Lower prices? Better libraries and bundles? More frequent sales? Just curious.
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.
Yes, an improving system of organizing resources and locating them.
It is getting too bloated...and Logos 7 did not address my need.
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.
Resources that meet my interests.
More mobile ed courses in CP. I always end up buying 3 or 4 of the books referenced.
[Y] Sales for items on our wish list would work well too.
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.
I'm always looking for good deals and especially am motivated to purchase when those good deals include resources that interest me.
A longer life to read and apply those books...
OR A Faithlife-assisted way to absorb and apply the wisdom in those books faster...
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.
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.
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...
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]
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.
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)]
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.
How can I search Logos to research whether Logos will be available in the new heaven and new earth? [;)]
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.
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.
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.
Agreed [:D]
I hope that the Faithlife leadership team and marketing folks are reading this.
They really should be Tony Thomas
Because they are losing money, and also losing customers.
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.
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.
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.
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
Buy only as needed anymore.
Am with you Whyndell Grizzard
I only buy as needed, and that's it.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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]
Cute story.
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.
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...
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
I would buy more if...
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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....
Actually you've just answered why 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.
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
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
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
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.
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.
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.
So you can run a google search....
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.
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:
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..
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.
