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I have an issue right now, where I would love to have the ability to respond to customer reviews: I'm the author of InstaDesk, a Instagram Mac Client. I just re

I have an issue right now, where I would love to have the ability to respond to customer reviews: I'm the author of InstaDesk, a Instagram Mac Client. I just released version 2.0 a couple of days ago, a huge update with lots of new features and improvements. Now that Instagram is offline, people who update to 2.0 think 2.0 is the culprit and write bad reviews telling other users not to update to version 2.0. I already put a big banner onto my website (http://www.instadesk-app.com http://www.instadesk-app.com) explaining the situation, but most people never go there, and those that do don't even read the banner oftentimes (People can send bug reports from the website, and I still get bug reports every so many minutes even though the website itself says that Instagram is down). So right now it would be really helpful for me, to reply to the review and tell people that the app will work fine again in a couple of hours. There is error detection code in InstaDesk that checks for faulty network connections and brings up appropriate errors, but I failed to take into account that the complete instagram.com could time out. Matt Gemmell is correct in that we, as developers, shouldn't try to reply to users but instead find the root cause and fix it, but that doesn't work if the root cause is beyond our control.

LinaLauneBaer 14y ago
I think that your responses to the reviews would only be seen by a fraction of unsatisfied users. Wouldn't it be much better to be able to inform your users via an unobtrusive push notification that Instagram is down and that hopefully everything will be working again in a couple of hours/days? This could prevent bad reviews in the first place and would be seen by more users. I am not saying that you should have built in something like this but what do you think about it - for your app and in general?
- terhechte 14y ago
  Hey, absolutely, yes. It is something I should have implemented, and will implement in one of the next updates, but this doesn't help the users right now.
  - LinaLauneBaer 14y ago
    Thats true and I sympathize with you. I experienced something similar and I felt helpless and frustrated. By the way: I am really impressed by the screenshots of InstaDesk. Looks like a nice and polished app. Lets hope that everything works out fine...
    - terhechte 14y ago
      Thanks! Yeah, the earlier Instagram comes back online, the better. And I guess I learned a valuable lesson here; I need a way to directly address users. Btw. Nice user name, I loved the children's TV show when I was young :)
      - LinaLauneBaer 14y ago
        Actually the TV show is called Lila Laune Bär and not Lina Laune Bär. I don't know why I picked Lina instead...
saurik 14y ago
This article is not claiming that /you/ should solve the root cause, but that Google should: that the real problem is not "reply to reviews", but that users use the review system as a crappy support forum. He explicitly states, despite his title, that replying to reviews is important and useful, but would be better done in private, not in public, as that is a more appropriate place to solve an individual issue. In this particular case, it shoulds like what you really need (the root problem here) is that Google should provide the ability for you to add an important-banner to the top of your package description (such as in a different color). (For disclosure, Cydia, the software marketplace I run, has "depictions" rather than descriptions, allowing developers to customize how their packages are seen an marketed. In practice this is used by repositories to show ads, but for the more savvy developers it solves your use case and provides a lot of power.)
- terhechte 14y ago
  You're right there, a facility from Apple or Google to allow for urgent messages would be the best solution for the type of problem that I've outlined.
huhtenberg 14y ago
Well, if your app doesn't properly identify the root cause of its problems, why do you think it shouldn't be getting unfavorable reviews?
- terhechte 14y ago
  It's less about the reviews, more about the users that won't update to the new, better, version because the reviews state something wrong. In hindsight, I should have added a mechanism to explain to users that Instagram is down. I'll also add such a mechanism, but that doesn't help the users right now.

LinaLauneBaer 14y ago

I think that your responses to the reviews would only be seen by a fraction of unsatisfied users. Wouldn't it be much better to be able to inform your users via an unobtrusive push notification that Instagram is down and that hopefully everything will be working again in a couple of hours/days? This could prevent bad reviews in the first place and would be seen by more users. I am not saying that you should have built in something like this but what do you think about it - for your app and in general?

terhechte 14y ago
Hey, absolutely, yes. It is something I should have implemented, and will implement in one of the next updates, but this doesn't help the users right now.
- LinaLauneBaer 14y ago
  Thats true and I sympathize with you. I experienced something similar and I felt helpless and frustrated. By the way: I am really impressed by the screenshots of InstaDesk. Looks like a nice and polished app. Lets hope that everything works out fine...
  - terhechte 14y ago
    Thanks! Yeah, the earlier Instagram comes back online, the better. And I guess I learned a valuable lesson here; I need a way to directly address users. Btw. Nice user name, I loved the children's TV show when I was young :)
    - LinaLauneBaer 14y ago
      Actually the TV show is called Lila Laune Bär and not Lina Laune Bär. I don't know why I picked Lina instead...

saurik 14y ago

This article is not claiming that /you/ should solve the root cause, but that Google should: that the real problem is not "reply to reviews", but that users use the review system as a crappy support forum. He explicitly states, despite his title, that replying to reviews is important and useful, but would be better done in private, not in public, as that is a more appropriate place to solve an individual issue. In this particular case, it shoulds like what you really need (the root problem here) is that Google should provide the ability for you to add an important-banner to the top of your package description (such as in a different color). (For disclosure, Cydia, the software marketplace I run, has "depictions" rather than descriptions, allowing developers to customize how their packages are seen an marketed. In practice this is used by repositories to show ads, but for the more savvy developers it solves your use case and provides a lot of power.)

terhechte 14y ago
You're right there, a facility from Apple or Google to allow for urgent messages would be the best solution for the type of problem that I've outlined.

huhtenberg 14y ago

Well, if your app doesn't properly identify the root cause of its problems, why do you think it shouldn't be getting unfavorable reviews?

terhechte 14y ago
It's less about the reviews, more about the users that won't update to the new, better, version because the reviews state something wrong. In hindsight, I should have added a mechanism to explain to users that Instagram is down. I'll also add such a mechanism, but that doesn't help the users right now.