Rick and Garry have some practical information. If you look at Ivan’s post history, you’ll see they are kind of the resident Xojo troll, so any of their answers should be taken with a grain of salt.
Xojo has been around for over 20 years and the active users are certainly not dwindling. There are more complainers lately, but that is a general societal trend these days, sadly.
So Ivan is a troll, and therefore any answers he gives are wrong on purpose?
“Active users are not dwindling”? Evidece is to the contrary
“general societal trend”. People generally complain when there is something to complain about (again evidence to the contrary)
This is twice in recent memory that either a Xojo employee or an MVP has taken a pot shot at someone on their forum (in this last case, as part of an ad hominem statement that anything this fellow says can be disregarded.) I am both astonished and saddened by this, to the point that I have to chime in and not just lurk.
I say this as someone who is overall a satisfied customer (my focus is desktop, and I’ve only played with the other targets.) I was one of the attendees in Nashville, and it was a pleasure to meet many of the team. I have no doubt of their dedication. That makes this particularly disappointing.
Oh, speaking of the Nashville conference, I know that the attendance has been discussed here. Well, anyone who met me will recall that I’m a big guy, so you can count me twice.
Okay try to look on it so. You are running a company with let me say 12 employees the CEO included. Means you need Money. Let me say for every normal employee you need around 80k per year makes 880.000 and 200k for eco you have 1,1 Million Dollars. Tax, your shareholders also wantinvest return…so around 1.5 Millions per year are gone. Passed away effortless. And so you are in the need and in the hurry to get money to pay the bills. And there comes a lot of them always. So when now you have a niche product which is not possibly a game changer for everybody and that Xojo is not, you may have to find ways to organize your Sales and to protect you sales. Sounds not nice but more important then the old customers are the new ones which do not know ya. The old ones having months of work inside and can’t leave so fast and don’t want it they want their problems be cracked away. The others want: the best product you will ever be able to get on market. That makes this difference between the sites.
Sitting together with equally-minded people in a comfortable environment is one thing. Dealing with dissatisfied and vocal customers another. You’ll get two different reactions. If staff lacks training in dealing with such a situation and the company culture eventually despises customers who come out with complaints and don’t shut up, it may result in what we have seen, repeatedly now.
The common pattern is: always blame others, never admit to a mistake.
With my customer service background, I know that well. I am reminded of a conversation I had years ago with a good friend, a (now retired) police officer. I said, “You must have stories about dealing with the public that put mine to shame.” He answered “I suppose–but at least in my job, there comes a point where I don’t have to be nice.”
My original comment was focused on this customer service faux pas, with–unlike some others here-- no animosity on my part toward Xojo nor toward any of the individuals involved (who, as I’ve noted, I’ve recently met in person.) I would just hope that there could be some reflection. Right now, though, it looks like staff and MVPs are doubling-down by “liking” Paul’s comment. I don’t have enough skin in the game to be angry about this. But I am saddened.
