Great Product, Iffy Standard Support
September 15, 2018
Great Product, Iffy Standard Support
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with ETO by Social Solutions
We use ETO as a client information management tool for our entire organization. It provides a centralized place to locate a client's demographics and history that facilitates both service provision and aggregated data reporting for funder compliance.
- Web-based data entry allows for real-time data entry from staff in off-site offices and in the field.
- Highly customizable data entry options and security rules make it well suited to comprehensive service providers where goals and service delivery approach may vary greatly by service type.
- ETO Results, the built-in reporting tool, is very flexible and powerful, automating and replacing much of what we previously did in MS Excel.
- If an issue cannot be immediately addressed by fist tier customer support, it can take an incredibly long time to get answers, let alone a solution. First tier support seems friendly and willing to help, so I can only assume it's a shortage of staff to diagnose and solve the actual problems.
- Account managers change at the drop of a hat and this frequently is communicated poorly. Actually, communication in general can be a challenge.
- Social Solutions seems a bit out of touch with the non-profit market and is less responsive than it used to be. While I realize this is a some what unavoidable development as their customer base increases, one of the original draws to ETO was the company's ability to respond to customers and help us make the most out of what we'd purchased.
- Non-profits often do not have funds for extras, such as sending staff to national conferences. These opportunities, while wonderful, involve not only the conference fees, but transportation and hotel costs as well. It would be nice if Social Solutions offered more regional opportunities (which would make costs more achievable for our budgets) or online options (which would again increase accessibility, even if the offerings couldn't be as robust).
- Positive impact: our ability to adapt our data capture methods and reporting tools allowed us to increase both private and government funding (both in number of grants and amount of funding provided) while decreasing the time needed to generate our reports (reduced staff costs per grant and increased staff availability for other reports/agency needs) .
- Negative impact: I can't begin to quantify the unnecessary amount of time lost trying to get useful updates about our support tickets and then find other ways to work around our problems when customer support couldn't provide useful, timely solutions. (One example among many: You've used a report for over a year. Unexpectedly, it doesn't work two weeks before your next report is due, because the universe isn't flattening correctly. You then waste time trying to get updates from support about actually fixing it (a solution) and asking them to manually flatten it (a temporary solution for the immediate time-sensitive problem), and then you have to start doing things by hand or accept that there's going to be X amount of data missing from your report or tell the funder your report will be late all because no one in support seems to have any answers. We have actually had this happen at different time for several different reports used for various compliance purposes and utilized all three of the DIY approaches.)
Given the diversity of the services we offer and the vastly different service goals/models of those programs, ETO is the only program we've found that offers us the flexibility we need in both data entry and reporting. Also, many of our funding requirements change annually and/or on short notice. As a result, it is essential we can build and update our own reports, as we often, we lack both the funding and time to wait for these reports to be commissioned.
ETO by Social Solutions Support
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
Knowledgeable team Support understands my problem Support cares about my success Quick Initial Response | Slow Resolution Poor followup Problems left unsolved Escalation required Difficult to get immediate help |
No - No, I don't see any evidence to suggest premium support would be a worthwhile investment of our limited resources. Our requests are usually basic system issues (functionality that worked then broke after an update by Social Solutions, servers not syncing, report universes not flattening automatically, etc.) and they don't bog down until after escalation to the developers. I can't see recommending to my COO that we pay more money to a company that provides inadequate support around basic system functionality. Usually, we don't need a lot of hand holding or complex advice, and we'd be willing to find the money to pay for it if/when we did, but Social Solutions is so unresponsive (aside from first tier customer support and the folks selling the add-ons) that I can't imagine premium support to be a good investment.
Yes - Depends on the bug. If it impacts all of their customers, yes, both satisfactorily and in a timely fashion. Otherwise, for the overwhelming majority it would be no to both satisfaction and timeliness, even for high impact issues.
Not in the last 2-3 years. We've had people do an exceptional job within their role in many instances, but I can't say that the support process as a whole was exceptional for any one issue that I can recall recently. (Meaning, customer support staff may have done a great job trying to help within their role, but the ultimate resolution or lack there of wasn't satisfactory or timely enough to make the support as a whole exceptional.)