
How I Handle Trello Support - joeyespo
http://blog.fogcreek.com/four-million-to-one/
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Serow225
If Brian or others at Fog Creek read this, I'd suggest considering adding a
way to provide more feedback when a user clicks on the 'I did/not find this
article helpful' buttons; in another software package I use, when you click on
the 'helpful' button it pops up a dialog asking 'Thank you for your feedback.
We'd love to know what you liked about this page (text box here)'. When you
click on the 'not helpful' button, the dialog says 'What were you trying to do
in the software, and what would make this page more helpful? For example. "I
was trying to fit data to a curve, but I think this variable is spelled
wrong." (text box here). In both cases, they also have a text box 'May we
contact you for more information? (Email)'. This way the support/doc team gets
immediate actionable feedback, and instead of just an email the ticket can go
right into your system, tagged with any useful information you want to gather
(page in question and its rev #, OS, browser, user account info, etc). Keep up
the great work Brian et al! *BTW if you noticed someone who just voted down
the 'Getting Started' page, that was me - I was just testing out if it asked
for more information :)

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ColinDabritz
This is really inspiring.

There are certainly some more complex professional products that probably
warrant a higher support burden, but I've always felt that a lot of support
costs are essentially consequences of software design not being quite right.

I think this example shows that with proper attention to design, detail, and
user feedback, you can reduce the burden of support for most software. The one
person filling the role, because there will always be SOME questions, and
you'll always miss SOME improvements, can serve as a conduit to the team to
improve the software.

Of course, if you already have a high support burden, transitioning could be
challenging, but not impossible.

~~~
louthy
I develop a massively complex healthcare system for running medical practices
/ small hospitals. We have two support staff members. I think you have it
right when you say "a lot of support costs are essentially consequences of
software design not being quite right".

There's a number of things that I think help:

* Clear UI

\- don't have rows of icons with no text

\- try to compartmentalise areas of the application so users can build a
'mental map' of the application (for example we have 'patient home page',
'appointment home page', 'consultation suite', 'accounts home page'. So whole
areas of the application work almost like documents.

* Explain everything in clear English

* Make sure the most commonly used actions always 'visible'

* Consider how the user will interact with your product. Healthcare especially is one where you must get this right, an extra click can drive the users crazy. It can be small things that really make a difference, I added a tag-cloud to the top of the medical-record for example, which really helps clinicians when the next patient walks through the door.

* Where possible make good decisions for the user, whether it's pre-selecting options, or removing clutter.

* Don't surprise users - They should never worry about what will happen if they click X

* Don't remove features unless you have properly explained why you're doing it

* Don't change a feature unless you're clearly making it better, or have again got buy-in.

There's probably loads more, but that's just off the top of my head. Then
there's the standard stuff like: Never go offline, be fast, etc.

I think also most people would be surprised at how effective 'shiny stuff' is.
Making it look pretty goes a long way.

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Jedd
ISO 8601 ftw, chaps!

I find the screenshot showing two columns - 4/22/2014 and 4/21/2014 -
culturally interesting (I'm from Australia, but see this date format
frequently).

You kind of take it for granted that everyone (else) in IT, especially those
who produce something used by foreigners, ie. the makers of any web app, will
have already embraced 8601. Or, at the very least, offer this as a locale /
display option for their users, even if they themselves use an unsortable,
ambiguous, region-specific format inside their own systems.

One of the very few things that continues to frustrate me with Trello is that
every date shown to me is locked in the format "Mmm dd, yyyy at hh:mm", with
no facility to modify that.

~~~
vl
Well, it looks like it's a perfect case for contacting support.

~~~
Jedd
Good point. Done. :)

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lifeisstillgood
I totally agree with the idea that calm serenity is the symptom of a software
process done right.

What I would like to plead for is hosted Fogcreek and other products in the EU
only. Data protection laws here make getting government work awkward if you
use hosted services outside the EU. It's painful. please host here !!!

ps anyone else in same position?

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jwr
Hosting in the EU would not change much as far as the NSA's reach is concerned
— as long as it is a U.S. company, your data is accessible to government
agencies.

It's a very real concern, but I don't think hosting in the E.U. solves
anything.

~~~
lifeisstillgood
Maybe I was not clear - this is not about stopping the NSA reading my support
emails (I pretty much assume anything I do that is digital is caught, even if
not read)

My concern is winning business with UK public sector - the Data Protection Act
and ICO are clear on processing data only inside legal regiemes that share the
same data privacy protections - in other words EU companies must process
inside EU borders.

Or rather we don't have to but it's a pain in the arse to explain why not and
I have enough to do so please please please either stick processors inside the
EU or can I find a bunch if similar parties who fancy shouldering the cost of
doing same.

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YesProcrast
The linear scale on your first plot undersells your accomplishment. The two
red pixels, if calibrated by the 4,000,000 users at left, correspond to 25,000
support staff. It sounds like there's only you.

A logarithmic scale, like this:
[https://flic.kr/p/nyf11i](https://flic.kr/p/nyf11i) shows off your feat more-
completely.

Thank you for making Trello. It's made my life more organized and efficient.

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snide
Having set up something similar yesterday for webhook.com here's what I ended
up going with.

1\. Using zendesk for incoming emails and a knowledge base. 2\. Installing
tissueapp plugin for it to allow you to convert a zendesk email into a github
issue. Even better, wherever you respond from (email, zendesk, or github), the
other instances get updated and alert the user. 3\. Pipe out hipchat notices
(zendesk has an option for this) into our chat room whenever issues/tickets
are updated.

Ended up working really well and doesn't get our engineering team out of the
tools they already use.

