Before going to bed, I noticed that the front page of msnbc was down. Usually, I don’t bother contacting anyone about this type of thing because they are often brief glitches that no producer wants to be caught with. But when I woke up, it was still there. So I thought I should say something.
Sadly, I spent about 10 minutes trying to find out how to contact the technical team at msnbc.com to tell them that I had troubles with their homepage loading. By the time I finally found the technical support contact form, I had nearly given up. And being near “give-up” mode doesn’t help when I have to write an email explaining the problem and then fill out 10 support questions.
Judging from this experience and others at MLive, I can see both sides of the coin – the frustrated user trying to get some answers, and the annoyed producer answering often-mundane questions.
Here’s what you can do about it.
- Report an issue: Find a problem with your site or another one and try going through the steps of reporting it to the web staff. Do you know who to send your message to? Do you know how to send a message? With two clicks, I was able to send a message to CNN.com‘s web staff. I already said it wasn’t so easy for msnbc. If your site’s contact page is confusing, or hard to find, consider making it more visible.
- Gauge the support response: Did anyone from the website respond to you? Did they answer your question? How does the response impact you as a user of the site?
- Use your name, title and work email when giving a response: Think back to your “report an issue” exercise? Did you get a response back from “support@website.com” or did you get a personal note from a site producer or staff member? The difference is huge for a user, who can feel more connected with a news website, which often can feel very impersonal.
- Follow up with users: So you answered their question – your job is done, right? Nope. If someone writes you back thanking you, which often can happen if you give good responses, write them back again and tell them “it was no big deal,” or something like that. Help site users understand that you are here for them, you want them to keep using your site and if they have questions again, they’ve got someone behind the scenes who can help. While it sounds like that’s opening the door to a flood of emails, it hasn’t happened that way in my experience.
- Write a feedback blog: Don’t have time to answer everyone’s questions about the same thing? Write a blog that answers users questions before they ask. With msnbc.com’s site down today, I would love to see a blog post somewhere on the “page not found” page that tells me why it’s down before I even have to ask. And if I have follow-up questions, I can always post those in the comments on that particular blog post. The Spokesman-Review’s Ask the Editors blog is a pretty good example.
Have any other experiences with feedback? What were they?
P.S. If anyone knows anyone at MSNBC.com, please pass this along: When I go to the homepage, I get the “page not found” error. But if I click a story and then hit the back button, the homepage shows up again. Then if I refresh, I get the “page not found” again.
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this is good. i was looking for this kind of answer. if there more described answer. that would be great…Thank you.