Re: comments sheets (and customer contact)

Subject: Re: comments sheets (and customer contact)
From: Guy Haas <infmx!godzilla!ghaas -at- UUNET -dot- UU -dot- NET>
Date: Thu, 22 Jul 1993 13:00:45 PDT

Steve Hollander said:

> If you wanna get readers' comments, try offering people something in return--
> a newsletter subscription, a small utility, a refrigerator magnet (with which
> to attach diskettes to their copyholders!), anything. If the pubs manager can
> be convinced that receiving comments is worth the minimal cost, the
comments'll
> flood in. Just tell him/her the company has to pay for its mistakes.

> In all my years of (compulsively) filling out comments cards, I've never
gotten
> so much as an acknowledgement. Does anybody out there follow up on comments
> cards WITH CUSTOMER CONTACT?

> Steve Hollander
> holland -at- cvax -dot- ipfw -dot- indiana -dot- edu


YES! Tandem Computers, Inc in Cupertino has done that. One pubs manager
arranged to be the guest at a Tandem Users of the Bay Area (TUBA) meeting
and talk about documentation. He got one user who spoke at some length and
with some intensity about Tandem's apparent LACK of responsiveness to reader
comment forms. This user had long been advising all-and-sundry not to bother
with reader comment forms, because Tandem did not listen. Well, the manager
knew that Tandem's policy was to draft a reply letter within the week, and
a site visit was arranged. Several of us from the publications department
went to the user's site in Oakland and sat down with the disgruntled user
and several of his compatriots.

We soon figured out that he had sent ONE form ONCE, during a management
change-over, and it had not been responded to. We convinced him that we
were KEENLY interested in reader feedback. (We also catered lunch.) He
told us that he had many, many marginal remarks in his manuals, and whenever
a new edition or an update came his way, he closely examined the new
material and recopied any marginalia that were still needed. We urged him
to PLEASE just take those pages to a photocopier and send them to us.
He agreed to do so.

Time passed. Nothing was forthcoming. A few months later, this user
was one of several brought in for a Focus Group about Tandem publications.
A writer who was involved in the Focus Group, and was aware that we were
waiting for photocopies, asked the user about the matter. He sheepishly
reported that his marginalia were not all that extensive, and many of them
were ...intemperate -- not the sort of thing he'd like to pass directly to
the pubs group. And he had not had the time to transcribe them into more
amenable tones. *sigh*

At least, he's now aware of Tandem tech pubs policy, and has begun sending
reader comment cards. He has even received the response letters to those
comments. He has stopped advising other users not to bother.

--Guy Haas [ghaas -at- informix -dot- com]
Sr. Tech Writer
(now) Informix Software, Inc
(formerly in the Languages & Tools Pubs group at Tandem)


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