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.
* A company taking reports seriously in a visible way is a rare occurrence in my experience.
-- (Edit)
Incidentally, for software issues this makes a public bug tracker something of a marketing tool. Even knowing my bug rather than lost without trace would be an improvement.
In my game, there's also a "feedback" button. I say early in the app description to please contact me if you have any problems. I answer any questions that come in, and am polite even to the insulting emails. Well, at least mostly polite. ;) And I typically answer them in hours, at most.
And yet I still get 1-star "complaint" posts that hurt my ratings, from people who have never contacted me. Frequently they just say that they hate the ads, which are only shown between levels, and therefore don't interfere with game-play. I guess I should work for free?
I don't think it helps to justify their behavior; if they make the least attempt and give up, that's one thing, but if they don't even try when dealing with an indie app developer who's obviously not some faceless company, that's just lazy (and in many cases selfish -- they can pay to turn off ads, after all, and the games don't write themselves). It's the EASY thing for them to do, and they're being jerks.
Or if, as you say, they've been hurt before, they're taking out hurt from Faceless Corporation on me, which is pretty much indistinguishable from being a jerk from my point of view.
I bought a book from No Starch Press, and I hated it. (Possibly due to my own fault.) I wrote to them to complain, and they refunded my money and told me to throw away the book.
That has almost always tilted into the 'better off not trying' category. I end up with more of my time, and happier, if I don't go through the official channels. On average.
That's what companies have trained customers into.
> I create puzzles under the username: [---]. The editor is designed to allow you to upload an increasing number of puzzles as a reward for earning high ratings on those puzzles you've created so far. However, if the rating drops, the puzzles you can upload may actually drop. This is lame and unfair. Numerous times I've trashed a puzzle with the intention of replacing it with a new one, only to find that I am now not allowed to upload a new one because my max number of uploads has dropped. Fix this and I will give you 5 stars. Otherwise I will stop uploading puzzles altogether.
The annoying thing is, he's absolutely right. We didn't think of this use case, and we're fixing it right now (it should be rolled out within a few days). But it's so frustrating that he felt like he had to threaten us ("otherwise I will stop uploading puzzles altogether") and didn't even think to contact us first.
And what's more, he decided that our game deserves 1 star, even though he's clearly played it for many, many hours, and presumably has really enjoyed it.
As for the rating, he's saying that this bug is so bad that it kills the entire experience for him. This is how people react to things they don't like: if they enjoy something for 9 hours and absolutely hate the 10th hour, most people will just say they hate it.
As for contacting you first, how easy is it for him to contact you? Did you say anywhere in the game that you all are happy to hear suggestions for improving the game? Also remember that for most users, the App Store is the only place they will interact with you. That's the model. Even if you had said in the game itself that you welcome suggestions and how to reach you, that may not be how users think about you and your game.
In that case, I went on Google and linked my name to a nasty complaint. Lo and behold, they called or emailed back and solved it if I removed the negative feedback.
Time and time again, if I complain publicly and become a cost sinkhole I get results. If I am a sheep, I get nothing.
But I still feel like the first response, if it's possible, should be an email. We're just a couple of guys, and both our website and our game's credits make it clear that we're not a major faceless company.
I suppose people are conditioned by large companies ignoring them, so I hope that the proliferation of indie developers in the App Store can recondition people to actually send emails.
We love getting direct email from people, and we respond to every single one. I think people are sometimes surprised to get a personal reply; hopefully that won't be such a surprise if enough developers do it.
Me: "I'm having a problem with the fribbulator. It appears to be broken - the metal is snapped cleanly in two."
Them: {no response}
Me: "I sent you this last week but didn't receive a reply. I'm having a problem with the fribbulator. It appears to be broken - the metal is snapped cleanly in two."
Them: "Here are instructions on how to reinstall Windows. Please see our FAQ as well. Did this response answer your question [Y/N]?"
That sort of response might as well include a .gif of a raised middle finger. Companies that intend to provide better-than-this customer service should factor in customer conditioning into their plans. The customer has been conditioned to complain publicly first. You'll have to fix that explicitly if you don't want it to happen to you.
I think customer conditioning, as you suggest, is part of the solution. Training also needs to include learning how to thoughtfully write a response, which would then show empathy. Instead what we have are a lot of Twitter support accounts whose names end with "Cares" run by a lot of people who don't.
[1] https://twitter.com/#!/shaggyfrog/status/100974626112421888 [2] https://twitter.com/#!/shaggyfrog/status/100727705112285184
I see two common scenarios:
Disposable products lead to or correspond with an attitude that customers are disposable. (And a corresponding, irritating frenzy around "customer acquisition" to address the resulting churn.)
Hotel California: You can check out, but you can never leave. You're dealing with a quasi- or literal monopoly, who know all to well that they can simply tell you to fuck yourself. Once in a while, they'll say it to your face. Most of the time, they'll just ignore you until you give up pestering them.
When I do have a genuinely positive support experience, I usually am willing to go out of my way to credit it, internally or externally.
But these days I'm predisposed to expect a bad experience, especially when I'm not dealing with the other party face to face (or even voice to voice).
It's part of what makes what would otherwise be an uneventful purchase so agonizing: You know that if you "choose wrong", essentially you're screwed. Or if the warehouse pulls the dropped, shaken, stirred, or restocked package for your order.
P.S. I guess my comment isn't really adding anything. I thought I'd gotten over that 7 hour experience -- maybe not quite yet.
You know the drill. My obligatory anecdote: bought a popular notebook from a big name computer company. Called tech support for the same problem six times. Five times was connected to someone who ran me through a pointless drill and refused to vary from the script, culminating in sending the machine in for replacement of random parts, which each time worked briefly then the device died again. The sixth time someone more conversant was willing to LISTEN to me, understood my job is designing such things, went off script, and informed me he was not allowed to tell me that complete exploded mechanical drawings were available online at http://www.bigcompco.com/foobar/product_X_disassembly.pdf ... I expressed my happy dismay that he couldn't tell me what he told me, hung up, took the machine apart (now knowing the secret sequencing), and proceeded to vacuum out the clogged heat sink which somehow nobody in the repair department managed to notice FIVE TIMES. Worked fine ever since.
Anecdote 2, short version: called MegaSoftware Corp about a non-booting OS. Was told to delete all 2GB of somebody else's data (a huge amount at the time) and reinstall everything - and was told this for $29. Unwilling to, 20 minutes later figured out copying one file solved the problem. Credit charges were soon reversed.
Upshot: we're now conditioned to assume there's nobody (or nobody competent) to talk to. The only hope to get attention is to leave scathing feedback and assume nobody will notice anyway. Quite a surprise when competent willing support appears.
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.
Additionally the abundance of similar apps means that there is no real interest in "asking for help"; the user can just try the next app. Still, before doing that he will post his comment for the benefit of future users (this app is (terrible|bad|doesnt-work|...).
Finally the feedback channels may not be as easy to find as for traditional software. I am not sure where I would send feedback about some indie-app that doesn't even have a homepage (or that may be ranked on page 20 on Google).
I'm disappointed that this appears to be an unreasonable expectation.
I think HN is mostly familiar (and admiring of) Zappos and their awesome customer service. Twitter is bar none the easiest, cheapest way to get positive public customer support stories.
Most twitter users have a handful (less than a 100) people they regularly interact with and are kind of amazed that a company would take the time to message them directly about an issue they were having.
From there it is usually easy to get a dialog going and when their issue is fixed they aren't just satisfied but ecstatic about your company and product (typically they go back on Twitter and talk you up to their friends).
The chances someone else has already encountered a similar problem? Good or better.
The chances someone else already commented online about the problem? Good or better.
The chances somebody else posted about how to address the problem? Good or better.
The chances of a Google query's response time being better than direct customer service? Whatever the maximum of "good" is.
Combined with most companies lack of decent customer service, it's obvious it has come to this.
Two days ago I read an article about a local company; deciding my wife may find enjoyable work with them, I decided to visit their website and careers page. The careers page presented an SSL cert error. I decided to write an email to the DNS administrator explaining that their intermediary signing cert was expired, and why this is a problem, and even provided a helpful link.
Amazingly, I got a reply - within hours, but unfortunately it went like this:
Them 2) You're going to the wrong site, its here:
Me 3) The URL you've provided me 302 redirects to the URL I said is the issue. Here's a paste from wget of this action happening:
Them 4) What browser are you using? Works fine here.
Me 5) I've tested this on 3 machines in 3 different browsers, here's output from browsershots.org showing it doesn't work on 78 other browsers.
Them 6) I'm forwarding this to someone else.
... silence...
Now one must question -- would have I gotten a better response by publicly @mentioning this multi-billion dollar pharmaceutical company that can't get SSL working on their careers site? (Just confirmed its still broken)
(edited for formatting readability)
And, obviously, don't release software that's not ready for production. The mindset "we'll just release without proper testing, the users will point out the bugs" - is so 1995
Sounds like the user hasn't ruled out a configuration error or buggy device and is simply looking for a solution. This is due diligence before reporting a bug (along with reading the documentation, of course).
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.
Here's an example. Recently I tried a demo version of an upgrade to a program I already own. Certain things were broken that used to work fine. The only support allowed is to sign into my account on their website and use a feedback form. Email support is not allowed, nor is there a product forum. When I filled in the form it told me that I was not a registered user of version 2, therefore support was not available. So then I went and wrote a scathing public review advising people to avoid the product for specific reasons.
Compare that to another product I have and seldom use which I also wanted to check the upgrade out. I tried the demo, and there were essential features missing. I emailed the developer using the link in the program and explained myself. He wrote back saying that feature would be added in version 3 and I could upgrade 1 to 3 when it comes and skip 2, no problem. And so that was the end of it for now.
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.
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.
It's unforgiving out in the wild. It might not be ideal, but that's the system we have (until support systems are integrated into the store). Even if there was a brilliant direct feedback/support portal & the customer used it to your satisfaction, I believe it's still appropriate to rate a product based on your experience with it. If it crashes, it's going to get a lower rating, regardless of how many reps apologised & promised to fix it.
Trolls, reinier, trolls killed 'asking' on the internet.
Then again, when a customer complaints about a bug, this (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3208990) is probably not a good way to keep them from going public.
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.
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.
