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Receiving feedback on Online Help
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Kim Martin on -
Great topic, Daniel. I am currently in the midst of facilitating (well, thinking about it anyway) some sort of feedback system, but really don't know if the benefits outweigh the time and effort. Honestly, I've never utilized such a system (online, that is; back in the day, where print was the norm for documentation, I would include a survey on the inside cover of the manual; and if a client completed and mailed back the survey, they would get a small discount on something or other.).
Based on what I've seen, virtually all KBs have a feedback form embedded on each page (article). As for online Help, I'm not so sure, as I have not been focusing on that too much these days.
Nonetheless, I would love to know what people are using for feedback systems (for any type on online documentation), and whether they are actually effective.
Anyone?
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Permalink Reply by Richard S. on -
I've engaged them directly (support tickets, email, phone, and f2f), done surveys, used feedback forms, and used web analytics tools. They can all yield different and interesting bits of information, but for the work I do, I've found that talking with them directly and using Google analytics have been the most fruitful. We don't currently do it, but IME info collected via feedback forms has generally been the least useful.
From a user perspective, I like the open comments model like Atlassian uses. I have no personal experience with it from the content/support perspective, but I'd be interested to hear what people that have think about it.
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Permalink Reply by HannahJ on -
Hi Richard,
Are there any questions you asked that yielded helpful results? I'm trying to find out the right questions to ask some customers about our documentation and video training.
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Permalink Reply by Richard S. on
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It usually starts with me saying "What is that fine language you are speaking, and can you get someone to translate?" :)
OK, more seriously, I try to avoid asking direct questions about the documentation. Most people are, by nature, non-confrontational. So they'll just tell you how great the docs are rather than risk offending you. If you want folks to critique your work honestly, it's critical to get past that. So instead of going straight to questions about docs, I try to engage them in conversation about what they do and how they get their work done. I try to talk about our product, and how well it suited their needs, where it missed the mark, and so on. I try to talk about how our product compares to other similar products they've used, and how our various support offerings (docs included) compare to other similar products. I don't spend time asking questions that analytics data can easily answer, but we might explore areas where analytics data ran counter to expectations (we think a doc is useful, but nobody reads it, or vice versa).
That's not really a direct answer to your question though, I suppose. I'm not sure I have any generic questions that are generally useful.
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Permalink Reply by HannahJ on
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Thanks Richard. I'm actually surprised people are afraid to criticize. People complain about all kinds of less important things. All you have to do is walk into a coffee shop or a restaurant.
I like your idea of easing the customer in with questions about how the product is working out in general. This gives me an idea of where I can start. I just wish there was a "What the heck!?" button for PDFs.
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Permalink Reply by Richard S. on
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It's not that people don't like to complain or criticize, it's that people don't like confrontation. If you talk with someone and they know you wrote the doc in question, they'll almost always be nice to you instead of being honest with you. For many people, politeness and propriety are pretty ingrained workplace behaviors, and you're asking people to overcome that with a stranger.
A line my boss uses on occasion when we're getting politeness instead of constructive feedback is "So what you're saying is that everything is perfect, and we shouldn't change a thing?" That usually gets folks talking. :-)
>> I just wish there was a "What the heck!?" button for PDFs.
Here's a fun test.
On half of yoru pages, have a feedback button, then on the other half, place a "Don't click this" button, that takes them to a page that says: Do not use this form to offer helpful suggestions for improving our docs. I wonder which would get you more constructive feedback. :-)
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Permalink Reply by Daniel Berman on -
I've started to use Google Analyics as well, with some interesting results. Thought of embedding Facebook comments box on each topic page, still trying to work my way around the code.
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Permalink Reply by Sarah Maddox on -
Hallo Daniel
And hallo Kim and Richard too. :) This is a great topic. I like comments best, where everyone can see what everyone else has to say. This form of feedback does put an extra burden on the technical writers and other moderators. We need to check for spam, and ideally we should incorporate useful information from the comments into the page then remove the comments after a time.
On the other hand, comments remove a little of the workload from the writers too. People can help each other by adding information in a comment, so it's not essential for the writer to respond immediately.
One of our documentation wikis has a feedback form and a link to the discussion forum instead of comments. Comments are disabled. The volume of replies via the feedback form is too high for us to manage. The discussion forum works well, but is removed from the docs. Readers miss the ability to comment, but agree that comments can make for a messy page.
My 2c? Comments are best. They keep the docs alive.
Cheers, Sarah
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Permalink Reply by Mark Baker on -
Sarah,
I agree that comments are the best way to go. Comments reward the person who posts them and assists other readers who read them.
What interest me in you post is this phrase: "and ideally we should incorporate useful information from the comments into the page then remove the comments after a time"
Certainly this is the traditional model of what feedback is for. Feedback is information directed inward that is intended to be used to improve the product that is directed outwards. But comments are not directed inward solely, the are directed sideways as well. If you treat the comments simply as feedback, there may be a danger of losing them as a seed of community.
I would like to advance for discussion (without committing myself entirely to one point of view or the other) the proposition that comments should be maintained as they are, because they are the seeds of community. They establish a pattern of community involvement, and of a personal face to the company.
The Cluetrain Manifesto asserted that markets are relationships. To receive comments and respond to them builds relationships. To absorb comments and delete them destroys relationships (both in the sense that it removes the evidence of the relationship, and in the sense that it robs the author of the comment of the satisfaction of seeing their comment and knowing that it contributes to the community).
So here's my proposition: comments are not feedback; they are the seeds of community and should be valued, nurtured, and preserved as such. Discuss.
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Permalink Reply by Sarah Maddox on
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Hallo Mark
There's something to what you say. On the other hand, comments make a page difficult to read. The train of comments becomes very long, and the information in them is not organised into conceptual groups but rather chronologically and by the conversation flow. Of course, those 2 factors can add meaning too!
On our wiki the comments appear at the bottom of the page, after the content. On other wikis the comments are in a separate tab. The first way is beneficial in that all the information is in one spot. A search of the page will pick up the information in the comments too. On the other hand, the page can get very long and the comments can outweigh the content.
Another factor is that comments become irrelevant as they get older. The software moves on, and the content of a comment may even become misleading.
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Permalink Reply by Mark Baker on
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Sarah,
I agree it is an issue. I suspect that it may strike writers as a bigger issue than it is for readers. Forums have been like this forever, and they still thrive. But there is still definitely a balance to be struck here. I just think we would be misguided to judge that balance on traditional paper world values. The values on the Web are very different,
That said, I think there are interesting developments in the handling of comments which focus on community control rather than administrator control. Sites like Quora and Yahoo Answers allow readers to rate other's answers, and ranks contributors based on how often their answers are are rated highly. These kinds of systems can help sift the the comments and bring the most useful ones to the front.
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