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Room for improvement?
Just some feedback, after spending hours with your software on a daily basis:
1. Admin interface: "Show replies" button. The "Needs attention" button doesn't show these and I have to find replies by going to my inbox and single them out. You say that the topics in bold needs replies, but I would prefer an individual listing as it provides a better overview.
2. Search: For some reason I often can't manage to find what I'm searching for. I go to Google and find it using their 'site:' command and find it instantly. Maybe you need a little more Google-esque search. I can't say if it's because you're not using page rank, or just show 5 results at a time... (I know you can 'See all search results' but I'm pretty sure our users don't get that small link). The result: We're getting too many identical entries, because people can't find the right answers. And then I have to answer that same question again - or make a redirect (which I'm not sure is ideal).
3. Support for 'Pages'. You need to integrate support for a different kind of page, a 'How-to' page (like Zendesk (I'm sure you've seen that Twitter has implemented Zendesk after using GS for a long time - and I think I know why)). My use case: I'm the guy with the most fresh knowledge about how to fix things, but implementing that knowledge into production is too cumbersome. We're canning our static FAQ for that same reason, which means that all support inquiries are redirected to GS as much as possible. But sometimes, you have a definitive guide or how-to that you want to create - you know, to answer all questions in on place on a specific topic. Since people are already searching GS, it would be cool to have these Pages show up in search with an icon that says it's an authoritative source, and a different layout to honor that source (including the simple tools to build such a page). The alternative is what I'm seeing now (and no doubt what Twitter saw): There is too much noise on the forum, making it too hard to find stuff - causing either multiple entries or more emails (both of which I'm desperately trying to avoid).
To give you an idea of what I'm talking about, check out this page http://www.getsatisfaction.com/issuu/... .
4. Rich text editor: HTML tags are just so 1990s. Any monkey can learn how to use them, but it'll always be more time consuming than simple rich text buttons (B / I / U / Bullets / Numbered list etc.).
5. And perhaps a little off topic: A user posts his email and regrets doing it because he didn't know this was a public forum. So I delete it. And it shows up anyway. Now user posts additional posts about this topic, reiterating his request and asks me to delete these topic as well. What can I do? What can he do (can he delete his account)?
Thanks for a great service. Man, I love being in the feedback writing chair, rather than to receive it. Just once in a while :)
1. Admin interface: "Show replies" button. The "Needs attention" button doesn't show these and I have to find replies by going to my inbox and single them out. You say that the topics in bold needs replies, but I would prefer an individual listing as it provides a better overview.
2. Search: For some reason I often can't manage to find what I'm searching for. I go to Google and find it using their 'site:' command and find it instantly. Maybe you need a little more Google-esque search. I can't say if it's because you're not using page rank, or just show 5 results at a time... (I know you can 'See all search results' but I'm pretty sure our users don't get that small link). The result: We're getting too many identical entries, because people can't find the right answers. And then I have to answer that same question again - or make a redirect (which I'm not sure is ideal).
3. Support for 'Pages'. You need to integrate support for a different kind of page, a 'How-to' page (like Zendesk (I'm sure you've seen that Twitter has implemented Zendesk after using GS for a long time - and I think I know why)). My use case: I'm the guy with the most fresh knowledge about how to fix things, but implementing that knowledge into production is too cumbersome. We're canning our static FAQ for that same reason, which means that all support inquiries are redirected to GS as much as possible. But sometimes, you have a definitive guide or how-to that you want to create - you know, to answer all questions in on place on a specific topic. Since people are already searching GS, it would be cool to have these Pages show up in search with an icon that says it's an authoritative source, and a different layout to honor that source (including the simple tools to build such a page). The alternative is what I'm seeing now (and no doubt what Twitter saw): There is too much noise on the forum, making it too hard to find stuff - causing either multiple entries or more emails (both of which I'm desperately trying to avoid).
To give you an idea of what I'm talking about, check out this page http://www.getsatisfaction.com/issuu/... .
4. Rich text editor: HTML tags are just so 1990s. Any monkey can learn how to use them, but it'll always be more time consuming than simple rich text buttons (B / I / U / Bullets / Numbered list etc.).
5. And perhaps a little off topic: A user posts his email and regrets doing it because he didn't know this was a public forum. So I delete it. And it shows up anyway. Now user posts additional posts about this topic, reiterating his request and asks me to delete these topic as well. What can I do? What can he do (can he delete his account)?
Thanks for a great service. Man, I love being in the feedback writing chair, rather than to receive it. Just once in a while :)
I’m happy
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The company has this in progress.
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Inappropriate?Hi Martin,
Thanks for the exhaustive feedback. I agree wholeheartedly with most of your ideas/comments. We're a heavy user of our system (as you can see) and have strong feelings ourselves about where we can improve. The good news is that we're in the middle of an extended redesign of virtually every aspect of the system. So good timing!
I wish we could do everything at once, but know that it will all get addressed in due time. Let me go through your points and address each one.
1. We have a number of significant improvements in mind for the management view to help deal with things like this. This part of the design refinements is not in the next release cycle, but it's definitely on the radar.
2. There are two issues here--the contextual search results (natural language-based), and the keyword search. Most people get results from the natural language "Ask a Question" flow, which we are redesigning to better decrease redundant topics, but that index doesn't serve the keyword searches well at all. So we would like to deploy a keyword-oriented index that will make those results far more useful.
3. Absolutely! Providing appropriate ways to share knowledge beyond the current conversation-centric structures is top-of-mind for us. On a related note, in the very near future we will surfacing content (answers, solutions, ideas under consideration, topics in need of attention) in far more effective ways for the community. This will help extend the value of the content a lot further.
By the way, we're partnering with Zendesk--we don't do ticketing/help desk, and they do it super well--and there are natural connection points between our systems. With Twitter and others, we expect that this combination will create great new value.
4. Ugh, true WYSIWYG editors are a sore spot for us. Suffice to say that we'd love to, and that there are some gotchas that have kept us from going down this path to this point. Relative to other things, this is not an immediate priority for us, but we know how much people would appreciate having it.
5. I totally agree on the importance of dealing with removing sensitive information. When you say you delete it but it shows up anyway, what do you mean? Is this a bug that we should fix, or am I misunderstanding?
There are many other elements of the system that you did not mention that we are improving upon in the very immediate future which we'll be discussing in coming days and weeks. I hope you'll like them, and will keep sharing your input.
I’m excited about the future
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Inappropriate?Thanks, Thor, I really appreciate you took your time for this. Looking forward to the updates. Partnering with Zendesk: Sounds like a great idea - would facilitate dynamic discussions combined with a more static, authoritative communication channel.
Re 5: http://getsatisfaction.com/issuu/topi... - this topic was removed to protect the user - but there's a link 'See the topic anyway'. I agree with the user that it's not really removed then and his data (email) is not completely protected. I can understand your persistence to achieve transparency, but sometimes you just need to completely wipe something?
I’m happy
2 Comments
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This is one of the best points
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I obscured the private information a week ago for him, per his request, and then I removed that for him a few days ago, per his request. -
Martin: FYI: The way it is supposed to work is that if it's removed for Privacy reasons, other users cannot see it and do not have the option to click through. But, if you are seeing any bug in this, please let me know. I haven't seen this happen before, but if it does, I want to pinpoint it quickly.
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Inappropriate?Any updates in Martin's suggestions, particulary #3. We are contemplating GS and the Satic Pages idea for How-To's would go a long way in making the GS decision easier.
Thank-
John2 Comments Add a comment
This is one of the best points
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Hi John,
Yes, we're working on a new topic type that will support this need. This is a short-term deliverable for us. Beyond that, I'm not at liberty to say (yet). But the more you'd like to share about your need the more we can consider for our feature requirement. -
Hi John, I just wanted to add that we've been using "Company Announcements" to post How-to's. I don't know if this logic would work for you, but we realized that many of our How-to's can be treated as features, and thus treated as announcements. We also feel that common workarounds, posted pro-actively, can be seen as a positive service we offer and thus treated as announcements as well. When we post the "How-to" content directly into the topic, it remains highlighted at the top of the page, even if a conversation develops below it. If we want to group these, we could either have had a generic "FAQ" user post (since we aren't highlighting dashboards right now, we didn't choose to do this because we don't think our users will use the dashboard view) AND/OR add a "how-to" or "faq" tag to them to generate or link to a full list of these posts (we've actually chosen to use more specific tags and have smaller more specific lists)
We're still working on the formatting for these pages. One thing we're testing right now is an integration with SCRIBD. This allows us to post more official-looking documents, and include a lot of content without taking up a ton of space. SCRIBD is free, you can create an account and a document library with pdfs, powerpoints, etc. SCRIBD converts the docs into a flash file and then you embed that file into the GSFN topic. A benefit of this has been that we can edit documents in SCRIBD and it automatically will then update what the viewer sees on GSFN. (This helps us get around the static topics that aren't editable in GSFN, one of our biggest problems with using this for FAQ so far. Answers change and we need to be able to change them gracefully without creating confusion.)
For an example of SCRIBD on our site, see this link: http://support.positscience.com/posit...
Anyway, I'm very interested in seeing what others do to offer their FAQ library on GSFN. We've just gotten started and there's definitely room from improvement, both in understanding the use-case and perhaps in additional features from GSFN. -
Inappropriate?I also have a strong need for a "How-To" topic type, similar in purpose to the company update topic type. I think Martin articulated the key reqmt quite well: a definitive guide or how-to ... to answer all questions in on place on a specific topic. Since people are already searching GS, it would be cool to have these Pages show up in search with an icon that says it's an authoritative source
Otherwise, you end up playing gimmicky games like create an "FAQ" user and using "how to" tags, etc. to try and achieve the same result, but the end result is really substandard without a dedicated topic type.1 Comment Add a comment
This is one of the best points
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The thing is....FAQs are often a mishmash of a bunch of different things...which is why they don't really work very well once you have a lot of them. One of the great things that's happening here at GSFN is that the fundamental nature of issues is really being pulled apart and made to work for more clarity and ease of search and moderation. What about FAQs that develop organically via a question/problem/idea and many people vote them up until they are actually a true "frequently asked question"? Do these then get turned into a separate topic type where they lose their unique question/problem/idea flavor? Perhaps a different approach would be to have an FAQ emblem that gets added to the topic, either via moderator tools or automatically after a certain number of people have fav'd it. (This is what's happening now on the new "Highlights" tab at the home page, however it's not reflected on the topic page itself.) However, this wouldn't help when companies want to post an FAQ proactively. But...aren't most FAQ's really based on questions/problems/ideas? I agree there needs to be a way to make a library of authoritative answers searchable...but aren't some of the best answers from customers? And currently we can mark any answer as a company answer...maybe there just needs to be a change to this layout? - I'd agree with that wholeheartedly.) So my question is, what happens to the layout of a topic (and the way that topic is searchable) once a company has said: Yes, this is the answer.
(btw, The new search features also let customers sort by questions that have answers or problems that are solved or ideas that are implemented...which is a way to search by authoritative answers since only companies can mark topics as closed.)
Anyway, this is a great topic. I’m looking forward to learning more from everyone on how to best organized and elevate FAQs with authorized responses (or add these proactively before they develop organically).
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