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Paul Goble wrote:
[...]
> The best metric I've seen came about when the whole company
> embarked on a
> Single-Unit Marketing Model study to evaluate which factors
> drove customer
> decisions. It was based on an elaborate survey which asked
> customers to
> allocate a theoretical budget between us and our competitors,
> then asked how
> that would change "if X were improved" or "if X declined," where
> X=documentation, usability, ease of ordering, etc. During
> the few years
> when the data was valid, it was easy to say, "If we make our
> documentation
> better, we will gain $Y in revenue; if we let it get worse,
> we will lose
> $Z."
Interesting.
How did you manage to get customers to participate in "an
elaborate survey"?
How did you avoid selection bias?
How did you validate the responses? (E.g., how did you
know that some of the answers didn't come from a
bored techwriter at the customer company? Or a
disgruntled engineer, or a purchasing rep with a
sense of humor?)
For the list: Is anybody getting results from surveys
and polls? How are you implementing/administering them?
What do you (list-members) use for incentive to get
busy people, whom you have never met, who live and
work on the far side of the world, and speak/read
your language as their second or third, (and where
the purchasing department might not even reside in
the same timezone as the end-user/administrator of
your product) to take time from their own deadline
rush in order to fill out forms and answer questions?
I've had little result (none...) in the past from
a standalone "How are we doing; what can we improve?"
page in my help.
I was thinking of re-introducing it in an upcoming
release and adding a link to it at the bottom of
each and every help topic/page.
- Kevin
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