Review business operations impact before launching features / changes
While we appreciate the improvements in the platform, it doesn’t seem like much thought was given to business operations impact of our customers. Yes, we are your customers (agencies), but our customers are ultimately the end-users.
Recently, new campaigns were launched. While the new campaigns are far better, there were no options for businesses on the platform to keep legacy plans. No date was given when the old would be deprecated, and there wasn’t an option for businesses to use both at the same time…
This pissed off a lot of my customers. And I knew it would. After all, they’re running their businesses & very involved, and now they can’t even download old data from the old campaigns (recipient & campaign details).
I’d say I’m asking that, in the future, if there is a big change to a feature where something will no longer be available or disrupt the way a business may currently be doing something we:
1. Get feedback from the agencies in how this might impact current customers, and how that might be minimized / eliminated.
Offer the option to keep the legacy feature in tandem with the new feature, if it’s warranted.
Give solid dates & timelines on deprecations, or leave it open-ended based on client feedback.
Allow a smoother transition. In this case, could we simply have “upgraded” existing campaigns instead of deleted them altogether?
Now that EMR is growing in size, I think more consideration will need to be given about structural feature changes that might impact a customer’s operation. If we don’t, it’ll decrease customer satisfaction, cost our customers money, and ultimately hurt our reputation & ability to retain those customers.
Thanks for the work you’ve done on this! Please let me know how I can help in the future.
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Comments4
mannie@embedmyreviews.com
Jul 15, 2024
@Patrick I suggest posting this in the group on FB. The campaigns were not automatically switched on for customers but only for newly created locations unless they had no old campaigns.
We are maintaining the legacy campaigns until the end of this year and we WILL give an advance notice on when these will be switched off (see below was shared in the change log)
Exporting out the old campaign templates was not possible since the templates are now provided by the platform. Settings we could have exported out but at this stage of the platform we need to move fast (early-bird phase). Things will settle down over this year and most changes will not be as drastic as campaigns.
Here is the upgrade guide from the change-log for this feature: https://roadmap.embedmyreviews.com/changelog/fresh-way-to-send-review-requests-email-sms-video
mannie@embedmyreviews.com
Jul 15, 2024
@Patrick Brennan also they can use both but under different locations. The way the new campaigns work does not allow us to use both the legacy version and the new version together.
This is the reason we are maintaining support until the end of the year.
But like I said this the first feature where it would have a major impact on existing users and I don’t see any future upgrades/changes that will have this kind of impact so I don’t see an issue here.
Patrick
Jul 15, 2024
I’m aware of all of this.
It still caused major disruptions in our clients’ businesses. I think my suggestions are still relevant. Perhaps if you decide to do a major change like this again, you can think about how customers can “migrate” instead of lose the data completely.
1 - Is migration possible?
2 - Can you keep legacy campaigns active “indefinitely”, if the customer chooses?
3 - Can you run the two side-by-side? I.e., new feature is for all future, while existing can remain on (or migrate to) the old feature?
This would’ve made it a much smoother transition for all customers on the platform. That’s why I’m suggesting it here, that you simply add this to your development lifecycle, as part of the process, to at least consider the business impact, Esp. now that EMR has grown significantly! That, to me, is a feature request. :-)
Thanks for your consideration.
mannie@embedmyreviews.com
Jul 15, 2024
This is feedback but not a feature request 🙂
Thanks for your feedback and I understand your concerns here but I felt this was not a forced change at all. Customers could continue to use the legacy campaigns until the end of the year. Though supporting a feature like this indefinitely at this stage of the platform is not something I want to risk.
I will answer each of your points below:
1 - Is migration possible?
Possible for future but this was only going to be an issue with campaigns going forward we don’t see a major upgrade like this. Campaigns was the only feature that I was personally not happy on how this was developed from a technical perspective. IF there are further changes that have a “drastic“ impact we will look at migrations (if they are possible).
2 - Can you keep legacy campaigns active “indefinitely”, if the customer chooses?
No we want to avoid this kind of technical debt especially while we are still in the early bird phase. If we have to maintain legacy features indefinitely this will cripple the platform long-term. But like I said campaigns was the only feature were this required such a drastic change.
We don’t intend to keep the legacy campaigns beyond this year but will give advance notice to agencies once we have a date.
3 - Can you run the two side-by-side? I.e., new feature is for all future, while existing can remain on (or migrate to) the old feature?
This is how it was working with the new campaigns. You could use both under different locations (same organization). The same location could not use both versions.
I think your customers will be happy with the new campaigns and the additional insights etc that this upgrade brings 🙂
I also highly recommend that you subscribe to the change log: https://roadmap.embedmyreviews.com/changelog this way you will know in advance of changes coming and we will use these subscribers to notify of any big changes that are on the way.