The last few times I’ve heard Matt Mullenweg, co-founder of WordPress speak he has said something to the effect of “what got us here, isn’t going to get us where we are going.” Gutenberg – the new WordPress post editor and UI framework – clearly reflects this and I’m very excited about the results.
As Caldera Forms has grown, I’ve seen how true this is. We’ve faced new challenges, and sometimes the strategy that allowed us to grow clearly was not going to help us grow further.
What Happened?
Last month, we could not keep up with support. We did not meet the promises we made about response time. Allowing that to continue, would have been a dishonest way to run the business and the stress it was causing us was not healthy nor helpful.
So we did what we so often recommend to our customers when they need extra help making their WordPress site successful: we called in WP Buffs. Literally, Christie and I had a meeting to put out this fire and at some point, she just pulled out her phone and called Joe, the founder of WP Buffs.
Why Did We Choose WP Buffs?
“Josh, Christie and the Caldera team are some of our favorite people in the world, so getting the chance to work with them has been a real pleasure for us. They’ve built an terrific product that their customers love which I think is reflected by the respect they garner in the WordPress community.”
-Joe Howard, founder of WP Buffs
Our relationship with WP Buffs has grown over the last year. Christie and Joe have become business friends and Joe brought on Nick Adams, an old WordPress friend of mine as the lead developer of WP Buffs.
Nick is not only a friend, he’s a long time Caldera Forms user. Nick has been in our company’s Slack for years. I know, from experience, that when something goes wrong with Caldera Forms, Nick knows how to work with me to get it right.
We didn’t bring in a random support outsourcing firm. That’s not how we do things. We brought in a trusted partner, who knows our product, works well with us and specializes in making WordPress users happy.
What’s Changed?
We’ve had this new system in place for a few weeks now. Priority support tickets, which any Caldera Forms Pro subscriber can create are getting answered in a day or less like we promised. Remember, if you ever bought an add-on or bundle from us, that includes you. In Joe’s words:
“I think they’d agree that our partnership has allowed them to have the best of both worlds; they can focus more exclusively on the high-impact work of product and business development their customers remain happy and loyal.”
As a result, I’ve been spending my time planning and started to build our version two platform. I’m excited about the details, which are coming soon.
What Did We Learn?
We made mistakes. For example, we should have communicated the situation earlier with you, our customers. But we were too busy to see that. We’ve learned a lot from this.
We also know that managing a WordPress site can be stressful and frustrating. Sometimes you need help. We recommend calling WP Buffs. Joe probably doesn’t want us to give out his personal phone number, but you might want to check out their special Caldera offerings here.
Thank you for being a Caldera Forms customer. We’re excited about what we can turn our attention to next.
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