Why We Removed Our Feedback Forum
You might have noticed recently that we replaced our feedback forum tab with a new feedback and help form in the Testomato web application.
It felt like the right thing to do for both our users (and our team) to make sharing feedback an easier process.
Before now, we were using Userecho as a forum to receive feedback, requests, and bug reports about Testomato. It’s a great service with an awesome team behind it, and we highly recommend it!
That being said, it wasn’t the right fit for us for a few reasons:
Most of our users prefer privacy.
We started noticing that people tended to use the private message function on Userecho instead of posting items publicly for discussion. Or, they’d hunt down our email and contact us directly with problems.
There were also a few times our attempts to ask for public votes on features fell completely flat – complete failures.
On the other hand, we conducted an email survey to vote on the next big thing to add to Testomato and were pleasantly surprised by the amount of participation.
This is how we made the decision to create the Testomato Chrome extension!
Support became more complicated.
You probably already understand the importance of customer support and feedback from building your own projects.
So, it’s important to make sure you have a smooth support workflow to make dealing with issues as fast as possible.
We found that our feedback forum actually ended up adding an extra step (and delay) in our process.
For example:
- You find a problem.
- You report it on our feedback forum.
- We receive an email notification.
- We offer our help on the forum.
- If the problem persists, we move the conversation to email.
This was problematic for both our team and whoever was submitting feedback. We all spent a lot of time chasing notifications in our inbox!
And in most cases, these problems were eventually moved to email to make everyone’s life easier.
In addition, our forum mostly functioned as another way for people to get in touch with us. Users were able to contact us via:
- Facebook and Google+
- Our support email: support@testomato.com
- Our regular email: info@testomato.com
- And…our former feedback forum using public discussion or private messages
It also means that we needed to keep tack and maintain all of these spaces!
Public topics weren’t doing their job.
Forums can often become an interactive community for users where they can answer each other’s questions and freely share ideas with others.
In our case, the forum never felt like it was a space for discussion.
One of the biggest advantages for having a forum with public topics is that users can submit feedback that can help show your team what to add next. Since users rarely voted or participated in these topics, we started contacting users directly to get their thoughts about new Testomato features and improvements.
Even though forums can be great tools for teams, it’s also important to take a look at what works best for your community and the people who use your service. You may be spending more time on maintenance than it’s worth!
How to Use the Feedback Form
We really do enjoy hearing from you, so feel free to contact us any time! It’s the best way for us to learn more about your testing needs and keep improving Testomato’s features.
To send us a suggestion or need help with a problem, just click the orange feedback button on the right side of the page in Testomato.
If you’re looking for an easy way for users submit feedback or ask questions, we’ve open sourced our feedback button and form, here.
What’s your favorite way for receiving feedback from your users? We’d love to hear your tips!
Share with us in the comments or on Facebook. You can also find us @testomatocom.
