Tech support forums

Lloyd D Budd wrote:

> I am interested in what companies or projects
> that you like telling them about *their* problems ?

I like reporting bugs to Debian. The main reason why, really, is that
the "reportbug" tool makes it really, really easy. And all followups are
done by email; so you don't have to grab the web browser to respond. In
addition, most maintainers are responsive to bug reports.

The main factor seems to be ease of reporting a bug. I compose the bug
report in my preferred text editor. reportbug grabs all the dependency
and setting information for me. Reportbug prompts for all the required
information, or lets me provide it when I invoke the tool (yes, it's a
command-line tool).

"Let them email you, don't make them deal with web support forms" seems
like good advice.

At 07:14 -0700 UTC, on 2005/08/16, Anthony DeRobertis wrote:
> I like reporting bugs to Debian. The main reason why, really, is that
> the "reportbug" tool makes it really, really easy. And all followups are
> done by email; so you don't have to grab the web browser to respond. In
> addition, most maintainers are responsive to bug reports.
>
> The main factor seems to be ease of reporting a bug. [...]
>
> "Let them email you, don't make them deal with web support forms" seems
> like good advice.

Agreed. Make it easy for those who care to reach you. If email means more
work on your end to file bugs, you'll just have to deal with that. Don't make
the user deal with it - too many of them will stop bothering to let you know
how you could improve your product[1]. Especially Web-based bug reporting
tools are often a big barrier[2]. If you're going to put up barriers, it's
easier to just not take bug reports at all.

Besides direct email, you could offer lists, allowing users to help each
other track down bugs - can save developers some time and can help create a
community of motivated testers. Newsgroups can also be very nice for this. I
always loved how Opera runs its own public newsserver.

But whatever medium you choose (and you can use multiple ones - you could
just bridge email<->news<->web even, to allow people to use their favourite
road to the same place) you'll need to show people that their feedback is
being put to good use to ensure they'll continue to essentially work for free
for you. Fix bugs they report. Explain when something is not a bug, or why it
will take time to fix a specific bug.

In the end it really boils down to understanding how to communicate.


[1] I've probably filed more bug reports on Apple's bug reporting system than
on their actual hard-/software and am at the point where I probably won't
bother anymore.

[2] Although for some products/users it can actually work better.


--
Sander Tekelenburg, <http://www.euronet.nl/~tekelenb/>

On 8/17/2005 7:58 AM -0700 Sander Tekelenburg wrote:
> [1] I've probably filed more bug reports on Apple's bug reporting system
> than on their actual hard-/software and am at the point where I probably
> won't bother anymore.

I finally _started_ to use Apple's bug reporting system because it was so
bad. It kept asking me to tell them what I was doing when Safari
"unexpectedly quit", so I decided to fill out the bug report explaining
that I had pressed Cmd-Q.

I've filled that out a few times now; I'm not sure whether Apple has done
anything about it. It doesn't seem to me that Safari should "unexpectedly"
quit in response to Cmd-Q, but who am I to judge? I mean, _I_ expected
Safari to quit, but maybe I'm wrong?

Dave

At 07:58 AM 08/17/2005 -0700, Sander Tekelenburg wrote:
>Especially Web-based bug reporting tools are often a big barrier.

The problem of course is spam, and this is an example of a very real cost
of spam.

A well designed web submission form can pretty much block spam. Then
additional interaction can be handled via email using a token added to the
subject to identify the ticket number. Email without a current ticket
number gets discarded. This works -- I've seen it work in various places --
though it's still far messier than it would be without spam.

What I'd like is the ability to go to the web site and file an initial
ticket with no content, just "send me a ticket number" instead of the usual
options. The web site would automatically assign the ticket number and send
me an empty response without bothering the tech support people. Then I
could send all I need to by email. This should be a fairly trivial addition
to any system that already uses the "ticket number in subject" method.

Edward
Art Works by Melynda Reid: http://paleo.org