Re: Effective mechanism to gather end-user feedback

[Peter Neilson <neilson -at- alltel -dot- net>]

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: