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If you don't solicit customer comments, you won't get
any. The result could be documents that turn silk purse product
into sow's ear customer perception and reduced sales.
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Gwen says:
At first, my
manager insisted that there was no justification for the changes--she had heard
nothing but positive remarks about the documentation! Of course, she had
implemented absolutely NO feedback mechanism, had not really read the
documentation herself, and had no idea how to use the software we documented.
(You may remember this manager as the one who "looked good in meetings" when we
were comparing documenter/developer ratios.)
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As someone who fills out and returns feedback questionaires, let me make
this suggestion:
Please pay attention to what Gwen said. I have found that too often these
forms offer no place obvious or suitable to make any type of negative
remarks. I get asked what I liked a lot. I don't get asked what part of
the documentation was incorrect, useless, not there, etc.
Could it be that if you are asking for only good comments on your feedback
forms and people aren't happy, they aren't responding at all?
