What's the best way to close the loop and have a desktop app "call home" with customer feedback? Right now our code will login to our SMTP server and send me some email.
+1
A:
You could also have the application send a POST http request directly to a URL on your server.
levand
2008-08-27 15:39:32
+4
A:
The site GetSatisfaction has been an increasingly popular way to get customer feedback.
http://getsatisfaction.com/for_companies
GetSatisfaction is a community based site that builds a community around your application. Users can post questions, comments, and feedback about and application and get answers to their questions either from other members or from members of the development team themselves.
They also have an API so you can incorporate GetSatifaction into your app, and/or your site.
I've been playing with it for a couple of weeks and it is pretty cool. Kind of like stackoverflow, but for customer feedback.
Nick Haddad
2008-08-27 15:42:57
+2
A:
Feedback from users and programmers simply is one of the most important points of development in my opinion. The whole web2.0 - beta - concept more or less is build around this concept and therefore there should be absolutely no pain involved whatsoever for the user. What does it have to do with your question? I think quite a bit. If you provide a feedback option, make it visible in your application, but don't annoy the user (like MS sometimes does with there feedback thingy on there website above all elements!!). Place it somewhere directly! visible, but discreet. What about a separate menu entry? Some leftover space in the statusbar? Put it there so it is accessible all the time. Why? People really liking your product or who are REALLY annoyed about something will probably find your feedback option in any case, but you will miss the small things. Imagine a user unsure about the value of his input "should I really write him?". This one will probably will not make the afford in searching and in the end these small things make a really outstanding product, don't they? OK, the user found your feedback form, but how should it look and what's next? Keep it simple and don't ask him dozens questions and provoke him with check- and radioboxes. Give him two input fields, one for a title and one for a long description. Not more and not less. Maybe a small text shortly giving him some info what might be useful (OS, program version etc., maybe his email), but leave all this up to him. How to get the message to you and how to show the user that his input counts? In most cases this is simple. Like levand suggested use http and post the comment on a private area on your site and provide a link to his input. After revisiting his input, make it public and accessible for all (if possible). There he can see your response and that you really care etc.. Why not use the mail approach? What about a firewall preventing him to access your site? Duo to spam in quite some modern routers these ports are by default closed and you certainly will not get any response from workers in bigger companies, however port 80 or 443 is often open... (maybe you should check, if the current browser have a proxy installed and use this one..). Although I haven't used GetSatisfaction yet, I somewhat disagree with Nick Hadded, because you don't want third parties to have access to possible private and confidential data. Additionally you want "one face to the customer" and don't want to open up your customers base to someone else. There is SOO much more to tell, but I don't want to get banned for tattling .. haha! THX for caring about the user! :)
merkuro
2009-06-13 17:35:08