Just had an email from TP asking for my feedback on Orbit 2.

However the 2nd question.

In addition to The Planet, which of the following companies that provide dedicated and/or managed hosting services does your company currently use? Please select all that apply.

It does not let you select none, or other. It only gives a list of companies.

Greetings:

I got an email about the survey, but cannot even take it as it tells me I've taken it already (which is incorrect).

Please fix http://orbit2.theplanetsurveys.sgizmo.com/ so that I can take the survey.

Thank you.

My goodness, this is so indicative of the Planet these days. They don't even test the survey before shipping it out. I can't take the survey for the same reason as JohnB. Earth to the Planet...please test things before giving them to us. Orbit 2 is a nightmare and doesn't work, the survey is in the same condition.

Additionally, there is no contact email for this Kyle Smith, The Planet's new Director of Customer Portal Experience! How do I contact Kyle to tell him his survey is broken? Perhaps the Planet hired Kyle without testing him first.

I am happy to take a survey if it will do some good, but please, make sure things work first, I don't have the time in my schedule to alpha test your work.

The survey has been updated to include the "none of the above" option. If you'd like to start over, you can do so now (you might have to delete the sites' cache/cookies to start fresh).

Hi Peter,

Are you still having trouble accessing the page? I haven't heard any other reports of similar problems, but if you still can't make it there, we can investigate.

-Kevin

Glad its fixed, thanks Kevin

As I was eager to get my views across I just selected the first option of my other hosting provider.

Was a little disappointed in the survey. Not sure what everyone else thought but it was pretty pointless and the questions were awful. I had to read several of them quite a few times just to understand what they meant.

Before these things are sent out, I think they need to make what they have work. I dont see much feedback on the Orbit board about the problems reported and they never get fixed. Whats the point in surveying people?

Hello, all. This is Kyle Smith, the new director over The Planet's customer portal experience. Please bear with this longer post...

I joined the company a few weeks ago, as did another Director counterpart in our IT shop. We were hired because we've both built successful (according to customers) customer portals in the past and have a good idea about where we need to take Orbit 2.0.

When I arrived, the first thing I asked is what kind of customer feedback we have received. It turns out we've done a fairly poor job of asking you. Most feedback has come through tickets or ad hoc forums like this. So I said we need to conduct a survey of all Orbit 2.0 users so we can really get a sense of your concerns, issues and ideas to make it better. We don't have a research department, nor the budget to outsource a really well-developed survey. So I wrote it and take full responsibility for the shortcomings of the survey. In fact, we are addressing them as we speak.

The good news is that my survey snafus have ignited a conversation here about real issues you have with the portal -- which is exactly what I'd hoped to create by sending out a survey. Your comments will be most trackable and actionable if you provide constructive feedback in the survey itself. But if you've already done that, can't access it again for some reason, etc., and yet still want to be heard -- feel free to send your feedback directly to me at kysmith @ theplanet.com. I don't have time to monitor this forum, but if you want 1:1 dialogue via email or phone, I'm happy to listen -- otherwise, I wouldn't have asked.

In my first couple weeks, I've already built a list of 120+ enhancements that need to be made -- from overall UI navigation to weak RTG performance and beyond. I'm looking for your feedback to confirm my list and to add to it. We will then prioritize and start marching. This will take some time. But I'm committed, as is The Planet, to giving you the self-service tools you need over the coming months. Thanks for listening and bearing with me as I begin the process.

Welcome... thanks for posting.



The orbit forum should probably be deleted then but I think you should make time to monitor it as a lot of useful feedback about bugs has been posted there and to date, ignored.

Good point. Ok, what I meant is that I'd prefer to use the survey and email to get feedback because then I can track what services a user is getting and see where things may be hanging up. Honestly, I didn't even know this forum existed until I heard about the traffic on it this a.m. But now that I know about it ... and if it's truly the medium many users prefer to provide feedback, I'll begin checking it regularly.

Obviously I cant speak for everyone but if you check out the Orbit forums, to date a lot of bugs have been reported.

Its easier to report hem there than make a ticket or respond to a survey.

Incase you not come across them yet the orbit boards are...

Orbit 2.0 Forums http://forums.theplanet.com/index.php?showforum=163
Orbit http://forums.theplanet.com/index.php?showforum=158

Thanks, JohnB. I understand this is faster/easier for you. Suffice it to say, I'll be checking all various media for your (and everyone else's) input along the way.

I'm sure you understand that if you report bugs here, though, we don't know your portal user id, company, etc. so we can try to replicate your issue. If it happens to be one that numerous users report, this works ok. But we often see things based on user navigation or environment, browser config, etc.

Again, I'll start keeping an eye on this forum. One of the enhancements I'm suggesting is also a means of providing direct feedback on the portal itself (and not via ticket). Thanks again.

Understand what your saying Kyle about bugs. If that is the case, there should probably be a change in direction and remove the boards as having them and having no one responds antagonises the situation further. I think you will agree from the posts that to date, some of the issues have been neglected. I do not mean that they have not had a reply, but they have just never been fixed which has upset a lot of people.

Absolutely! I had a conversation last night with my IT counterpart re ideas for more transparency in our bug fix process. We've fixed hundreds in the last few months and have more to do. But, as with everything, we have to prioritize each ticket we receive. Then we have to start ticking them off. It would be nice if you could see everything we're working on and start seeing the burn-down of that list over time.

Sounds good to me!

I submitted the survey rating "response time" in a couple places as the response time of the orbit2 portal itself (which is not as fast as orbit1 for me) not the response time of the people behind the portal (which has been very good for me lately.)

Good point there Jeff. The survey did not clearly explain which response time it was referring to.

For tickets, I don't think you can ask for more, the response times are nearly always excellent 110%. Response times of the portal though, terrible.

Just to clarify...your interpretation of the question was correct. I was trying to get customers' take on the response time of the portal itself, not of the support staff. But I am happy to hear they've been taking care of you along the way.

Lets also keep in mind that the complexity of Orbit and the internal systems tied to it have a significant impact on adding and changing features and dealing with bug reports. Making changes takes a lot of time and resources.

Keep in mind that the forums are manned by volunteers and isn't an official channel for support. The purpose of this forum is to facilitate a community for current customers, future customers, and even interested non-customers.

Kevin, other volunteers, and I have escalated many bug reports to the development group. We do this via tickets for tracking purposes. The reason why we encourage you to submit tickets is three-fold.

First, the ticketing system is manned 24/7 by dozens of people which means escalations can take place faster. Posting on the forum will introduce a period of latency. While I tend to troll the forums on the weekends or overnights, the frequency is definitely less than when I'm at work.

Second, it provides traceability so we can reproduce the bug, request more information, or verify if the customer is still seeing the issue.

Third, not all bugs are bugs.. it may be simply a matter of bad data in the system. These issues can generally handled at the Tech Support, DC Ops, or Customer Service levels and, in many cases, don't require reallocating a developer from their projects.

I just hope we can get all the requests from my review filled.

Kyle, just letting you know that the survey has sent me a reminder to complete it.. but I already did it. Not sure if that's a bug or not...

Greetings:

Now that I can actually take the survey, after 15-minutes of having the survey writers completely waste my time with an overtly complex survey, I stopped the survey.

The Planet would have to pay me to take such a survey in the future.

Tomy Durden, if you read this, please note the problem with the survey is the time involved, the complexity, the making me do the sorting using a complex GUI... and wow... that's the entire problem with the Orbit 2... add complexity thinking it will be better... WRONG.

This entire survey just frustrated the living daylights of me as a paying customer. First, it doesn't work, and then 15-minuets in and no end in sight for when it will end.

Thank you.

I've also gotten two reminders to complete this survey even though I already completed it.

yeh i knew something weird was going on there