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We've got this very badly wrong right now and are suffering the consequences. In short we are in the middle of a huge re-development of our core product. Unfort
by JonM 16y ago
We've got this very badly wrong right now and are suffering the consequences. In short we are in the middle of a huge re-development of our core product. Unfortunately my co-founder (who isn't a developer) has been telling users various different "launch dates" (which have conflicted; and many of which we have now passed without the launch) on public and the pressure has really mounted on our public support forum.
The long and short of it is that I'm under enourmous pressure, because according to our users it's already behind schedule.
I don't want to break face by just saying that my co-founder has jumped the gun massively and was in no position to make the promises, so at the moment I'm just living with the embarassment and trying to keep my head down an get it out.
In his defense, there is a reason for this and I wonder what advice HN peeps would give.
Day-to-day senario......
User: Is feature xyz available?
Company: No
User: Will it be available in the future?
Company: This does seem be a worthwile addition and we will discuss it in our next development meeting.
User: When will this feature be added?
Company: We don't have a launch date.
User: Ok, when will this feature be available becuase I need to use it now?
Company: We don't have a launch date available.
User: When will it be available, I'm getting annoyed.
At this point my co-founder usually breaks cover and gives a vuage, fairly distant forward projection; "in a month".
Should we really just be saving "no" and keeping silent on good ideas even though we are developing them?
- faramarz 16y ago>Should we really just be saving "no" and keeping silent on good ideas even though we are developing them? I think a good way of combating that is to get a page up for feedback submission. Anytime you have users like that, ready to make a decision based on your answer or lack of one, you direct them to that page and gently ask them to leave their suggestions for the team. At the end of the day you need to be honest with your users, but do so without revealign what you'll be doing. Instead say that feedback and feature suggestion is crucial, but we can only support the most popular ideas for now. Which is the truth. If adding a feature is requested by 60% of your base, you know you're going create value by giving it to them. Goodluck
- JonM 16y agoThanks for the advice. We do have a GetSatisfaction page setup but alot of our user base refuse to use it (I don't want to pay the extra monthly fee to integrate with our login system). I think it boils down to a communication problem, support / request are fragmented between phone, get satisfaction and our own support ticket system. We also don't have a good way of sending out information. Perhaps if we had a regularly updated blog and a single support and feature reqeusts system it would eliminate the cause of the problem. But that's more coding for me!