21

On the first statement about customer experience and declined orders; the changes made of only seemed to increase the opportunity for both of these to happen.

By allowing customers to only upload and submit an order, we as a hub only have to option to decline it if the part is not printable or the turn around time is not sufficient. Before customers could maybe look at our previous work and get an idea for what our printer could do. Or what use to happen often would be they would contact us with an idea or a link to something and wonder if it was printable, if it could be done soon enough, and what it might cost. And if it couldn’t be done I had a list of other hubs I had prior contact with that operated different machines and I would tell the customer exactly why I couldn’t print it, what could print it and who to go to.

Now once I decline an order I loose all contact with that person, it counts against me apparently and I am out a potential future customer. Sure I could leave the pending order open for the 24 hours to further communicate with them but its also my understanding that leaving orders open is bad for the hub. Really a loose loose situation.

22

Hello Brian,
I’m a little concerned because yesterday I archived two “Enquiries”. One customer sent me two duplicate messages, so I got rid of one. For the other, the customer started an order (which was successfully completed) independent of the “enquiry” and was no longer needed. When you “archive”, it warns that you are “rejecting an order” and afterwards I noticed that my ranking dropped a couple points. Does archiving an enquiry lower your ranking?
-Jesse

23

I have this concern too. A customer messaged me thanking me for the print and to say how his project is going. I archived it and I think it had a detrimental effect.

24

If this is true no wonder I get no orders, I have “archived” quite a few messages without even thinking about it. Why in the world would using archive count against us. The message was over and I didn’t want the notification just sitting in my task bar thingy

25

Hey Guys, just to clarify we don’t hold archived messages against your Hub rank/performance. We’re a stricter however with orders that get paid and then get canceled, as this is really a bad experience.

26

What if the customer stops responding to the order before payment?

27

I can’t go into each case in detail as it would make the Hub ranking algorithm too prone to gaming.

In general we penalize Hubs for not completing an order, there are different reasons why and we’ve weighed them in such a way that the worst Hubs get penalized most and the best Hubs the least. It’s not rocket science, of course a customer can in some cases lose interest so that’s not weighed heavily, but if you customers keep consistently ‘losing interest’ at your Hub that’s a sign that the service is not great, and it would be in the best interest of the marketplace/platform to not suggest you to future customers.

In the end it comes down to this: if you’re running a decent service we’ll suggest your Hub to customers, only if your service, reviews, conversion etc. are really poor we lower your position on the /3dprint ranking to keep customers from having a bad experience.

1 Like
28

Hi Josh!

Thanks for the amazing and extensive feedback! Great points, this is definitely something we’re planning on doing in the near future. Obviously for us it’s also important to educate our Hubs by giving actionable advice and feedback: better Hubs → happier customers → great platform.

The best channel for this is probably more insights on your Hub profile and a dedicated email with local insights and tips such as the ones you mentioned. This way we can share more “sensitive” and Hub related information as well. I’ll be exploring this soon, so if you have some more ideas on what you’d like to see/know about just let me know!

In this sense, with the Trend Report we have completely different goals. It’s more for people with general interest in 3D printing - actually only ~25% of the subscribers are our Hubs.

Cheers,

Bali

PS: We have our open positions here, both for the NY and Amsterdam office:)

29

Great to hear. I look forward to getting more information about my Hub and ways to improve it.

Emails sound like a great source for sending out the info and definitely help with keeping what might be considered more sensitive data private. As for ideas, that’s about it for right now. It covered a lot and I think would be the next major step in greatly improving the Hubs ability to function and further improve themselves and the site as a whole. Only other thing I would love to see really, and this is a completely different area, is allowing a Hub to have 2-3 possible locations. I personally have two hubs set up so I can be visible near my work address and my home address. It would be great if I didn’t have to try to bounce between accounts to see both. I get that could cause some issues like people have shared elsewhere with getting proper verification and proof of address but I bet I am not the only one who would like to advertise from two valid locations.

Also if having two accounts isn’t allowed I’ll delete one right away, I tried looking for any info on it but there wasn’t anything I could find on it. And to point out a small bug with having two accounts. Both accounts have different usernames and emails but the same password. One is even linked to Facebook well the other isn’t. When I try logging into either username though it logs me into the same, newer, account every time. If I try to log in through facebook it brings me to my newer account that isn’t connected to Facebook. The only way for me to log into my old account right now is to go to my email, find an email from 3D Hubs and click on a link through there. I’ve really only tried this on Chrome on several different computers/devices. Should probably try from a new browser to test though.

Yes I get the trend report is for the much larger population of the fresh 3D printing crowd who is just starting. And that’s why I think having an alternative, more detail oriented report for that 25% that brings in the other 75% is so important. Just because we are the few does not mean we are the least important. It reminds me of when Reddit got closed by its moderators in protest because the company stopped listening and forgot who really ran the show. And well I don’t think the situation here is anywhere near the same I feel the need to bring it up. One post I saw during the whole thing was in response to someone posting about “Why should the average user care if the moderators/famous people of Reddit are upset?” And the simple answer to that is the average user can easily jump ship to the next Reddit of the internet if that’s where the content is. All the majority cares about is fresh content that’s mainly being posted by the 1%er’s. If those 1%er’s started posting it on a new site, guess where the rest of the crowd is going? Because they don’t care if its called Digg, Reddit, or whatever the next site is called.

PS: I keep checking there every once and a while. None of the postings usually seem to fit my background. I have a degree in Industrial Design with an obvious love and knowledge of 3D printing, 3D modeling. My skills are more in design thinking, Adobe Creative Suite, Solidworks, pen and paper, model making. Most of the postings are more for coding side of things. And well I’ve done a little web/UI design and I’ve taught myself a little programming in the past it is certainly not my area of expertise. Any idea if there is any need for someone like that at either office? Some of the internships seem to fit but they are for EU students only and I am neither.

EDIT: I actually just posted this from the wrong account because I was double checking the log-in issues I was having and it switched accounts on me. Now I cant even get into my other account the way I described. Hmm, this is fun.

30

Well now I’ve gotten back on with a password reset. Little scared to log out to test again though

31

I’ll have our developers double check if everything is ok. In general it’s good to know that our links in emails will automatically log you in, it seems you are aware of this and use it to get back into your second account. Of course if you use your username and password for the second account it shouldn’t log you in to the newer one, is that really happening?

32

Ya, I can make a video or something of it later tonight if you would like.

If I type in Josh_Raples and my password I log into WickedxJosh

If I click on “Log in through Facebook” I log into WickedxJosh, even though its only linked to Josh_Raples

If I type in WickedxJosh and my password I log into WickedxJosh

Then the issue I ran into for the first time when I typed that last message was it logged me into WickedxJosh and when I tried to log back into Josh_Raples it told me there was some sort of error with that log in. And when I went to try to log in through an email it gave me errors. I fixed it by resetting my password and I haven’t tried again since. I will now though.

It might be a caching issue with Chrome and 3D Hubs as I think all the times I’ve tried doing this I’ve been logged in with my info on Chrome across a few different computers. I can try with IE or something too.

33

Ok, so changing my password kind of fixed the issue. Before both accounts shared the same password to keep things simple. Now that they have different passwords I can now log into the proper account with the right username. Issue still arises with logging in through Facebook. Even though I know I never linked my second account, WickedxJosh to FB it still logs me into WickedxJosh if I click the FB button.

34

A quick screen capture would be great, indeed it could be a caching I issue, we’ll try to check it out this Friday and see if there is a fix for it dependant on the reproducibility of course.

35

Now that I have changed my password I can no longer replicate the issue myself. Figures. I even changed my password back to the same on both accounts and it logs me in properly now.

So to test it I guess try having account 1 with:

Username_1

Password_a

Linked to Facebook

Then make:

Username_2

Password_a

Not linked to Facebook

Maybe you will get it to happen again on your end. Also I did just notice it allows you to link both accounts to the same Facebook. Kind of an issue I guess but more of just an annoyance.

36

Hi Josh,

I couldn’t replicate it either so happy to hear that it solved itself on your end :slight_smile:

I’ll look into the Facebook linking to two accounts though, doesn’t it disconnect from the first when it connects to the second?