You make absolutely all great points. I have nothing to say other than that I do apologize. We will do better going forward. In all honesty, taking down analytics was a quickly made decision because of some stuff that is not worth going into. But we underestimated the effect to some people and the time it would take us to get things back up. Our fault.

Now, when I said that things should be up on Friday, I was serious. But of course we slipped a little. I checked in on this earlier today and it does look like this will be back up tomorrow (Tuesday) sometime. I will check in on it first thing in the morning and will follow up.

Again, sorry about this. We have not handled it well.

But I am extremely appreciative of the reasonable way in which you have brought this up. Thank you.

David

#13

David,

  Are you not answering the question about whether we’ll have historical data as well as data from the in-between period because you don’t know?  Has it not been decided?  Why is that answer so hard to get?  

#14

I believe we will have data in there starting March 26.

#15

do you know if the ‘old’ data will still be available or is lost permanently?  (e.g. from before March 20). 

#16

Unfortunately we had to make a clean break and there will be no old data.

#17

ok.  That sucks bigtime, but I get that you have business decisions to make and appreciate finally getting an answer.

#18

Sorry about the delay in answering fully.

#19

it’s a lesson for the future :wink:

#20

Any further updates on when analytics will be back up? I see changes to the analytics pages but it’s still not working.