customer feedback

[Miki Magyar <miki -dot- d -dot- magyar -at- BANGATE1 -dot- TEK -dot- COM>]

Not sure who started this one (Gwen Barnes?), but here's my bit:

Long long ago before we got et by Tektronix, I was the Documentation
Department for CDS, with customers all over the world. Everywhere but near
us. So customer feedback was non-existent. No one ever sent in the little
post cards. So I asked the Applications Engineers (the guys who field the
phone calls from customers who need help) to fill out a tracking form for a
month. The second month they actually did it. It was a simple checklist,
with a space for the product name, and columns to identify the type of
problem the customer had. It included such things as
        information wasn't in the manual
        didn't read the manual
        didn't understand what was in the manual
        stupid person

and so on. The form was easy enough to use that it didn't interfere with
their work, and gave me enough feedback to know whether I was giving
customers what they thought they needed.

You might also ask the AEs or marketing people to suggest customers who
would be interested in doing specific focused reviews. Make it a special
thing that only selected people are allowed to do, to help develop the
documentation. Then send them a thank you letter that they can show to
their boss.

Good luck - getting useful feedback is a real problem.

Miki
<insert meaningless disclaimer and profound quote>
miki -dot- d -dot- magyar -at- bangate1 -dot- tek -dot- com

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