What happened to "asking for help"?
alwinhoogerdijk.com
What happened to "asking for help"?
1–10 of 52 posts
Re: What happened to "asking for help"?
#2The problem is the normal response to their questions. Most companies, or even just people, will respond negatively to bug reports, especially if they aren't good reports. This has trained the users that they shouldn't bother asking.
Instead, they do what gets them results: They complain publicly. See, you can't ignore them if they're speaking publicly. Everyone else gets to see the problem and response, or lack thereof. In this situation, they either get a fix for the problem, or the developer loses future sales.
Here's an example from my life: I bought a mousepad on eBay for like $10. Ridiculously cheap, compared to what others were asking. When it arrived, it wasn't the right one. Now, I had 2 choices. I could contact the seller, and they'd probably tell me to ship it back at my expense, which would cost me more than the product was worth and waste my time, which was even more valuable.
Or I could just give them a low-star rating and explanation, and be done with it. I wasn't about to waste my valuable time, so I chose the bad rating.
The seller contacted me, upset. "Why didn't you contact us?" And I explained the above, and said that there was nothing they could do because I wasn't willing to spend the time and money to send the item back.
They ended up refunding my money and letting me keep the product. (Which probably sits in my closet somewhere, unused and unwanted.) I allowed them to nullify the rating.
tl;dr - So why do users take that route? It's quicker, easier, and works better.
Re: What happened to "asking for help"?
#3The cynic in me wonders how many of these warnings and one-star reviews are from authors/supporters of competing apps.
Down-vote bots are becoming quite common in other forms of media (Reddit, etc). I wish there were some way of computing the number of players 'gaming' the system.
Re: What happened to "asking for help"?
#4Remember: you're more invested in your application than your users. Even if it's possible for them to have a dialog with you to fix their problem, they may not care to.
Posting a negative review is not part of that investment - it's just a cathartic release, and after that, they move on. If you're selling a relatively cheap application that your users don't need (such as a comic-viewing app), you may only have one chance with your users.
Re: What happened to "asking for help"?
#5I see the same thing even from my close colleagues. With one in particular, the first I'll even know he's using my code is when he bitches about it on Twitter. Forget about usable information in a bug report about what he did to trigger it (usually turns out to be utterly insane hacked configs), sometimes we've been talking on IRC and then I switch windows to find he's slagging the code on Twitter.
I think it's a cultural thing. Righteous anger is addictive. In this case it's anger at bad code, and the craving for another hit precedes any attempt to find out if the anger is even justified - let alone to work constructively toward a resolution. Some people (lots here BTW) are just rage junkies, and should simply be ignored.
Re: What happened to "asking for help"?
#6It's often easier to find the review form on the App Store than it is to find a human-answered "contact us" form or address for the developer.
When a user writes a shitty review, they know for a fact the developer will read it, whereas many app store developers may not even have a web presence, let alone a reliable looking way to contact them.
I'm not saying that's good by any means -- dialog with your customers gets to the bottom of things and usually leaves them happier -- but right now if it's easier for your customer to find and leave a public vent session on your app store page than it is to find out how to contact you, they are going to take the path of least resistance.
If user to developer dialog is important to you, enable your users to do it, don't expect them to jump through hoops to seek you out when there's an easier alternative.
Re: What happened to "asking for help"?
#7There is no way to fix actual bugs in your software, because you can’t learn what the problem is exactly, what might be causing it, how to reproduce it, etc… Making it next to impossible to fix the bug, let alone help the user (and possible other users running into the same bug!).
You can fix bugs without having a conversation with a user. It involves a two prong approach: 1. Proper testing - Most people are probably doing more testing than they can possibly bear, but we all know we should do more. 2. Proper tracing - If an app crashes, the logs can be studied to work out what went wrong. - I accept this might not work on a phone as well as with web/desktop apps.
Re: What happened to "asking for help"?
#8The cynic in me wonders how many of these warnings and one-star reviews are from authors/supporters of competing apps. Down-vote bots are becoming quite common in other forms of media (Reddit, etc). I wish there were some way of computing the number of players 'gaming' the system.
Given the sheer number of inane "reviews" with bizarre complaints, I think the sad truth is that most of them do come from real users.
Re: What happened to "asking for help"?
#9People optimize like crazy to get users to convert. I'm pretty sure that if it were as easy to get help as it was to download the app, more would do so.
You used to only get users who were smart enough to find the download link, which might have even been on a subpage. Now, you get the people who can only be bothered if they need only press the great big button in the center of their field of view.
Re: What happened to "asking for help"?
#10The cynic in me wonders how many of these warnings and one-star reviews are from authors/supporters of competing apps. Down-vote bots are becoming quite common in other forms of media (Reddit, etc). I wish there were some way of computing the number of players 'gaming' the system.
Given the sheer number of inane "reviews" with bizarre complaints, I think the sad truth is that most of them do come from real users.
I saw an absolutely excellent Japanese app that was at 3.5 stars because a bunch of people 1-starred it for not being in English.