While the rollout of the new MaritzCX site has had its issues, at least the company is active here, and they seem to be responding to the problems that have been brought up.

Let me preface my answer by saying the specialiization for my M. Ed. is distance learning, so I have been trained in best practices when it comes to data collection, data dissemination and online communication.

EPMS gets my vote as they have many issues with both their website and communications, and they fail to address them despite the issues being raised in response to their post shop surveys and individual communication.

I've got quite a few complaints, and will list some here, not in order of importance:

• Completing the sections of a report leads to a dead end. Once all sections (except for follow up) have been marked as completed, you wind up on a page with a few lines of black text on a white background, and no links to go anywhere else on the site. Those of us who have shopped for them know that you simply go back one page and you can access a menu to get where you need to go next, but a first-time shopper would find the implementation confusing as there are no instructions on the page as to how to proceed.

• Numerous text boxes are prefaced by an "If no..." instruction to put a response in the box. However, even if the respective answer to the question is "Yes", the box still requires an input. This is faulty logic. They need to either fix it so the box is ignored with a "Yes", or expand on the instructions to denote that an "N/A" is required if the answer is yes. Second To None also employs a proprietary site, and they correctly implement similar questions.

• The latest quirk I ran into was the inspiration for this post. I recently completed a shop for them, and the Telephone Followup section had a single question, regarding a followup call taking place within a few hours of the visit or up to 48 hours. The only available answers are Yes or No. Given the phrasing, it is impossible to answer the question (and thus complete the report) until 48 hours have passed.

After completing the rest of the report sections I sent a message indicating that I would not be able to complete the report because of the poorly implemented section. I received a reply stating the shop deadline would be extended to accommodate this issue.

Unfortunately, whomever told me they would extend the deadline did not do so, resulting in one of their much-beloved automatic emails chiding me for my report being late.

Curious as to how others feel about their online experiences with other companies.

Searching for assignment on Marketforce takes so many steps and is so time-consuming that I often don't even bother.

I'm not with MF for many different reasons, but from what I see on the forum, they do have good jobs that are "easy'..oh well, my loss, I guess.

I'm not a fan of Confero's report for the grocery shops in my area. The report seems convoluted to me, and confusing at times. It makes me want to pull my hair out!! Which is probably why I only do one or two a year from them, when I can get a bonus.....that, and the fact that despite giving a thorough report, I have never gotten above an 8 for their grocery shops...but I get paid, so that is all that matters!!

I don't work with North Fork, Imyst, Bestmark, Kinesis, JM Ridgeway, Service Connections and especially 2nd to none very much because the report is tedious and they want too much information for the pay.

At least North Fork and Ridgway are SASSIE, which has decent overall online implementation.

I do a fair share of 2ndToNone work. Most of their shops in my area are easy, a fair number of the locations are defunct which makes for even easier cash, and their website is very well implemented from a best practices standpoint.

For 2nd to none I had to go page to next page to next page, it was never ending. You can say this or that company has a very well implemented reporting from a best practices standpoint all you want but if it's irritating to wait for page after page and question after question then what is it?

If it was never ending you would still be filing the report. ;-)

Their pages are really clean, employ proper grammar, and implement sound logic. It is very rare, if ever, that you are denied going to the next page because of a logic error on their part. This is most definitely not the case with many other companies. Clicking through pages horizontally while answering a few questions per page is roughly the equivalent of scrolling down an exceedingly long page in order to input all data (ala SASSIE).

That there are numerous pages could be cleaned up a bit with more questions per page, but I'm guessing they are implemented the way they are so that the data collection can be categorized in a way that is meaningful to their processes.

Not sure which vendors you have shopped for them, but there is basically one major player in my area. The shop execution is easy and usually pretty quick, and I breeze through the reports even though they require moving through multiple pages.

Oh, ok, I thought you were asking for opinions.

Yup.

And you asked about best practices as applied to 2nd To None and I responded.

The multi page approach is not optimal in their case, but the pages themselves are implemented properly.

Overall their site is way cleaner than most.

I see. I does look like a question.

You does?

It.......lol.....dang fst phine fingrr

i guess its true, you shouldnt text and drive

The GigSpot program was terrible. Several MSC have opted out of using Gigspot. So that should tell you how bad it is.

I find Shared Insight reporting to be cumbersome. They also have those horizontal pages. I have not worked for 2nd to none so I am not sure it is the same platform. Years ago they had an easier to fill out report even though there was a lot of redundancy. Now they still have redundancy but it is on different pages. You cannot scroll up to copy and paste or see exactly what you wrote before making it even more frustrating and time consuming looking to make sure you are not repeating yourself too many times.

Maritz shops that have a restroom and required restroom photo. If the station does not have a restroom and you mark no restroom the picture requirement is still there and you can't submit the report without putting in a picture of a restroom that doesn't exist.

GBW hands down..............OOPS except for gigspot,

EPMS has long, time consuming reports for not enough money. They had a typo on the front page this month and contradictory info posted about video shops. I think that they should uphold the same standards that they require of their shoppers. I have deactivated myself from a couple companies due to poor standards in certification quiz writing.

My winner for clunky, old interface is Amusement Advantage.

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 01/22/2018 07:38PM by liddlekiddle.

A Closer Look's page is really annoying to navigate and input data into. I swear it's at least 5 generations old. CertifiedFieldAssociates is pretty old-fashioned to.

I agree about Confero's grocery store form. I have been duly reprimanded for not fully understanding it.