Re: Effective mechanism to gather end-user feedback

Subject: Re: Effective mechanism to gather end-user feedback
From: Peter Neilson <neilson -at- alltel -dot- net>
To: Laura Chris <tw_asks_u -at- postinbox -dot- com>
Date: Wed, 18 Jan 2006 09:01:35 -0500

I think that your best bet would be to get closely involved with the help desk management. They will have the information you are looking for, but they may not be recording it in a way that'll work properly for you. Precise details as to the user's difficulty must be recorded, and the general thrust of the help desk is to solve each problem as quickly as possible and get on to the next one. Time spent on asking extra questions and recording the answers carefully may be seen as wasted.


The only times I have had any verifiable success in solving such problems was when I communicated directly with the customer.

In a former century I worked for Prime Computer, and that company had the unusual idea of putting the name of the tech writer on each manual as "author" just like with "real" books. I received a lot of phone calls and a few letters. We also had an easy-to-use survey form that promised a free pocket-sized booklet. In general it was much easier for the end user to get the booklet for free from us than for money through his own purchasing department.

The feedback from customers was very helpful in improving the content of the books. Because the company did not have an official "help desk" our department sort of served as one, although I'm sure that the people in marketing often worried that we would give away things that were supposed to be sold. (I packaged up and sent a manual from my own collection to a frustrated librarian in a university in Papua New Guinea, where it was taking more than a year to get anything through proper channels!)

My most memorable customer call was from the mother of a famous family of entertainers. This was before the PC or the Mac were available. She had bought a computer for doing geneology, and found that the instructions did not quite meet her requirements. She helped me improve our new-user material.

Good luck!

Laura Chris wrote:

Hi all,
I work as a writer with a product-based company. As my documents are
targetted at the end users, I believe that direct feedback from them
would be the best way to improve the direction of writing and the
quality of our documents. This would also help me get an idea about the
expectations with the product documentation. In our company most of the customer calls reach the help desk and I see
the big bosses complaining about increase in support costs during the
reviews. If my stars are aligned correctly, I get to know what the exact
problem was, otherwise the requirement comes as an enhancement request
for the documentation with no trace about the history of the problem.
[snip]

At present, I have user forums and chat as options in mind, but we as
writers are not supposed to contact the customers directly.
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References:
Effective mechanism to gather end-user feedback: From: Laura Chris

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