I have recently been watching the public twitter stream of the word Lotus (some might say obsessing). First, it is amazing how many people twitter about the lotus flower, lotus position, clubs called "
Lotus", and the Lotus automobile line. Side note: If you want a decent Twitter search string, try lotus -position -elise -flying -flower -yoga -lounge
I was specifically looking for complaints about Lotus software. There are far fewer than I thought there would be. I am only finding about 3 or 5 per day from the public stream. In fact, the praise outweighs the complaints significantly. Almost all of the complaints have been generic, like "Lotus Notes sucks". But hey, you only get 140 characters so I didn't expect a lot of detail. Each time I spotted one, I would reply to it and offer assistance if they would provide more detail. Most people didn't respond. My hypothesis is that most people don't want to have their minds changed about something they "like to dislike." However, most that did, quickly revealed that their complaints were not actually legitimate "suckage" of Lotus Notes, but rather poor implementation, poor management, or lack of training. Many were running 6.0, which is 6 or 7 years old now. Now wonder they're displeased. The only legitimate complaint with 8.5 was about sluggishness on PC's with less than 2 GB RAM, which I'll acknowledge. In almost all cases, I'd say that I was able to significantly diminish if not completely resolve their complaint, or at least inform them that they should upgrade to a more recent version before giving up on it.
So I encourage you. The next time you see or hear someone complaining about Lotus Notes, ask them why, then help them realize the truth.
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1 Ed Brill Permalink Nice work engaging the skeptics, Scott. I think there's a lot of room for end-user education to increase satisfaction in many, many Notes organizations.
2 Marie L Scott Permalink Scott - we're able to resolve many of the 8.5 complaints with basic PC tuning if they have at least 1 GB RAM. I've also seen many XP workstations that have been neglected in terms of maintenance which leads to poor application performance -- and not just with Lotus Notes. But Notes takes the hit for exactly for the reasons you describe. Great post!
3 Tony Frazier Permalink I have also been watching the Twitter stream and inquiring to some of the comments. Sometimes I get useful conversation, sometimes not. I think we even tagged some of the same folks recently!
Usually, like you, I find people using older versions of
Notes/Domino, unable, or unwilling, to upgrade. Most are end users
with no control over the issue. Then there are some that just want
to be heard and complain no matter what.
The search string I have been using is: "lotus notes" OR domino
-pizza -pizzas -fats -"xvid-domino" -domino's
Amazing how many folks comment on the pizza chain!
4 Simon O'Doherty Permalink Blogged internally on this some time back.
Twitter is not a good system for determining how well a product is
doing. You hit most of the reasons why.
Responding has to be done where you think the person wants a
solution. Where responses are issues with some more history I've
been pointing them to LDD .
At least that way if they need help they can give more details.
5 Scott Hooks Permalink I agree and disagree Simon. If someone WANTS to solve a problem, Twitter might not be the best channel. However, I do think that Twitter can be at least one indicator of diverse global user satisfaction (or perhaps DISsatisfaction) with a product of say 140 million users. Consider the recent changes to Twitter or Facebook, or the performance problems that Google had earlier this week. All were wildly jeered on Twitter due to user dissatisfaction. My observation is that there are a lot of people who like to vent on Twitter. If the argument is that Notes can not be compared to those services, try monitoring the stream for complaints on Vista.
My assertion is simply that if Notes were really that bad, then
there would be more legitimate complaints than I observed, and that
the complaints would be legitimate rather than the result of poor
implementation, outdated versions, and lack of user training.
I think we're on the same page though.
All due respect Simon, I'm afraid that I have to disagree if your
assertion is that Twitter does not give at least some insight into
user satisfaction with a product. Forums and Twitter have 2 very
different audiences. My opinion is that the users of forums are
mostly technical people who have responsibility to solve a problem.
6 Simon O'Doherty Permalink @5. Here is the reason I don't think Twitter is a good medium.
When notes is not working, people will complain. So for complaining
Twitter is fine. You can vent your problems. But the limited text
doesn't give a full context. So it is very hard to determine which
is a vent, and which is a request for help.
Now when notes is working fine a person is being productive so they
aren't going to be using Twitter to say "Notes is running as
normal" unless that is not the norm.
Also when a person gets something solved they don't always twitter
about it either. So all you see is the complaint for ever and ever.