So...what would make you buy more books from Logos?
Lower prices? Better libraries and bundles? More frequent sales? Just curious.
Director of Zoeproject
www.zoeproject.com
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1. Resources that interest me
2. An ever improving system of organizing and customizing resources quickly, efficiently, and simply
3. Appealing starter libraries that would cause me to happily purchase starter packages for children and others as a gift to get them started on becoming new customers for Faithlife.
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Yes, an improving system of organizing resources and locating them.
It is getting too bloated...and Logos 7 did not address my need.
PCA Church
L4 Platinum, L5 Reformed Platinum, L6 Reformed Diamond, Reformed Studies XL, Platinum, Logos Now0 -
I ignore the sales because the end of the sale is always secret and does not work for me so I ignore the sales. Sometimes the low price causes me to buy, but I tend to buy high cost bundles I am interested in.
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Resources that meet my interests.
Orthodox Bishop Alfeyev: "To be a theologian means to have experience of a personal encounter with God through prayer and worship."; Orthodox proverb: "We know where the Church is, we do not know where it is not."
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More mobile ed courses in CP. I always end up buying 3 or 4 of the books referenced.
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MJ. Smith said:
Resources that meet my interests.
[Y] Sales for items on our wish list would work well too.
Robert Neely said:More mobile ed courses in CP. I always end up buying 3 or 4 of the books referenced.
I'd love to see more Mobile Ed CP, and I also follow through and buy the course books. In fact, I'd love to see bundles that discounted a course's recommended resources.
The biggest detriments to me buying more are a) high regular prices, and b) lack of dynamic pricing/bundling/sales of publishers' books. I'd have bought more WBC volumes if the set offered dynamic pricing, and a sale took place.
Thanks to FL for including Carta and a Hebrew audio bible in Logos 9!
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I'm always looking for good deals and especially am motivated to purchase when those good deals include resources that interest me.
Using adventure and community to challenge young people to continually say "yes" to God
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A longer life to read and apply those books...
OR A Faithlife-assisted way to absorb and apply the wisdom in those books faster...
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- Greater availability of Logos editions of my seminary textbooks (which is as much on my seminary as it is on Faithlife.)
- Better cash flow. (I have extensive wish lists, plural, and little cash for purchases. Definitely not Faithlife's responsibility.)
- Better cooperation with Faithlife's pricing policies from publishers. (I hang this one on the publishers. I have an informed outsider's understanding of the challenges publishers face today, but it is healthier to adjust to new market conditions rather than double down on resisting them.)
As to comments about reading books, there are two types of libraries: reading libraries, and reference libraries. Faithlife promotes Logos as a reference library to support reading and study of the reading library subset of your Logos library.
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Tony Thomas said:
Lower prices? Better libraries and bundles? More frequent sales? Just curious.
1. More expendable money (not much of that around. YET).
2. Lower cost for major collections. For instance, TDOT.
3. More "must haves".
4. Shorter (much shorter) turn-around time for Pre-Pubs.
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Participation in sales that other software companies do. It looks like with the new pre pub policy, this shouldn't be an issue. Also maybe price matching another competitor? Though I am not sure that is possible all the time...
Keith Pang, PhD Check out my blog @ https://keithkpang.wixsite.com/magnifyingjesus
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Oh yes, and I should add...
I'd buy Carta books if there were offered by Logos....still dreaming of the day this comes true!! [S]
Using adventure and community to challenge young people to continually say "yes" to God
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I could buy books in my wish list if they come to sale. Otherwise I try to read all important books before I buy books from my wish list.
Gold package, and original language material and ancient text material, SIL and UBS books, discourse Hebrew OT and Greek NT. PC with Windows 11
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Definitely lower prices (especially on those bundles and collections), price-matching other competitors, resources that meet my needs ( there are a lot of books i have in print, that I would love to see in LOGOS),
Collections that need to be completed, like THE CLARENCE LARKIN COLLECTION - which is missing 3 or 4 of his books.
Oh, and did I say, definitely lower prices [^o)]
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Tony Thomas said:
Lower prices? Better libraries and bundles? More frequent sales? Just curious.
Definitely lower prices, however not through more frequent sales, but higher quality sales. I have felt induced to buy things in the past because the deal seemed too good to pass up (the 500 book mega pack comes to mind in 2012). Now it seems like 15% off is about all we get, and that doesn't excite me too much.
I imagine that when we scoop up the incredible deals, the margins are slim/non-existent and FL doesn't make too much. But I also have to imagine that based on the spending habits history thread that the current system isn't great for FL either (higher margins, but not nearly as many sales). I don't know what the answer is, but I feel like I'm getting priced out of buying things I'd like to buy.
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PL said:
A longer life to read and apply those books...
How can I search Logos to research whether Logos will be available in the new heaven and new earth? [;)]
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Much higher resolution images (charts, graphs, pictures, illustrations, etc.) in books. Unless I'm just doing something wrong, it seems that most of the graphic material in the books I have is quite low resolution. For me at least, maps, charts and diagrams are generally much less useful in Logos than they would be in paper form. That's one of my biggest frustrations. I've gotten to where I completely discount the presence of illustrations when deciding whether or not to buy a book, because I go into it assuming they won't have any value to me. And that's so unnecessary. With an electronic version it seems intuitive that you would have high resolution images that you could easily zoom in on.
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Agreed 100% EastTN
I also encounter this frustration as well. Definitely need "Higher Resolution" images (and in every book, commentary, dictionary, etc. I might add).
A good example of this is NELSON'S NEW ILLUSTRATED BIBLE COMMENTARY, where the resolution on the images, charts, and maps are very low, and not high-quality at all.
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Agreed 100% William Gabriel
This is why I have not spent any money as yet on the Christmas sale - the prices are way over exorbitant. Very little excites me at FAITHLIFE right now.
I spend very little money at FAITHLIFE these days.
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Bruce Dunning said:
I'm always looking for good deals and especially am motivated to purchase when those good deals include resources that interest me.
Agreed [:D]
Pastor Glenn Crouch
St Paul's Lutheran Church
Kalgoorlie-Boulder, Western Australia0 -
I hope that the Faithlife leadership team and marketing folks are reading this.
Director of Zoeproject
www.zoeproject.com
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They really should be Tony Thomas
Because they are losing money, and also losing customers.
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I would buy more if Faithlife:
1) Quit pushing bundles on us. I refuse to pay $200 to get a resource that costs $20 when sold by itself. Usually, by the time a bundle is broken up, I have either gotten it elsewhere or have lost interest.
2) Had more compelling prepub prices. Saving $5 on a resource that I'm not sure I want/need will not persuade me to buy it anyhow.
3) Had sells on resources that interest me.
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William Gabriel said:
Definitely lower prices, however not through more frequent sales, but higher quality sales.
One of the negative trends I've noticed over the past few months is that FL puts together bundles of resources for sales but fails to pass along any regular savings over buying the items individually (omitting "Total value if purchased separately" information).
Bundles should always be discounted compared to the regular price of their items, even when they're not a part of a sale
I believe a higher-quality sale would apply additional savings to any initial* savings of a bundle.
*The bundle discounts probably should be better than ~1% I've recently noticed. Saving $2 when buying 50 books together isn't much of a savings in the first place.
Thanks to FL for including Carta and a Hebrew audio bible in Logos 9!
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The number one like everyone is resources that interest me. I find most of the time the prePub price is ok, although I will admit lately the prepub prices feel less than attractive. I have most of what I want already and paying off what I owe FL is my top priority. There are numerous things I have ordered that I would love to have but many are not past the gathering interest stage so if Fl won't offer them to me I cannot buy them. A fair price is also extremely important... If I can get a resource less than half price from a competitor no amount of tagging or integration is going to make it worth it for me to get it in Faithlife's ecosystem.
-Dan0 -
Like many others who responded, I look for resources that are: 1. priced right for me and 2. resources that appeal to me and my studies. I admit to snagging every free resource that I see but many of these are so far down on my reading list that I have not read them. So, again, it has to be resources that are relevant for me.
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1. Dynamic pricing.
2. On sale for 25% off or more.
3. Already in a discounted bundle.
4. In my wish list.
5. A better way to organize my existing library and compare it to what's available in Logos and Vyrso.
Dale Heath
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Buy only as needed anymore.
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If you publish the Bicentennial Edition Works of Wesley from Abingdon Press - the only scholarly edition of his works - I will beg and borrow the money to buy it.MJ. Smith said:Resources that meet my interests.
"In all cases, the Church is to be judged by the Scripture, not the Scripture by the Church," John Wesley0 -
Am with you Whyndell Grizzard
I only buy as needed, and that's it.
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1. The ability to choose specific resources to receive at a sale price. I remember once several years ago that Logos did a promotion where purchasing resources resulted in Logos credit to use toward any other resources. Anything that would enable me to zero in and get a deal on things that I want would give me incentive.
2. More collections of well known evangelical pastor's sermons i.e. W.A. Criswell, Charles Stanley, Alistair Begg, H. Edwin Young, H. B. Charles, Rick Warren, just to name a few.
3. More collections from well known authors that actually include some of their best work. On a number of occasions, I have excitedly seen the offer of a collection from a well-known pastor or theologian, but wound up disappointed when I realized they did not include the very titles that made me most excited look at a bundle from them.
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I would buy more if....
1...FL stopped using so much of the money coming into Logos and Verbum for other ventures - Faithlife groups, Proclaim, Vyrso, Noet, Bible Study Magazine, Soundfaith, Lexham Press, Bible Screen, Every Day Bible, Kirkdale Press, Biblia, Beacon Ads, Faithlife TV, FaithSmiles, plus probably more that I missed.....doing some things to branch out is good, but I believe most of these, if not all, are losers of money for now - investments - and the investments come from that which makes the money, Logos and Verbum. If FL would get some focus, there would be money and resources to invest in staff to work on the core product - and it's going to take a lot of users to replace 25 heavy users of Logos who drop their spending considerably, for example. Faithlife is resource strapped right now, we are told as much on the forums - how many 1 or very small person departments are there these days? How many Logos/Verbum related projects are on hold indefinitely? No money, no people - it's going to other ventures, and the product suffers.
2...FL updated the web site and made it much more functional to the needs of its users. It's substandard for today's world in so many ways. It's also probably very hard to maintain and requires a lot of manual work to do every day tasks, likely with home grown code written by people no longer in the company, and as we have seen very prone to mistakes. How many problems with forum posts, pricing, inaccurate information, delays in product information being updated, inability to correctly deal with spam, inconsistencies in how something appears one place vs. another, etc.?
3. ...FL invested in fixing the bugs, clumsy user interface, performance issues, Mac stability issues, and incomplete features instead of continuing to heap more new features that a small percentage of the user base needs or asks for - a symptom of the dream of subscription based software that drives the continual need to find new customers and advertise a growing list of features. No one can use all the features heavily in the product any more on any desktop computer, the performance and stability is so bad if they do. Logos/Verbum is getting more and more challenging to use, and its features are getting less and less cooperative with other features when thinking about how to do Bible study. With the growth in library sizes and new features, how well do you think the product will work in 2-3 years? I would think you would get a lot more new subscribers by having forum users that exhibit how happy heavy users are with the product - it runs so well, so easy to use - instead of trying to have the longest list of new features. Quality software sells a lot of product.
4. ...FL was more transparent. The issues have been there for awhile. - It seems FL fails to understand that acknowledging issues and committing to do something about it buys a lot of loyalty. Is there any evidence that FL sees any of these bigger issues as problems? Doesn't that seem odd that we would have to wonder about it? Why have some big problems been left unaddressed for years? At some point more customers scale back or stop buying entirely, no matter how alluring the sales are, if they think there are problems and the company won't even acknowledge or discuss them.
Maybe none of these are problems - but it sure seems they are to me. I used to think my world would end if Faithlife went away, the product experience and community engagement was so good. Now I really think if it happened, despite my considerable investment, I would just shrug my shoulders and move on. That's very sad.
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The option to easily read resources on an E-Ink device without wailing and gnashing of teeth. I would buy Logos books versus Kindle books.
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1. Larger catalogue - more resources of interest to me, more sales. Adding certain publishers (e.g., Scepter) or contracting for/carrying more books by publishers that they already have some stock from (e.g., TAN, CUA Press) would help a lot with this. Relaunching a number of individual volumes or mini-collections using remnants from cancelled CUA and other Pee-Pub bundles would be nice.
2. Page number tagging for Abingdon Press/other academic Vyrso/Noet Ebooks titles. I'd do it myself for some of those books in return for a free copy of whatever I did it for. Seriously, page number tagging would be more than enough!
3. Versions of Libraries stripped of grammars/original language resources. Maybe I'm the only person who has more resources on ancient languages and whatnot that I care for, but I doubt it. Highly discounted resources that I don't want just make what I do want more expensive, which makes me buy less of it, so FL gets less of my money.
4. Bundle-breaking - there are a number of titles that I would like to pick up that are still in their old Pre-Pub bundles (only), or which are offered as part of Pre-Pub bundles that I otherwise don't care for.
5. More curated Catholic/Verbum bundles - A "Verbum Classic Commentaries Bundle" composed of Catholic and perhaps 'near Catholic' classic commentaries from the giant Classic Commentaries Bundle 3.0 would be pretty high on my wishlist, for example.
“The trouble is that everyone talks about reforming others and no one thinks about reforming himself.” St. Peter of Alcántara
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Let me step back a little and give a totally unrelated case as an example. A little over a year ago, I left Seattle for a small town in the mountains a bit outside the city - far enough outside that there are only big chain grocers - none of the large niche grocers at whom I had regularly shopped. One of my favorite grocers (Central Market) had been going to open a store within 25 miles of me - a thought to warm any tummy. Then they backed out because the industry was changing too quickly - Seattle now has a no checkout Amazon grocery using cell phones (employees only at this point), a chain has opened a preorder only drive up to pick up grocery, and a myriad of companies offer delivery of the necessary ingredients for preplanned meals.
Logos is in an industry that is similarly changing rapidly. But they are like a local chain which must be able to adapt quickly to stay in the market but without the resources of the national chains. Plus they are headed by an ideas man - someone who loves to see new possibilities. So yes, they develop Faithlife groups, Proclaim, Vyrso, Noet, Bible Study Magazine, Soundfaith, Lexham Press, Bible Screen, Every Day Bible, Kirkdale Press, Biblia, Beacon Ads, Faithlife TV, FaithSmiles - and Faithlife News. Some of these are simply repurposing software they already have; some are prototypes to test markets; some are new elements to win at the integration game. They are the Logos strategy for not becoming a store that is unable to expand because of uncertainty as to the future. Logos wants to be a player in shaping the future.
The only time outside of Faithlife I have ever seen customers trying to second guess management to anything close to this extent is when Safeway did a reboot and lost significant market share as they had disastrously misunderstood their market base. They correctly identified where they went wrong and readjusted. Company transparency is usually an issue between the company and its stockholders, not the company and its consumers. As a consumer what I expect from a company is honesty in packaging, labeling, advertising ... and customer service at a level I deem appropriate (I don't expect Nordstrom level service at Costco).
I agree that we should hold Faithlife's feet to the fire with regards to bug fixes, promised resources and tagging - you should get what you were promised was included in your purchase. As an economist would tell you, pricing is related to demand (i.e. the customers' willingness to buy), so if you don't like the pricing vote with your dollars just as you do in any other consumer relationship. But please ... most of us are not business owners and have neither the expertise or desire to be one. Then consider if all the speculation and/or complaining is actually the best use of your time. The best use of my time was to comb the internet and business directories to find grocers who had something I needed or online businesses that could ship it to me. So successful that I even managed to find alligator pepper - related to but not the same as grains of paradise and some would have you believe. [:D]
Orthodox Bishop Alfeyev: "To be a theologian means to have experience of a personal encounter with God through prayer and worship."; Orthodox proverb: "We know where the Church is, we do not know where it is not."
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Cute story.
MJ. Smith said:so if you don't like the pricing vote with your dollars just as you do in any other consumer relationship.
I think that's exactly what people are saying they are doing. The comments come because there is a vested interest involved here. We are not buying groceries - which are perishable, consumed, and there is no expectation of value beyond their eventual consumption.
MJ. Smith said: Then consider if all the speculation and/or complaining is actually the best use of your time.
Why do you call it complaining and not feedback? I wonder if Faithlife sees it the same? That would answer some questions...Hmm...
MJ. Smith said:The best use of my time was to comb the internet and business directories to find grocers
Google "switching costs" for customers - while your story is a nice one and has some relevant points, there is little to no cost to switching to a new grocery store. With Logos/Verbum, costs of switching are very high - and most know that, especially Faithlife. If this was a grocery store I suspect most of the "complainers" would be long gone.
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Don Awalt said:
Why do you call it complaining and not feedback?
Because I am talking about the complaining and not about the feedback? They are not the same thing and both occur in the forums.
But the point was about adaptation not the goods purchased.
Orthodox Bishop Alfeyev: "To be a theologian means to have experience of a personal encounter with God through prayer and worship."; Orthodox proverb: "We know where the Church is, we do not know where it is not."
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Dale E Heath said:
1. Dynamic pricing.
2. On sale for 25% off or more.
3. Already in a discounted bundle.
4. In my wish list.
[Y] On the top of that, if bundle is cheaper that separate resource
"No man is greater than his prayer life. The pastor who is not praying is playing; the people who are not praying are straying." Leonard Ravenhill
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EastTN said:
Much higher resolution images (charts, graphs, pictures, illustrations, etc.) in books. Unless I'm just doing something wrong, it seems that most of the graphic material in the books I have is quite low resolution. For me at least, maps, charts and diagrams are generally much less useful in Logos than they would be in paper form. That's one of my biggest frustrations. I've gotten to where I completely discount the presence of illustrations when deciding whether or not to buy a book, because I go into it assuming they won't have any value to me. And that's so unnecessary. With an electronic version it seems intuitive that you would have high resolution images that you could easily zoom in on.
In most cases, for third-party resources we're dependent on the resolution of the images that the publisher provides. The older the resource, the more likely it is that it's lower-resolution.
On the other hand, for media that Faithlife creates and publishes, we work hard to make sure the resolution is as high as is practical.
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Don Awalt said:
Why do you call it complaining and not feedback? I wonder if Faithlife sees it the same? That would answer some questions...Hmm...
Complaining is annoying, feedback isn't? FL hears the same things, over and over and over, from the same people, me included.
Feedback from the company would be good that something is being done (such as figuring out a new pre-pub policy). Then people could wait and see (and be pleased when the change is announced).
Unfortunately, most things are unacknowledged, such as recurring product page/pricing issues, and lack of dynamic pricing or bundle discounts.
I don't envy FL. It must be hard to keep customers satisfied with the program, satisfied with the quality of the resources, satisfied with the prices or savings, etc.
Thanks to FL for including Carta and a Hebrew audio bible in Logos 9!
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I would buy more if...
- New books came to Logos more quickly. I've bought a number of dead-tree or Kindle books which I needed to read for projects, but which weren't available in Logos. Examples would be Chris Wright's The Mission of God, Fee & Stuart's Old & New Testament Exegesis, a number of books I had to purchase for an MA course I was doing, Tom Wright's 2016 Advent for Everyone, Richard Hays' Reading Backwards, several books by Jamie Smith, and a number of others. I am not sure Logos/Faithlife is doing a good job of checking for what seminaries and theological colleges (or at least those outside the USA) put on their course reading lists. I also wonder if it would help if "reading" books were initially made available with less tagging, and subsequently tagged up. I fully understand why reference books need greater depth of tagging, but a book that I'm just going to read needs Scripture tagging, and it would be helpful to have footnotes hyperlinked to the books they refer to, but not much more is needed for me to be able to read the book fruitfully. If it were made clear at purchase that it was only partially tagged, I'd be fine with that.
- Books from other, newer, theology specialities were available. I started an MA in 2012 which included a module on Practical Theology which has become a theological discipline in itself. Some academic theologians are a bit sniffy about it, but those of us who live in both the academic and pastoral worlds are engaged with it. Not one of the books I needed for the course was available in Logos or Vyrso.
- Books were made more readily available individually, rather than in bundles. I know that discounts are bigger on bundles, and understand why, but if I want a $20 book it's no use to me in a $100 bundle, even if that bundle is normally $200. I have been through the process of acquiring commentaries, lexicons, grammars, systematic theologies and original-language texts and apparatus, and probably won't be buying base packages or bundles in future, but do still buy several books every month (a reducing proportion of which are in Logos format), and many of these are available as part of bundles, but not at a price I can afford.
- More response was made to suggestions for resources on here. I hovered over the "Buy" button on A-Company's website today and very nearly bought the Carta set. These are invaluable for those of us who do significant amounts of teaching, as well as those who preach. It was only the thought of having to switch between applications that put me off, but if I eventually find they're not available in Logos, I will end up becoming a customer of theirs (I've already downloaded their Lite version, which means they'r enow emailing me), and will probably eventually buy other products from them that are also available in Logos, my preferred platform. The Carta resources have been regularly requested on here over a number of years, but nobody has responded (as far as I remember) to say whether they're in the pipeline, Logos won't be offering them, negotiations are on going, or Carta has an exclusivity deal with A-company. If we knew we could plan (or buy elsewhere).
- Logos recognised better that customers have a lifecycle. From Bob's posts on here I can see that this is beginning to be recognised, and Mark's thread on what people have bought year by year has helped. I first got into Logos when I needed a commentary for an Exegesis course that was never available in the library because everyone needed it. I bought it in electronic format (I was studying abroad and weight coming home was a concern). To use it I had to install Libronix software. Then there was a Logos deal going for people at our college and I bought the L4 Leader's Library. Once I became a pastor, I upgraded to Silver just before L5 came out, and later to Platinum and to L6 Platinum when L6 came out. I added some commentary series, textual apparatus and lexicons to make this into a package that made my preparation of teaching and preaching easier, as well as my academic papers. I didn't buy a L7 base package. Since then, I have bought only individual books or small sets as I cannot afford and do not need to do more than that. Logos marketing needs to reach out to people in my stage of the customer lifecycle as well as those building their libraries. I think that things like getting $35 of Logos credit for every $30 you buy if you set up a monthly subscription would be quite enticing to me.
- Logos offered a discount to people in full-time ministry, as well as academic discounts. I really appreciated Academic Discount when I had it, but I don't any more. A-Company offers a 10% discount for those in full-time ministry (as well as a number of other categories).
- Logos didn't make me search across Logos, Verbum, Vyrso, Noet and Noet Ebooks sites. I don't understand the rationale that some of the Counterpoints books are only available on Vyrso, while some are only available on Logos (see the first and second editions of Four Views on Hell). I wrote an Applescript in the end to enable me to search across all the Faithlife online stores in one go. Some of us drink from more than one theological fountain, and it is frustrating to have to try and guess which store we need. I'm a charismatic evangelical with a penchant for Benedictine, Ignatian and Celtic spirituality and Church History. That might be my problem, but I don't want to have to search in up to five different stores to find a book when one search on Amazon will get me the Kindle version.
I hate to disagree with some of the other views, but I'm personally not that excited by massive discounts in sales any more, although I am very pleased when a title I want is on sale. I suspect the lower levels of sale discounts have more to do with tectonic plates moving in the publishing industry than penny-pinching by Faithlife. I'd like to be able to get the books I need for a project at a reasonable price, at the time when I need them for the project I'm working on rather than two or three years after I've bought them in Kindle, dead-tree or A-company format. Sorry to keep mentioning A-company, and I'm not one of their fans, but I do think someone in Faithlife's Marketing team could do with spending an hour or two browsing their website.
In case this sounds like a complaint, I love Logos, use it every day of my life, am an enthusiastic Logos Now subscriber, and have great admiration for the way Bob engages with his customers despite the kickbacks he gets in these forums at times.
Running Logos 6 Platinum and Logos Now on Surface Pro 4, 8 GB RAM, 256GB SSD, i5
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For me 100% it is resources that I want at the time I want them. Getting newly published stuff out more quickly would be huge
Jacob Hantla
Pastor/Elder, Grace Bible Church
gbcaz.org0 -
MJ you call anything you don't agree with as complaining and consider only those things you agree with as feedback. At the end of the day though rhe judgement you have appointed yourself to pass on your fellow customers is not going to stop them from providing feedback to Faithlife regardless of what you might call it.
You say you have no business knowledge - so stop telling your fellow customers, some of whom have more experience, knowledge and qualifications in business and in dealing with customers, particularly the issue of customer engagement, that your opinion is more valid than theirs and that they are simply complaing. For someone who says they have no authority to speak on the subject you are quick to judge the value of what other customers say.
MJ. Smith said:Don Awalt said:Why do you call it complaining and not feedback?
Because I am talking about the complaining and not about the feedback? They are not the same thing and both occur in the forums.
But the point was about adaptation not the goods purchased.
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PetahChristian said:
Complaining is annoying, feedback isn't?
No, it's not. Let's keep it simple and look at the MW (that's MW by the way not MJ) Learner's Dictionary:
http://www.learnersdictionary.com/definition/complain
1) [no object] : to say or write that you are unhappy, sick, uncomfortable, etc., or that you do not like something
2) [+ object] : to say (something that expresses annoyance or unhappiness)
I dont' see nay reference there to annoying or inappropriate or wrong or immoral or anything similar.
PetahChristian said:FL hears the same things, over and over and over, from the same people, me included.
They need to ask themselves why this is the case....
PetahChristian said:
Feedback from the company would be good that something is being done (such as figuring out a new pre-pub policy). Then people could wait and see (and be pleased when the change is announced).
Unfortunately, most things are unacknowledged, such as recurring product page/pricing issues, and lack of dynamic pricing or bundle discounts.
Actually you've just answered why PetahChristian said:FL hears the same things, over and over and over, from the same people, me included.
.They don't bother answering the feedback their customers provide.
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Great sales on great quality resources!
Zondervan might bring back some of the great deals from the past during 12 Days of Logos! Be on the look out for those 👍
DAL
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Tony Thomas said:
Lower prices? Better libraries and bundles? More frequent sales? Just curious.
1. Better customer service - the amount of unanswered customer feedback is increasing. It gives you less trust in the company.
2. Resources of interest - goes without saying really.
3. Sales that are not full of high priced bundles but offer a range of price point options
4. Less reliance on internet for accessing features - Atlas is a big disappointment (did they ever even finish what we payed for in Logos 6 ?) along with things like bible browser.
5. I could search across all store fronts with the one search routine.
6. Either correctly tag bible reference in Vyrso books or publish Theologies, Commentaries, Bible Studies and References etc in Logos format only and leave Vyrso for novels and other titles unrelated to studying the scriptures.
7. Dynamic pricing on all bundles along with "New to Me" view available for all bundles and pricing setup and displayed correctly.
8. Sales that are not based on phoning up someone at Faithlife to find out the price
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Don Awalt said:
1...FL stopped using so much of the money coming into Logos and Verbum for other ventures - Faithlife groups, Proclaim, Vyrso, Noet, Bible Study Magazine, Soundfaith, Lexham Press, Bible Screen, Every Day Bible, Kirkdale Press, Biblia, Beacon Ads, Faithlife TV, FaithSmiles, plus probably more that I missed.....doing some things to branch out is good, but I believe most of these, if not all, are losers of money for now - investments - and the investments come from that which makes the money, Logos and Verbum. If FL would get some focus, there would be money and resources to invest in staff to work on the core product - and it's going to take a lot of users to replace 25 heavy users of Logos who drop their spending considerably, for example. Faithlife is resource strapped right now, we are told as much on the forums - how many 1 or very small person departments are there these days? How many Logos/Verbum related projects are on hold indefinitely? No money, no people - it's going to other ventures, and the product suffers.
2...FL updated the web site and made it much more functional to the needs of its users. It's substandard for today's world in so many ways. It's also probably very hard to maintain and requires a lot of manual work to do every day tasks, likely with home grown code written by people no longer in the company, and as we have seen very prone to mistakes. How many problems with forum posts, pricing, inaccurate information, delays in product information being updated, inability to correctly deal with spam, inconsistencies in how something appears one place vs. another, etc.?
3. ...FL invested in fixing the bugs, clumsy user interface, performance issues, Mac stability issues, and incomplete features instead of continuing to heap more new features that a small percentage of the user base needs or asks for - a symptom of the dream of subscription based software that drives the continual need to find new customers and advertise a growing list of features. No one can use all the features heavily in the product any more on any desktop computer, the performance and stability is so bad if they do. Logos/Verbum is getting more and more challenging to use, and its features are getting less and less cooperative with other features when thinking about how to do Bible study. With the growth in library sizes and new features, how well do you think the product will work in 2-3 years? I would think you would get a lot more new subscribers by having forum users that exhibit how happy heavy users are with the product - it runs so well, so easy to use - instead of trying to have the longest list of new features. Quality software sells a lot of product.
4. ...FL was more transparent. The issues have been there for awhile. - It seems FL fails to understand that acknowledging issues and committing to do something about it buys a lot of loyalty. Is there any evidence that FL sees any of these bigger issues as problems? Doesn't that seem odd that we would have to wonder about it? Why have some big problems been left unaddressed for years? At some point more customers scale back or stop buying entirely, no matter how alluring the sales are, if they think there are problems and the company won't even acknowledge or discuss the
Very true Don. Of the things you list in point 1 above I do think Lexham Press is a worthwhile ventures. Faithlife TV along with Proclaim and Logos Now are FL's way of trying to claw back some of the revenue being lost by long term customers with large libraries now reaching the end of their free spending lifecycle by introducing a regular committed flow of cash into the business that they can bank on having each month.
Don Awalt said:I used to think my world would end if Faithlife went away, the product experience and community engagement was so good.
was is the key word Don..
I dont' expect all of the above to be fixed right away or even in the next 12 months but some progress needs to be made on the things you raise here Don. But you do raise some quick wins, particularly in stopping redirecting their resources to side projects that add little value and simply start communicating with their customers in a more transparent way. For the bigger items, even if FL said in 2017 we'll work on getting the website fixed, that would be a positive step forward.
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Criticism vs. Feedback--Which One Wins, Hands-Down? in two parts.
from another source Know the Difference Between a Customer Complaint & Customer Feedback:
[quote]
There are subtle differences as you move across the spectrum. For example, here are three different ways a customer could contact you about the same topic:
• The complaint: “I can’t believe you don’t ________! I’m never doing business with you again!”
• The question: “We’ve just bought your product, and we’re wondering if it can ______?”
• The suggestion: “We’re frequent customers of yours and really enjoy your product/service. We’d like to suggest you ________.”
The first example is a complaint and should be handled with service recovery in mind. If it’s made on your Facebook page or other social media platform remember, others, including your evangelists, are watching. Take the complaint professionally, not personally. Think before you respond, then do so in a calm manner with the intent not only to retain the customer but to increase his or her loyalty to you.
The second example is a customer who requesting information. You have an opportunity here to increase their loyalty.
The third example is from a customer evangelist. This is a small group of people who are your biggest fans and who frequently refer others to you. They offer you a suggestion that will increase your profits because then they will be able to engage with you more often which they enjoy doing. You do not want to mishandle this suggestion. An appropriate response can strengthen their loyalty thereby increasing their lifetime value to you. This is true even when there is no way in heck you can implement their suggestion. Fumbling the response can crush or severely damage their loyalty to you costing you profits in direct sales and referrals.
If you cannot meet their need, be especially careful how you respond. Generally, your employee handling the response is not in a position to change organization policy. Rather than saying, “No,” your employee should tell the person he or she will communicate their suggestion up to a higher level. Then have that person reply (perhaps off-line in the case of social media.) For an example of how not to do it, see my recent post, Squelching Customer Feedback Is A Bad Social Media Policy.
Orthodox Bishop Alfeyev: "To be a theologian means to have experience of a personal encounter with God through prayer and worship."; Orthodox proverb: "We know where the Church is, we do not know where it is not."
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So you can run a google search....
MJ. Smith said:Criticism vs. Feedback--Which One Wins, Hands-Down? in two parts.
from another source Know the Difference Between a Customer Complaint & Customer Feedback:
... and what you have chosen to share only strengthens the concern customers are raising about the lack of response from Faithlife about complaints in general.
MJ. Smith said:The first example is a complaint and should be handled with service recovery in mind. If it’s made on your Facebook page or other social media platform remember, others, including your evangelists, are watching. Take the complaint professionally, not personally. Think before you respond, then do so in a calm manner with the intent not only to retain the customer but to increase his or her loyalty to you.
Too often FL leaves it up to their MVP's to respond to a complaint which is totally unfair. MVP's do not represent the company and they have no authority to resolve the complaint. The response of MVP's i see in situations such as this:
MJ. Smith said:The complaint: “I can’t believe you don’t ________! I’m never doing business with you again!”
i.e. frustrated / distressed customers, demonstrates, MVPs are not equipped to handle these situations, and often results in long unpleasant posts on these forums because of how MVP's try to resolve but only make the situation worse.
I would be amiss though if I did not acknowledge there are some FL employees who do try to respond to customers when time allows them to do so, and heir efforts are appreciated..
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Disciple of Christ (doc) said:
... and what you have chosen to share only strengthens the concern customers are raising about the lack of response from Faithlife about complaints in general.
That was intentional so that the difference between complaining and feedback was emphasized without any implication that the feedback on the forums was inappropriate.
Sorry you did not appreciate my clarifying the distinction I see between the terms and providing links to information I thought relevant to the conversation. I considered it appropriate because it was my use of the terms that caused the original confusion. I am very aware that there is a subset of forum readers with whom I have trouble communicating in a clear, unambiguous style. I am also aware that there is always a period of second guessing marketing and feature selection after a major upgrade release. This particular time the tone of the forum caused me to pull back in reading the forums and temporarily suspend the TIP of the day.
Orthodox Bishop Alfeyev: "To be a theologian means to have experience of a personal encounter with God through prayer and worship."; Orthodox proverb: "We know where the Church is, we do not know where it is not."
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