Wishes
Post your wishes about Graphisoft products: Archicad, BIMx, BIMcloud, and DDScad.

Customer Engagement

DGSketcher
Legend

One thing I have noticed on other forums is the developers are regularly engaged with their customers offering guidance on workflows, work arounds and picking up on their failures and what they can do to fix it. Looking back I see so little actual engagement its not surprising AC is full of bugs and incomplete solutions. There are a couple of names that appear with solutions and to them a big thank you, but the majority of the time all we get is "that's a good idea we put it on the list" or "it has been logged as a defect" only to disappear in to a blackhole. Even the feedback in the quarterly webinars hasn't produced anything tangible.

 

So @GRAPHISOFT , are we expecting an official response to the launch & the feedback that was given? Perhaps a bit more daily supportive customer engagement delivering official solutions on the community forum and a commitment to deliver on bug fixing and more frequent architecturally relevant development / updates?

Apple iMac Intel i9 / macOS Sonoma / AC27UKI (most recent builds.. if they work)
2 REPLIES 2

I've been given this post some thought as I find it strange that it has not triggered even a generic customer relations response from @GRAPHISOFT. I believe that any GS user that respond to posts at the community do so more or less independently and not as a part of any central  process or policy at GS - which would explain why some for GS inconvenient topics are avoided although there clearly is a large interest in them from community users. This post is a good example and so is my recent post about the lack of a roadmap which judging by its quick like accumulation seemed to resonate with the community users. 

 

So we have a lack of official engagement with members while GS keep promoting the new community at every possible place and time. To what end?

 

Since the launch there has been little to none improvement of the usability of the platform but we have had four competitions! Calls for functional/organisational clarity and consistency is disregarded but work on the graphical profile does not miss a beat! 

 

Is the community nothing more than a platform on which GS can parade their marketing mumbo jumbo? Why do everything here feels like it is an audition to play the part of happy customer in some marketing material?

 

Lets take a look at the launch video for Graphisoft Insights and see if that tells us anything.

 

So Graphisoft Insights is a new channel where GS will communicate "all sorts of news and information on a regular basis" with the goal to provide "not only news but also technical details and information" and "open and foster discussions". This communication channel will be open to community members whom are encouraged to share their experiences which GS would love to hear and share with everyone else.

 

Firstly, the language is overreaching and with the CEO delivering it it is hard not to expect some kind fundamentally new feature. I admit that it is too early to make any firm judgements but as of right now it does not seem to be anything beyond a news feed for which some content seem to be thrown together in a haste.

 

Secondly and more importantly. A stated purpose of the channel is to open and foster discussions. Yet there is no way for users to comment/discuss the posts in the channel directly. Instead there is a link to a related forum thread. How is this a way to open and foster discussions? Who are the the intended participants of the discussions? Even more bizarre is that users on a forum platform are encouraged to share their experiences with GS through a support email! Do we get a different response if we use that to express our experience instead of the actual forum? Or is it our presupposed "success stories" we should write down and mail in to them so that they can produce more content to the Graphisoft Insights?

 

To me it is becoming evident that GSs preferred, or at least instinctive, order of customer engagement is:

 

GS inform (or implement) > users discuss amongst themselves > GS decide what feedback to take notice of and what to do with it.

 

The beta/preview process and the user group initiative which naturally should have a even higher degree of official engagement then the community is plagued by the same attitude but here it is even worse as both are coverred by a NDA and lack designated forums, taking away the discussion all together. We also see it in every Q&A where GS pick the questions they want to answer and so seemingly on the spot which turn it all in to a rather meaningless exercise.

 

My conclusion is that the community is just a spoke on the marketing spinning wheel which GS for some reason has put in full throttle and the quality/function of the fibers is no longer of any importance to them as long as they effectively can filter out any unpleasant realities. The resulting weave might look nice but the question is what happens when the threads comes under tension?

DGSketcher
Legend

If GS have become as detached from the real world application of their software as I think they have, it's no surprise we don't see much of their input.

 

One of the reasons why we pay an annual fee is to receive technical support from alleged "experts" in the software, so if each tech support unit throughout the world made a basic commitment to being present and supporting users here for a short amount of time each day then perhaps the atmosphere around here would change and hopefully GSHQ would start to get the feedback it needs to put AC back on track e.g. if the "experts" can't solve a user problem then things need fixed and that should then be formally reported back to GSHQ for action.

 

P.S. I keep looking for a tumbleweed emoji... 😉

 

 

Apple iMac Intel i9 / macOS Sonoma / AC27UKI (most recent builds.. if they work)