Customer's Canvas

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the senior web developer administrator at a printing service company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Customer’s Canvas?

Our company originally hired Customer’s Canvas to develop software for customizing can cozies via our website.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Customer’s Canvas has developed custom software for customizing print designs using JavaScript, PHP, HTML, CSS, and Ruby. They also handle the website’s hosting.

What is the team composition?

I believe that Customer’s Canvas is a small company, with about 4–5 employees. There are two main developers, and in the past year or so I’ve also dealt with two newer teammates that handle communications.

How did you come to work with Customer’s Canvas?

Our company had already partnered with Customer’s Canvas when I joined, and I’m assuming that members of our team researched options for developing a print design customization tool.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve invested at least $20,000 with Customer’s Canvas. Their yearly fee is $5,000–$6,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Customer’s Canvas in January 2018, and the partnership continues while we develop a new website with a different vendor.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Describe the impact this engagement has had on your business.

We measure the software’s success by its sales and downtime. At least 5–8 times in the past three years, we’ve encountered bugs and other issues that have shut the site down completely for 1–3 days per incident. We’ve had to task people with testing the software to make sure that it’s still working correctly, as there’s no automated alert to let us know when the site is down. That’s one of many reasons why we’re trying to move away from using Customer’s Canvas.

It has taken Customer’s Canvas about a year to get our site up and running, but I don’t fault them for that because our company has changed directions several times. The software worked great for a while, but that was four years ago and it hasn’t been updated. That’s another reason why we’re transitioning to a different provider. 

How did Customer’s Canvas perform from a project management standpoint?

Their communication has gotten a lot better, and it’s really good now — I can’t knock them for that. We’ve experienced some language barrier challenges. Whenever we’ve encountered major problems, Customer’s Canvas has set expectations that those problems will take a day or two to fix. They keep us updated on their progress. 

We communicate with Customer’s Canvas through their ticketing system, and when I enter a ticket they usually get back to me within 10-15 minutes. They have a 24/7 hotline for leaving messages about any problems that we encounter, but that’s of limited use when we encounter issues that end up taking days to fix.

They tout themselves as a big company, but I’ve dealt with only 4–5 teammates from Customer’s Canvas during the past three-and-a-half years.

Is there anything that the vendor did well or that you would consider a strength?

The developers at Customer’s Canvas are expert coders who know what they’re doing. Their communication is one of their top strengths.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I find their software to be inadequate and expensive. The software is coded with a lot of different programming languages, and I think that’s why it’s so buggy. I wish they would upgrade their interface — they could benefit from other people giving them ideas in areas such as visualization, functionality, and UI. I think that’s where they’re falling short. 

They need to rethink their pricing model. For the amount of money that we’re paying them, we should be on a dedicated server. Their pricing is just outrageous — they’re two or three times as expensive as other providers. They could be more lenient with their long-time customers about changes in direction, and maybe not bill us for every request. 

If these issues had all been fixed, we would've purchased another subscription from them for our other website. Instead, we've found a different partner for that project.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

There are probably worse companies, but I wouldn’t recommend Customer’s Canvas.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm the owner of Web Development.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Customer's Canvas, and what were your goals?

We hired this team to design and update our WordPress site. Hoping for the best.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

We search online for the web designer areas and shortlisted 5. We interview and select them according to their past experienced and portfolios.

Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and technologies used.

include technologies like WordPress, PHP product features (e.g., chat box)

How many people from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

A project manager as well 2 full stack developers.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables?

After launching we saw organically 20% traffic.

Describe their project management style, including communication tools and timeliness.

we used slack, Jira, and GitHub to coordinate and it worked very well.

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

They gave us a professional website.

Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?

Overall, I felt like the company has a lot of great practices, but there were a lot of times that the designers did not follow very specific requests. I've listed everything inside of Google Sheets. The company kept trying to force me to use their internal systems, but I already had my own that I was comfortable with.