End user mail client satisfaction
January 10 2006
This (comment #24) looks to be an interesting study [emphasis mine]:
We're nearing the end of a survey asking end users about their email practices. As part of that survey, we're asking about users' satisfaction with their primary email client in the context of how well it meets their needs. At this point, we've found relatively little difference between users of Notes, Outlook and GroupWise in terms of their level of satisfaction, although a slightly higher, but not statistically significant, percentage of Notes users report they are 'very satisfied'.Looking forward to Osterman Research's report.
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- 2
Tony S Lee | 1/11/2006 7:11:04 AM
Bottom line is in Notes mail viruses and other malware cannot easily load, or read the PAB to proliferate themselves. Our clients on Outlook live in fear of unknowingly opening or spreading viruses.
- 3
Brian Jorgensen | 1/11/2006 8:50:47 AM
@1... I agree with you on you thoughts concerning admin and support personel.
Even the best product looses with an ignorant admin or supporter.
But I am looking forward to the result, likely to be posted on this Blog ?
- 4
Ed Brill www.edbrill.com | 1/11/2006 9:07:31 AM
@3 "likely to be posted on this blog" -- I don't know. Michael's comment was the first I heard of this (and as far as I know, IBM did not commission or sponsor this report).
- 5
Dan techandother.blogspot.com | 1/11/2006 9:08:52 AM
comment: this went on a little longer than I thought, I apologize, Ed!
@2 - I'd like to see a survey like this one, but of system administrators. I'm sure there would be a significant preference to Notes for exactly these reasons.
Overall, I haven't put too much weight on these types of surveys. What I WOULD be interested in is a survey of end users who have used multiple email systems, and their preference.
It seems like Notes would blow others out of the water, if the end users knew what they were missing. But often they don't. A perfect example of this is a sametime rollout I was involved in for a small company of about 400 users. No-one understood why we were rolling it out, they were satisfied with what they had. Two months later, we were averaging 10,000 sametime conversations per month, 80% of them business related. About 6 months later, we had a minor error with the server's hardware, and you'd better believe people missed it.
I think of it like this - people using exchange or others are like workers with a shovel and a wheelbarrow. The tools allow them to do more work more quickly, and they are happy with what they have. Then you give them the dump truck and backhoe of Notes 6/6.5/7. Not only can they continue doing the same old thing, but they have the tools to accomplish much more.
The only dependants are the user's desire to learn how to use their new tools effectively, and the 'drive factor'. By 'drive factor', I mean the choice the user has to make whether to continue putting forward the same amount of effort with the new tools and accomplish more, or accomplish the same goals with less effort.
I think the latter happens a little too much, and this seems to me to be some of the source of the 'Notes is too complicated' argument. Not that I think the Notes UI is complicated, I think it is very intuitive. But I think the real argument some of these people are making is, 'Notes is too complicated...because I don't need such a capable tool to accomplish the lower goals I have set for myself'. For end users, this is a management problem, but it's not hard to see this attitude in management, developers, etc.
Sorry for the long comment!
- 6
Irv Schor | 1/11/2006 9:31:30 AM
Being involved with experiences administrating both Notes and Exchange, including migrations both to and from each system, I've observed the following:
1) Users seemed to always prefer/miss what they know/knew better, so if a user started with Outlook, they miss it when going to Notes (and vice versa).
2) New employees coming into an organization are always the most vocal about the change if being presented with something new (NOTE: This can typically be bad news if the new person is a new CIO/CTO with an agenda).
3) Training is key, particulary when moving from one to the other. Many times a user who had Outlook just wouldn't know that they could do the same thing in Notes. The question of intuitiveness is typically voiced as biased, but can also be as much attributed to the fact that Notes is a different product.
My feeling is that the above only applies to email only scenarios. Folks moving from Exchange to Notes became more enamoured as they saw the other uses of the product. Also, many Exhange Admins could be sold on Notes on the single aspect of Disaster Recovery and the bonus of extra time at home with the little future computer admins (babies).
- 7
Alan Bell http://www.dominux.co.uk | 1/11/2006 9:53:24 AM
@6 lol at the last comment, that would lead to a great survey - Do Domino Administrators breed faster than Exchange Admins?
- 8
david racicot | 1/11/2006 10:09:09 AM
@6. Ah ha! There you have it. According to Darwin then, eventually there will only be Notes since Exchange Admins will not have time to reproduce. Ed, can we use these for the next marketing campaign?
- 9
Bill Brown | 1/11/2006 10:12:23 AM
@2 - Are you sure? If the Notes client is installed as a MAPI service, I beleive any malware would have access to whatever directories your notes client has access to. It may depend on how it accesses it. Obviously, it won't be in a raw address book file, but if the virus uses MAPI lookups, it's got ya.
- 10
Peter de Haas http://www.peterdehaas.com | 1/11/2006 10:12:39 AM
Would be interesting to learn the number of respondents per email client. Without the actual survey / sample size it is hard to interpret the information. Maybe Osterman Research will share it now they have this free publicity :-)
I recently posted a survey done in The Netherlands by a local community site on the usage of email clients :
{ Link }
This is based on consumers mainly ...
- 11
Tony S Lee | 1/11/2006 11:15:37 AM
@8 - Good point... For IE, in Tools - Options - Programs we do NOT set the Contact List to Lotus Notes. I hope this works 8-).
- 12
Tony S Lee | 1/11/2006 11:16:21 AM
Arghh@!! previous post meant @9.
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Michael Osterman http://www.ostermanresearch.com | 1/12/2006 7:32:15 PM
The survey we're conducting was not commissioned by any of our clients: we funded this study internally.
very interesting. On the basis of the information available so far this survey would appear to be unbiased but, as always, you need to know who commissioned it and how it was conducted. Personally I would expect email satisfaction levels to be mostly not correlated with the brand of the email product, but with the quality of the support and training each end user company provides for their users.