Customer Service
morningbird wrote on 12 Oct 2009 16:46
Could someone please tell me how to get customer service for my two Wikidot.com sites? I did send an email to the provided email address but I have not received any reply. Please someone help me. I feel like I've wasted many hours populating my site with content if I can't even get someone to help with the minor issues I'm having. Please someone contact me at dawn.black at gmail.com
Comments: 18
page revision: 1, last edited: 19 Oct 2009 18:01
You can get some help on the Community Forums
You'll get more response from there than from the wikidot support email address.
Just remember to provide
~ Leiger - Wikidot Community Admin - Volunteer
Wikidot: Official Documentation | Wikidot Discord server | NEW: Wikiroo, backup tool (in development)
Customers are people who pay. If you want customer service, upgrade your account to Pro+ and then ask us again. This is simply a matter of economics: every minute spent helping people with their questions is a minute less we spend on everyone else.
For your specific problem, which was Google's site tools breakage, you would have seen other people asking the same question on the community forums, and please next time search for those threads and post there, rather than in random other places. That's just to make sure we see your post and respond. For instance you posted your problem in "New features and ideas", which is really not helpful.
Anyhow, we answered you. http://community.wikidot.com/forum/t-63070/new-features-and-ideas#post-607136
Portfolio
That is a terrible sales strategy. I have been in sales for years. A customer is someone you are trying to convince to pay and you are making it very hard for me to give you my money. Perhaps technical assistance is for people who pay, that makes sense, but customer service should be for people who are potentially willing to pay if they can get their questions answered.
I WAS planning on paying for your service but I am unable to find anyone to answer my questions. I can't just send people money blind, that would be a terrible financial decision on my part. My specific problem, which I actually have several QUESTIONS that don't relate to Google in the least.
I want to give my sites custom domains and I am willing to pay ya'll to do it BUT I need to talk to someone first, about such things as backups and file management and I am hoping that whoever it is I talk to is more polite than you or I will have to take my business and my money and be someone else's customer. You aren't the only Wiki hosting service in the world and I have been using Wikimedia on my own server for years. I thought maybe this would be a simpler option and save me the headaches of having to do my own bugfixes and upgrades so I could focus on providing content and yes, I am willing to pay for that convenience but I'm not about to give money to someone who is going to be rude to me.
Wow dude. Someone else must be paying your bills because nobody who depended on customer income would not treat their customers like High Schoolers. I'll take down my sites. It's clear you don't want them. Luckily, they were recreations of existing sites so the data won't be lost, but I'm a little ticked off about the hours of work I put into transferring it.
It doesn't matter whether you go to High School or not. That would be discrimination to treat you differently for that.
If you're going to behave as immaturely as you have, then you give everybody reason dismiss you as the insolent person you've portrayed yourself to be.
@morningbird:
I wasn't being rude, just accurate. You can't call yourself a "customer" if you're not. I don't believe in the notion that everyone who creates a free wikidot account is a customer. They are users, partners, contributors, and many things. They are participants in a community and as such, they form a long queue when it comes to getting support.
You were demanding to jump to the front of the queue and you did this by shouting: sending me a PM, using the community forums, and this forum, inappropriately.
Please read the forums before you post. This forum is for discussing Wikidot projects, not complaining about service. The community area where you posted was for new feature requests, not reporting issues.
How on earth do you expect to get support when you do not respect the simple rules we have?
If you actually spent a few minutes learning Wikidot's community before demanding priority service and trying to jump the queue in front of hundreds, thousands of more patient and polite people, you would realize that there is a blog, and today is the designated day for complaining on the blog, not here.
Portfolio
1. Okay, I'm looking at your pro plans and it says that the free, lite, and pro account all get "standard" email support. So… you're saying that if I sign up for the lite or pro account I will get the same customer service as I get for a free account which is none? Because that sucks. I can't commit to giving money to a company if I can't be assured I'm going to get good customer service.
I'm sorry, I'm from New York. I expect customer service. I will walk out of a restaurant if someone doesn't approach me in five minutes. But I also tip $5 on a cup of coffee.
2. I have a page on my site that has a redirect on it that I need to get rid of. I was experimenting and I screwed up. Now in the olden days I would have just gone into my file manager and deleted said page, or gone into the database and edited the entry directly and but as far as I can tell the only way to update a page is to access is through the browser which, of course, causes the page to redirect elsewhere rather than allowing me to open the editor. I fully understand why you would not give someone with a free account access to that stuff. I would like to know if I would have the ability to edit the files or database entries without opening the pages themselves if I bought a pro account. If so which one. If not, would I be able to get someone to assist me with that. It looks to me like only the Pro + account gets that access. Is that true? If so, can pre pro + folks get help with stuff like that from your ever so helpful customer service department.
3. Considering the fact that I have put Google ads on my site, which, Google informs me you are getting 20% of, even though you didn't make this obvious in the beginning, which is rather dishonest but I forgive you because I had assumed you were going to take a cut anyway, you have the potential to earn income from my site regardless of whether I purchase a pro plan, so it seems it would be in your best interest to provide "standard" customer service that is, answer your customer service emails so as to help your free customer to make the best site possible, get lots of traffic and earn you some Google revenue. Okay, that wasn't a question, it was a suggestion.
4. It is my understanding, and correct me if I'm wrong, that you permit domain mapping but do have domain hosting available. Your directions for domain mapping, however, only have CNAME and IP information while most domain hosts are set up for DNS (which looks like ns1.blah.com and ns2.blah.com). My host requires me to pay extra to use the tools which would allow me to alter the CNAME and IP information for my domain so I have the choice of paying THEM extra to conform to your standards, or transferring my domains somewhere else (apparently GoDaddy works according the forums, but I have always hated them so I'd like to avoid that). Assuming I am going to buy a pro plan and thus earn the right to your attention, can I get the dns information? Or if I AM wrong that you do not have domain hosting, I would like to talk to a customer service representative about transferring my domain.
5. I also have some general "which plan do you think is right for me" questions.
See, all my questions were about potentially becoming your customer and thus earning the right to your service. Now I really like your software, and I have already recommended it to many people (which I am regretting because I will be embarrassed when they complain to me about your crappy service) and I would really like to continue to use your software, which is the only reason I'm' still talking to you, but I DO need service, so if you want my money, can we get on with this?
Fine. Nice to meet you.
Glad that you are still talking, and for what it's worth, I'm the CEO of this crappy business and my answer is the best you will get.
Email support is extremely costly and by offering it we were sacrificing work on new features and bug fixes. I am glad you pointed me the plans page, it was out of date and it now properly explains that free accounts do not get to speak to us directly.
Having said this, please note that:
But: something like 100-150 posts a day, so the response time can take several hours.
If you absolutely need 5-minute response, it will cost you. Try to imagine a restaurant serving free coffee, with 380,000 customers.
Portfolio
Again, sorry for what appears to be rudeness in my replies, it is not. This is simply straight talking.
The cost and effort of running your own wiki software is the main reason to use a service like Wikidot. However, nothing can be really free, there is always a price somewhere. If you use Wikidot as a free service, you have to pay in some other way. The way we make free accounts pay is by making them participate in a community, kicking and screaming if necessary.
This means several things but primarily it means asking other users for help on issues. "Users" includes me, even as CEO I spent most of my time working with other users (like James here, who is an absolutely brilliant person and if you ever use Wikidot, someone you will be glad you met) to make Wikidot easier to use.
It's not laziness on our part. This is how we manage to keep coherence even when there are so many of us, all with questions, problems, ideas.
While if you use Wikidot as a paying customer, you get to bypass the community. The more you pay the more Wikidot looks and acts like a straight wiki hosting box (and we'll be making it more so in the future).
Portfolio
Pieterh, I forgive you. You have a cute name and I am also accused of being rude for straight talking so of course I should have understood. And besides, there's a cultural difference and you've probably never had to sit through the "everyone is a customer" seminars I've had to sit through so there's probably cultural and definition issues going on here. I am in turn sorry for dancing naked in the town square to get your attention. I know the site of an overweight middle aged woman in the town square was probably horrifying. I knew exactly what I was doing and yes, it was kind of rude, but I was frustrated beyond all sense.
If we could, I'd like to start this over.
I am willing to buy your product. I have never and will never ask for anything for free, though I've been known to barter. I know the value of this product and I want to buy it if only because I just transferred my whole damn site over to your server and I don't want that time wasted.
But I have questions, and I need them answered. I don't like giving money to people I have had no contact with. I like to make sure I understand exactly what I'm paying for. I don't think that's unreasonable. I have 15 sites with probably 5 different providers altogether and I have gotten excellent customer service from all of them. I was shocked, yes, that's even the right word, that I was having such trouble here. It came as a complete surprise.
I know you're not lazy, I see you post every day. You sounded friendly, I thought I would contact this friendly guy directly, since the email didn't work. And then that didn't work so I went a little crazy, but you know, I did try.
The fact is, I really really want to connect my stupid domain name to my stupid wiki and it's driving me nuts trying to figure out how to do it. And that redirect page has me worried too. So if we can make up I can give you money and you can tell me if you can give me the DNS information (maybe not in that order) so I can set up my Wiki properly and then we can talk about my messed up page with my nifty new standard service. If I need to transfer my domain I need to know that ahead of time.
I do have a suggestion that will help your customer service and it's super easy. If you set up an autoresponder on your support email that says basically:
"Thank you for contacting Wikidot's support team. Your query has been added to our queue. We handle our support requests on a first come first served basis so it may be up to (average wait time) days before you hear back from us. In the meantime try looking for the answers to your questions in our forums at <link>."
We do that for our clients and they never complain. In fact, if we get back to them before the average wait time (and we set it high so we usually do) they are all impressed with us. We get 500 or so requests for information a day. I understand.
Also, perhaps you could set up a sales request email just for queries from people who want to buy from you and ask questions about your product (with a similar autoresponder, but I suggest you shorten your average wait time for that because the longer you wait to sell a product, the more time the customer has to peruse your competition.)
Also, I don't want to bypass the community. I kind of like it. It just wasn't giving me what I needed. In hindsight, I should have probably requested information from your "sales team" rather than your customer service department, that might've saved everyone alot of frustration.
PS I doubt one could get really good coffee in a free restaurant.
We'll try and make a really good coffee out of this.
First off, I'm sorry for not stopping and listening to you more carefully… it is like the sidewalk between 41st and 43rd, rush rush rush. Sorry.
Fixing the email responder, a great idea. Thanks for that.
The other questions you're having sound kind of typical for someone trying to make a reasonably complex site work on Wikidot. Would you like to work with me to go through these step by step, to solve them but also make a guide that will help other people in the same situation?
… and thanks, no-one ever said I had a cute name.
Portfolio
I've always thought you had a cute name Pieter! ;-)
~ Leiger - Wikidot Community Admin - Volunteer
Wikidot: Official Documentation | Wikidot Discord server | NEW: Wikiroo, backup tool (in development)
Oh and I didn't call your business crappy, I called your customer service crappy. And I still think it's kind of a shame. But maybe my sites will draw so many customers to you that you'll be able to hire a rep one day.
Anyway, I'll be a good girl and trot off to the forums now. I am starting to get itchy because I haven't been working on the sites because I don't know if I'm going to have to move them now, so I guess I'll just do whatever and if I don't like it I'll demand my money back. (I see you have a money back guarantee and I'm assuming >that's< not a misprint, you see, this is why I like to talk to people first). But I think I'll sleep on that decision before I carve it in stone. I won't be offended if you delete this entire thread and pretend you never heard of me as I'm sure you'd like to do anyway. (But do take my advice on the redirects, it'll save you future annoyances.)
I called this business 'crappy' (named after a perfectly nice English gentleman who happened to be an expert in toilet design) because I'm a perfectionist and never satisfied with what we achieve here. We have nice users and they rarely shout at us but I know that there are mountains of frustration with unmet expectations, failed promises, and other disappointments. As an intense user of Wikidot since 2006, I have reserves of frustration with the service you would not believe.
All I can offer here is our commitment, as individuals, as a team, as a company to make Wikidot better every day in some concrete way.
Thanks for this thread. If there is one thing I really appreciate, it's someone who can complain firmly and openly.
Portfolio
please - use the seasrch center on our community site( over 8 sites) : http://community.wikidot.com/search ( by keying in redirect)
and you will find the Emergency help: http://community.wikidot.com/help:emergency-help#toc3
Which helps yxou in such cases..
The community is answering very fast on such questions..
Service is my success. My webtips:www.blender.org (Open source), Wikidot-Handbook.
Sie können fragen und mitwirken in der deutschsprachigen » User-Gemeinschaft für WikidotNutzer oder
im deutschen » Wikidot Handbuch ?
I also am confused sometime Pieter, as you know.
Maybe projectsforum.wikidot.com would be better…
forum.wikidot.com = the forum of wikidot IMO…
Nice to see that ideas sometimes come from places you weren't expecting them to come from. Huray for open discussion!
So will this become a project or will this tread be moved?
A - S I M P L E - P L A N by ARTiZEN a startingpoint for simple wikidot solutions.
I like short names for important things. Maybe projects.wikidot.com, indeed…
Portfolio