FF update problems. Support offline (20)
Its been more than 2 month of using FF. We are dissapointed.
Support and update service are 2 great problems of this project.
1) We did update 3-4 times. And had 1 great shutdown in October (like 10 hours down) and now after last update it looks like 1/2 of tracker is not working.
2) We asked help via ticket system. And no answer yet. Although it was more than 24 hours since we created it.
1 and 2 are two separate questions. We even don't create new ticket on 1st problem because they have not answer on the 2nd one.
No skype. no chat. no phone.
We are dissapointed.
Hi,
It hurts reading this and I'm feeling bad about it - I just logged into the support desk and I think I have replied to your message as I saw one that didn't get any reply from the staff yet. I think it was yours eventhough the username doesn't match.
Please, also send in your 2nd request about the upgrade issue. We have 2 sys admins online.
I'm really sorry about the delay.
This was one of the reasons I went with
The platform was awesome, but support was too slow.
Would love to hear how (if?) this has improved in the last 3-4 months as it looked like it had a lot of potential.
Well, to be honest, it depends on the days. Some tickets get replied in a few minutes while others are slower. Some customers tell us that we have the best customer support ever, while others get angry (and I understand why).
The truth is that we are trying to keep up with the growth but it's very difficult to find and train good support staff. We have added some more staff those last 3 months but it's clearly not enough yet.
I actually find it quite challenging, because our ideal employee would be an affiliate, but affiliates don't work for a salary.
If anyone has experience in this field, I welcome all suggestions: How do you guys find/train/retain very good support staff?
Anyone here interested in working with us?
Originally Posted by vitavee
Still interested in the platform so PM me if you're going to be in Bangkok.
With regards to support. Personally, the biggest issue was onboarding. Its a new way of tracking and I think the videos you had up were outdated—so I found myself having to ask support some basic questions.
Suggestions based on no experience at all:
- Go through support tickets and create FAQs for basic stuff and Guides/videos for slightly more complicated setups (keep these up to date)
- Getting new support staff to go through the process of setting up campaigns, run a little traffic to it and figure out if its working
- Reward them for each ticket answered within a certain timeframe
If you haven't heard of Buffer, check out their hiring/training process for support (https://buffer.com/journey/happiness-hero).
I agree with thenjp. Update the videos and documentation and it will be easier to handle support.
Originally Posted by vitavee
While I worked for Oracle Consulting I sometimes used to help out Oracle Support, which is basically a totally separate beast.
The 'best' support staff were indeed either folks who had spent time in the dirt on customer sites and afterwards decided to take a step back and work remotely in the support organisation.
The second category were developers who had build the products and who also had the skill to communicate in a way which allowed non-tech folks to understand what they were talking about.
I think for Funnelflux it might make more sense to look in the 2nd category because majority of affiliates will have a hard time ignoring the data/info that they will be exposed to without trying to benefit from that themselves.
Further I agree with above suggestion and have always been a big fan of proactive support as well.
Basically for every single support request that arrives, you need to ask yourself the question 'Why did this person have to raise this request, and what can I do so that nobody will ever need to raise a similar request ever again'.
That's not possible, but your aim is to get as very close as possible to it.
It might feel counterintuitive to spend time on creating knowledge articles etc. while an organization might be flooded with support tickets, but it's the best way to win the battle.
You start benefiting even more from this when your ticketing system automatically proposes the relevant related knowledge articles, right before a lazy human tries to submit a new support ticket.
Also, since we're on the topic of support:
- I accidentally discovered this week that a feature I had requested has been added to Funnelflux.
It was a great surprise :-) but it would be better if the support system sends out an automatic email when a feature request is changed to 'completed'.
- When support tickets get closed because the bug gets transferred to your internal bug tracking system, then I'm not sure there's still a clear feedback loop back to the customer once the bug gets solved.
- The release notes are not always complete and therefore features go live and stay under the radar (as happened to me).
There's always room for improvement, but personally I'm satisfied with support, and more than happy with the speed and frequency at which new functionality gets implemented.
FWIW:
I'm new to paid traffic and FunnelFlux was the option I chose. So I can't compare my experience to other platforms..
I can say that there have been many times I've been very frustrated with the amount of time it takes to receive an answer, and the support documentation is outdated. And recently an update broke my server - they issued a patch that would've fixed it 12 hours later, but for some reason I received no notification.
This resulted in me pulling my hair out trying to find what was wrong with my campaign, spending about 1k in traffic over 7 days that for the most part got served a 504 bad gateway message instead of a lander (being a noob I assumed it was a spy-tool blocking feature when I was testing my funnel links, but at that point did submit a ticket checking to be sure), and then waiting longer-than-I-should for support to confirm the issue, investigate it, and resolve it. Nearly 72 hours in total wait time.
As compensation they did issue a 1 month credit.
All of that said, I'm not leaving. I do believe that they're the best option out there because their features - once you learn how to use their system - truly are leagues above everyone else's.
When other trackers start integrating Bayes modeling into their drill-down reports, the ability to visually set up complex traffic flows with a few clicks of a mouse, and a UI that generally looks modern and inviting - then the playing field will be a little bit more level. But for these reasons I'm sticking with FF, in spite of their shortcomings.
Just chiming in here.
Currently using both FF and
To be honest love FF for the funnels, but that's just it. The other features not so much.
- Support is slow, videos/documentation are outdated, yes.
- Reports are not really accurate. Trying to find out the reason why with the help of support, but perhaps I'll not even bother.
- Occasionally get the 504 bad gateway timeout (including last night too), thought I was the only one. And it's worse if you're on the recommended vultr.com servers, everything is self-managed.
Thanks everyone for the feedback.
I'm going to use this as fuel for improving greatly in the support area - taking immediate action to fix those frustrating parts.
Big thanks to @thenjp and @mindfume for their ideas - we'll implement those.
Also trying to find some more support staff, so if anyone is interested, please PM me.
Just on a side note, this thread may give the impression that we're VERY bad for support. While we're definitely not perfect, I need to mention that the majority of our customers are satisfied as can be seen in this screenshot:
We'll work harder to have everyone satisfied though!
Just wanted to add my two cents.. I switched from
Updating here:
My FunnelFlux tracker (hosted on vultr.com) went down again. Didn't realize until I notice my offer clicks/conversions halted totally.
And of course vultr.com support says no support, you're on your own.
So I'm stuck with no idea why it went down or how to prevent it from happening again.
Not complaining here, but want to ask:
- any idea why it happens and how to prevent it?
- which managed hosting do you recommend, so I can move my FF installation over from vultr.com?
- or is it not even due to the server, but FF itself?
1) There are third-party monitor services that even send you a text for a very low monthly fee when your server goes down
2) Personal experience with BeyondHosting and LiquidWeb. Not 100% uptime but both their support systems are beyond 5 stars. You can get a live hold of them within minutes every time.
3) No issues with FF whatsoever. I'm also hosting it on a 2gb Vultr box
Thanks mihalis09.
1. I guess that helps, although I'll still have no idea why the server goes down at all. Still trying to find out why, and I'm not even running pop traffic to the server. 
Kindly recommend the 3rd party monitoring service that you use if possible.
2. I've used both Beyondhosting and Liquidweb before. Would like to know if vitavee would recommend other hosts that work best with FF.
3. Good for you. I'm also on the 2gb box, but this is the 3rd or 4th time (that I'm aware of) my tracker has gone down.
I don't have any experience with FF, but when approached online chat for a few details I wanted to know, the response was pretty fast.
One thing I can tell for sure is that customer support and quality of service can be built mostly on negative feedback. There are lots of big companies out there like HP that will leave an open ticket for weeks and no one botheres answering. Or even like those phone supports that keep you like 90minutes on hold!
Fortunately for FF this thread can become useful and take advantage of problems pointed out to build a better product 
Originally Posted by talez
1. I guess that helps, although I'll still have no idea why the server goes down at all. Still trying to find out why, and I'm not even running pop traffic to the server.
Kindly recommend the 3rd party monitoring service that you use if possible.
2. I've used both Beyondhosting and Liquidweb before. Would like to know if vitavee would recommend other hosts that work best with FF.
3. Good for you. I'm also on the 2gb box, but this is the 3rd or 4th time (that I'm aware of) my tracker has gone down.
Where is this mysterious "online chat" for support some people are talking about? I can't seem to find it?
I've put in a ticket and been waiting a good while for a response so looks like things haven't improved greatly so far 
Definitely a different support experience compared to
The online chat is accessible from our homepage at https://www.funnelflux.com/
There is a badge on the left saying "Live Chat"... when no one is available, it changes to "Contact Us".
Your ticket was sent before the weekend and you got a reply a few hours ago this Monday. Your request was very specific, so it's not something you can just ask and receive within the next hour - I see the team created an article and some custom code just for you here:
https://support.funnelflux.com/99384...-on-User-Input
I don't believe you would have had a better reply from the support of other trackers for your specific question, as I think they don't have the ability to do what you were trying to achieve.
Originally Posted by vitavee
The FF team went out of their way to product a knowledge base article complete with videos and code snippets for my particular use case... very happy with their response and I consider the support I received to be of an excellent standard!
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