A plea from a documentation coordinator: please tell us the WHY!

In Gizmoland (aka SurveyGizmo/HelpGizmo headquarters) we truly value feedback. We use feedback in nearly every area of our business to gauge how we are doing and determine where we are headed. You hear this a lot in SaaS, but unfortunately, it is touted more often as a company value than it is actually true. Too often companies ask for feedback but do not act on it. As a result, people are generally skeptical that providing feedback is worth the time.

The Very Worst Kind of Feedback

Before I worked in Gizmoland, I operated under the assumption that when companies asked for feedback it just went into a black hole. So, most of the time, I didn’t respond to requests for feedback. If I did, I would only answer the quantitative questions (e.g. a rating scale question such as “On a scale of 1 to 5, how happy are you with your most recent interaction?”) leaving blank the follow up open-text questions which asked me to provide comments or “the why.” Now that I am on the receiving end of this kind of feedback I know that it is the very worst kind.

Why You Should Tell Us the WHY

If I could go back and bop my past self on the head I would. There is nothing more frustrating than a satisfaction response without the why. Think about it. I cannot act on the number alone. A response with out the why is simply not actionable.

For example, we embed a SurveyGizmo survey at the bottom of each tutorial in our HelpGizmo knowledge base. We ask a really simple question, “Did this tutorial answer your question?” Readers can respond “Yes,” “No,” or “Somewhat?”

If the respondent answers “No” or “Somewhat” we ask 2 follow-up questions: A “why” question: “What information are you looking for?” And, if they want help finding a solution, we ask them to provide their email. For respondents who provide their email, a ticket is created for our support heroes to come to the rescue.

All of these responses come straight to my Inbox (see the example below). You can see I have the URL to the the tutorial available to me, the satisfaction response, “Yes,” “No,” or “Somewhat,” as well as, most importantly, the why!

I read every single word of every single open-text response that my respondents take the time to provide. I won’t bore you with the nitty-gritty, but I read and analyze each response. I learn so much from each of these responses. Without this data I feel like I would be writing into a void. This kind of feedback is how we “iterate and make it great,” in the words of Pete, HelpGizmo’s Lead Developer and Help Sheriff.

Can This Scale?

I don’t know for sure, but I would posit that the larger the company the lower the response rate for knowledge base feedback. Customers find it difficult to believe this type of feedback can scale. I think that it can. Here’s what it looks like:

We will continue to read all feedback; this I promise. However, at some point, my team will not be able to act on every piece of feedback we receive. Even now, there is some feedback we choose not to act on. Some of the feedback we receive comes from customers who are trying to do something so specific that an update to the tutorial might actually confuse the rest of our customers. We don’t just toss this feedback aside, however. We still read it as a means to better understand the user and, thus accomplish our most important role, bridging the gap between the product and the user. Beyond this, we will continue to analyze all knowledge base feedback looking for trends to act on.

A Plea

So here’s my plea. It’s 2 simple steps.

1. Respond to feedback surveys, especially mine
2. Tell us the WHY!

See? Easy!