April
12
2008
So, some of the buzz coming out of WordCamp – Dallas was for a new web analytics product called “Woopra” – a Java-based analytics app.
According to my email, I signed up on March 30, 2008 – 14 days ago. At the time, I was unable to configure a site because although I could register for the service, setting up a site required an invitation – which I didn’t have and there were no instructions for getting one. The next day, the invitation was made ‘optional’ so I was able to add this site. However, adding the site just sent me into a queue and I received the message that I would hear back regarding site approval within 7 days – this was 13 days ago.
Two or three days ago (don’t remember which since it was a form on woopra.com and I didn’t receive even an automated recognition of the submission) I sent a support request via the woopra website asking for a status on the site approval. Nope, haven’t heard a word.
I was just cruising the forums over at woopra and there’s a whole topic dedicated to the approval timeline. According to CEO John Pozadzides, Woopra is too busy with other things like a site redesign, bug fixes and infrastructure scaling to take care of approvals – or customer service apparently.
I’m a web analyst and I like to evaluate web analytics packages when I can, I’ve had as many as six running on this site concurrently (don’t try that at home – it’s like going down the rabbit hole not to mention the impact to load times) seeing how things work and blogging about them from time to time.
Of course, with Woopra so far behind the customer service curve I’m just peeved enough to write a review with the information I have at hand.
Woopra had set my expectation for one week, in one week after sign up I was to know the status of my approval. Seven days came and went and there has been no communication. No resetting of my expectations no “Woops! We’re sorry” – not a peep.
So, it would seem that the folks at Woopra weren’t prepared for their launch and are managing poorly. Instead of focusing – at least a little – on managing mine, and others’ expectations as well as other aspects of customer service they are busy launching a redesign a couple of weeks after their launch.
How would I rate Woopra so far?
- Technology: UNK
- Core Reporting: UNK
- Segmentation: UNK
- Campaign Analysis: UNK
- Intra-Page Event Analysis: UNK
- ECommerce Analysis: UNK
- Multimedia Analysis: UNK
- Data Visualization & Exploration: UNK
- Customer Service: Non Existent
I also checked their official blog and there’s no discussion of the approval process or problems nor is it discussed in the FAQ so it would seem that the only place to talk about it is in the forum since support requests seem to be in an endless queue.
I found one of the co-founders on Twitter and there’s no discussion there about how the flood of sign-ups has derailed their customer service. I wonder what @jowyang would say about their apparent lack of social media strategy and management?
I guess my point is this: Even if you (or Woopra) think of yourselves as a technology company, at the end of the day people use the technology and you need to spend at least the same amount of time on us, your customers (or potential customers), as you do on your technology and service and I’m not feeling that at the moment.
Has anyone else signed up for Woopra and gotten a site approved (since the launch at WordCamp)?
Anyone in on the private beta beforehand that would like to tell us about the service?
Tags: customer service, Web Analytics, woopra
Messing that badly in such a cut throat market?? Well, they’d be better off closing the company right away…
Clint,
John Pozadzides was my co-organizer of WordCamp Dallas, and he approached me about a week prior bubbling with excitement to offer one of the first official Beta accounts. In the weeks since, I’ve stopped using all other stats packages and have the Woopra client running continuously in the background. It’s an astounding program that I have no doubt will only improve with time.
I was aware John had intended to preview or “tease”, if you will, our attendees during his session at WordCamp Dallas, but I did not know he intended to issue Beta invites to all 150+ people there. After I’d introduced him to Cali Lewis and Neal Campbell I had to leave them to attend to other things, and then found out he’d previewed the program for them and videoed it to boot for their video podcast, GeekBrief.tv.
In the video, John explicitly says that the program was only being rolled out that day to 200 invited Beta testers and that there would be a period while they scaled up to meet the expected demand. He requested patience and assured everyone that everyone who signed up would be given an account, but that it would take some time.
Now, your observation about customer service has everything to do with your expectations, and you’re entitled to your frustration, but keep in mind that this is a free program being offered by a company made up entirely of three employees at present: two programmers and one executive/blogger who is also the CMO of a large grid web hosting corporation. I know for a fact that he works 7 days a week for nearly 20 hours a day.
Yes, I agree their customer service is lacking, but the (premature) launch was barely 2 weeks ago! Please be patient with them.
Charles,
thanks for your story. Glad to see that you think highly of the product and the team!
While I appreciate the ‘free’ aspect of Woopra and the challenges that brings, I still see CS as a problem. The word coming out of Dallas didn’t seem to include any information about it still being private beta nor was this message on the site anywhere. I would have been perfectly willing to wait if I had been communicated to in a clear way.
The sign up process didn’t make it clear as to the status of the beta either. In fact, on the first try it felt more like a broken sign-up process (something that was re-enforced the following day with the removal of the invitation code requirement) than it did a private beta.
I am relatively patient, perfectly willing to wait until they are ready to get me started on Woopra but they need to manage my expectations on that. The original expectation was set at 7 days and that came and went so the time budget, which they gave me, expired without any word from them.
I think I was reasonable, I waited 2 or 3 days after the 7 days went by before I sent a request to support and then waited another 2 or 3 days before I wrote the post. It’s important to note that after my initial registration confirmation email I didn’t receive any direct communication from Woopra about anything.
Thanks again.
-Clint
[...] Clint from Instant Cognition – woopra, hoopla? [...]
[...] Instant Cognition – Woopra Hoopla? [...]
Sorry to see you had such an experience, the fact of the matter is that it’s still a beta, the beta was released a few weeks ago, it got so much of a buzz that a lot people actually thought it was a fully released product… Although it’s not very apparent, but looking at the Woopra logo you see a small beta underneath. I got a small competition running on my blog, you’re more than welcomed to give it a try, the reward is an invitation to Woopra.
@Johny: Thanks for the commisseration. I’ve been in touch with the founders so everything is OK. I’ll leave your contest for others.
“…Although it’s not very apparent…” That was the whole problem. The buzz coming out of WC was all about the new product, and not that it was still in private beta, nor did the site indicate in anyway that it was in private beta.
Miscommunicating to your potential and actual customers can be a killer, which is what I was pointing out.
Thanks again for the commiseration, the offer and the explanation.
1) On April 2nd asked for an invite: the members area @ http://www.woopra.com/members/ area shows as satus of the request: ‘pending approval’
2) Used the contact form @ http://www.woopra.com/contact/ and asked when a reaction could be expected
No answer ever since
Still no news from Woopra; methinks this could be some sort of e-mail address harvesting scheme, with the promise of interactive chatwith your visitors
Cheers,
Julien
@Julien Coquet: It’s not a scam, they just haven’t figured out the customer service/messaging side yet. After my rant, I was contacted by the founders and they went ahead and approved my site – now I have to write a review of the product
!
But it seems that they are still buried under development tasks and beyond a blog post or two haven’t quite addressed the CS issue, although, apparently on Friday (4/25) they are starting a “mass approval process”
BTW, I tried to open a chat with you, but I think you had already bailed…
With the new release this weekend, many are getting approved to start using the Woopra site.
I wrote up a video review if you are interested here:
http://jeftek.com/web/video-review-of-woopra-web-analytics/
Jef
@Jef: thanks Jef, I will be sure to check out your video – I need Silverlight first though
I have to second Charles. I was there and the excitement in the room as only those there were handed the exclusive invites was amazing – and privileged. The WordPress Community is filled with people experienced at beta testing and this was a great opportunity to stretch the testing. Little did John and everyone know that this would be covered by Cali and Neal and then TechCrunch and Mashable within a few hours. There were only 200 invites!
Within a few hours, the site which was new and still in development, went nuts and people were applying for their own invites like crazy. In a few weeks, more than 10,000 applications were submitted for approval! John had to jump immediately to get new servers and funding to cover all the excitement. So much for 200 testers.
I just heard recently that they’ve now approved those 10,000 and in 4 days, got 10,000 more. I don’t quite know how this is going to work out, but a lot of time has gone into handling all these approvals, opening and migrating servers, handling all the inquiries…the team is up for it, but it’s small and doing the best they can.
Still, 10,000 beta testers and growing. That’s a lot. WordPress certainly didn’t have that in the early days.
Nor did anyone else. This is a lesson in the modern web. Don’t say anything public until you are ready to serve 10K users plus. 
Woopra is up for it, so stay tuned. I expect great thing. Look how they handled the first few weeks!
@Lorelle: Thanks for stopping by – I’m a fan of your blog!
The crux of my issue as you so rightly point out is “Don’t say anything public until you are ready to serve 10K users plus”.
From a CS perspective, John and team were caught unprepared and that’s a no-no for any company regardless of size or maturity.
We got Woopra approval in under a week, so I can’t speak to your troubles with the registration process, however the site states that it is still a beta product, and thus not ready for public consumption. However, having said this – the program works well, and has some nice features. It doesn’t pick up all interaction with the site, and it also doesn’t keep a running log of visitors that I’ve been able to find anyway. The ability to send a broadcast or individual message via chat client through the site is an interesting feature though. Give it a little time – hopefully they can get the bugs worked out in short order – because if they do, there won’t be much need for any other analytics tool.