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At 01:10 PM 11/20/96 -0700, you wrote:
>Karen Brown asked, "Anyone had luck in extracting usable feedback
>from customers?"
If you have a technical support line, you should be getting all the feedback
you need. Every call has a reason. And, you need to figure out the reason
for the call. It might be that some topic is not covered. If that was
deliberate, don't do anything, but if it was an acidental ommission,
remember to include it next time. It might be that the topic was
inaccessible, a process was described incorrectly. Then again the user may
be trying to do something beyond the scope of the software, or the user may
just be aliterate. You need the technical support peoples help. It is not
enough to get a summary of topics. You will need details.
I have included a list of tasks on a reply card and asked the users if they
sucessfully performed those tasks. This will get you a low response and
unrepresentative survey. You can increase response rates by making some kind
of offer, like a T-shirt, a coffee cup, or a raffle for free software. The
responses will not be representative, but you will get some responses.
