Why is it so hard for addon devs to not alienate customers?

[Matthew Kane 1,343]

1 hour ago, PATCO LCH said:

Kyle, may I say with all due respect I think with your analytical mind you would make a stellar University law professor!

Please don't take it wrong, I'm not trying to be funny but you are a smart dude and may just be wasting your time moderating a hobby forum with a bunch of old fellows playing pilot.(Such as myself). I know you stated once you have taught school before or am I wrong? I have wondered if you may just be over qualified intellectually leading to some of the frustration with folks here. I don't mean to sound smart but maybe something to think about.

Enough advice from granddad.

Regards, Vic

I was thinking the same, overqualified for the job, also for me I run a small business so when I am managing the PR side of things I prefer keeping things to the minimum, that saves time and resources for other things as resources are very limited in small operations. 

Kyle you are a very smart fella, Go and make your millions applying yourself to something of value to this world so you can retire on a nice Scandinavian Lake someday, and if you play the right cards perhaps you can buy the entire lake 😎

[Peter Webber 339]

6 hours ago, Holdit said:

I think it's stuff like this that's at least partly responsible for the problems mentioned in the OP. Too much developer worship and rejection of the idea that something might actually need improving. When there's a big enough chorus of "We're not worthy, we're not worthy!" it's hardly surprising that some people might actually start to believe it, and behave accordingly.

I don't like the attitude that PMDG display sometimes, yet their product is amazing and I'm delighted I bought it, but I show my approval of a developer or their product by giving them my money (and I'll recommend the product to others) - that's the bit that affects the bottom line, but they needn't think they're getting my Unconditional Positive Regard also.

I'm not even particularly picking on PMDG, who are like Mary Poppins compared to a certain scenery developer, whose forum I will only ever visit if I have a specific technical question that needs answering - the Hallelujah Chorus is a bit too deafening.  

On the other side of the coin, I've never noticed a certain GA aircraft developer being rude to anyone...but that's because they don't do communicating at all.  You pays your money...etc

 

Brother, where are you from? A first world country with first world service? It's "stuff like this" which makes me realise how lucky you guys are to have any type of service. In Africa, we are lucky to have any kind of pity when it comes to "service". I am not into "worship", I am just so happy that i get service from any source. Brother, come join me here..PMDG (Kyle) has proven to be the best in costumer service with my PMDG aircraft issues. It's all relative. Come join me here...I will show you a few things...show me who you "worship".?

[Holdit 551]

1 hour ago, Peter Webber said:

Brother, where are you from? A first world country with first world service? It's "stuff like this" which makes me realise how lucky you guys are to have any type of service. In Africa, we are lucky to have any kind of pity when it comes to "service". I am not into "worship", I am just so happy that i get service from any source. Brother, come join me here..PMDG (Kyle) has proven to be the best in costumer service with my PMDG aircraft issues. It's all relative. Come join me here...I will show you a few things...show me who you "worship".?

We're not "lucky to have any sort of service" - we pay for it. Maybe we are lucky to live in a culture/society/economy in which good service is available, but that's good, and not a reason for substandard instances of customer service to be given a free pass. I'm sure Kyle has been great with your customer service issues, but you sir are not the world, and other people have been less enthralled by the communications skills exhibited sometimes by PMDG. In fact I'm not knocking PMDG's customer service skills at all - I don't believe I've ever had to put them to the test, such is the quality of their product, and any customer service I've witnessed seems to have been on the button, so please don't put words in my mouth.

And by the way, progress, in any walk of life, comes from those who see room for improvement, NOT from those who insist everything's fine and prefer to dismiss criticisms.

[Guest]

I think this:

And I raise my glass to all my virtual Pilot friends...Clear Skies to all!

 

 

[Holdit 551]

6 hours ago, scandinavian13 said:

This one goes a little of both ways, and I think people (not necessarily including you in this) confuse the two.

When you work the support queue - ours in particular - you find that the vast majority of the issues are caused by user misconfiguration (when FSX:SE came out - not reading the Read Me file asking them to install additional SimConnect versions; same with P3D; bad FSUIPC setups, too), or misunderstanding (allowing third party programs to interfere with things). After a while, you get in a groove of "okay, let me figure out what this person is/isn't doing, and solve it." Surprisingly, despite this fact, many take issue with my immediate assumption (based largely in statistical fact - I can literally pull stats on this out of the support queue) that it's something the user can solve with some guidance. I think where the flareups occur is usually when people waltz in with a "this is your problem" attitude, and when I try to walk them through the common steps, they get irritated about it. While I can understand frustration in a situation like that - there's a problem someone wants solved, they're frustrated, and the last thing they want to hear/admit is that it's caused by their own system setup or actions - it's the logical first step.

All the same, I will agree with you when people come in with things that are not functional issues ("my plane isn't working"), and more of the design things ("the angle of [this] isn't correct") that are a bit more subjective, it's a bit harder to process. I think that's where a bit of the ego creeps in, and it's less of a "we can do no wrong" and more of a simple issue of pride. A perfect human would, of course, want what they make to be the best possible version of what it is, but it's still hard to hear "your work is wrong," and a lot of the posts for those things end up being loosely sourced (often MSPaint on a screenshot), while going up against a bit of the ego.

I'll definitely admit falling victim to the latter more often than I'd like to...

 

As someone who works in IT, I can empathise, and while I don't visit the PMDG forum all that much, I do recall seeing things posted by users that had me thinking "He won't get far with that attitude". And to be fair to PMDG, it's pretty clear what the recommended support route is. Nevertheless, these are people who have paid a fair amount for their purchase, you're the professional; they're not (I say this in the sense of clarifying the relationship and not making any criticism or accusation), so more is expected of you. Some customers/end-users are ____s, no question about it, but their money is worth the same as everyone else's. 

If answering obnoxious requests sometimes gets your back up, may I suggest a composing a standard generic response that you can copy and paste every time? One, say, for misdirected support requests, and another for those who claim to have found a bug or fault. That way you'll only ever need to reply once.   If a customer really goes off on one, you get the added satisfaction of battling it away with a simple Ctrl+V. 🙂

 

[Guest]

Wow Vic,

That was a big chop of posts there.

Sorry we all said something - wrong.

You must feel like  [REMOVED]  sometimes.

Really hope that's working out for you.

Edited November 5, 2018 by Guest
removed religious refrence

[charliearon 3,023]

8 minutes ago, ganter said:

Wow Vic,

That was a big chop of posts there.

Sorry we all said something - wrong.

You must feel like God sometimes.

Really hope that's working out for you.

Weren't Vic, or me!  It was the "big Steel Hammer"!🔥

[Poppet 703]

26 minutes ago, ganter said:

Wow Vic,

That was a big chop of posts there.

Sorry we all said something - wrong.

You must feel like  [REMOVED]  sometimes.

Really hope that's working out for you.

 

Hello Ganter

I removed several off topic posts,  It was either that or i was going to lock the Topic 

[vgbaron 3,612]

NOBODY messes with Poppet!

 

Vic

[charliearon 3,023]

8 minutes ago, vgbaron said:

NOBODY messes with Poppet!

 

Vic

Alias the "Big Steel Hammer"!

[WarpD 824]

*pokes Poppet and runs!*

[vgbaron 3,612]

24 minutes ago, WarpD said:

*pokes Poppet and runs!*

Danger! Danger! Will Robinson!

[Guest]

8 hours ago, Poppet said:

 

Hello Ganter

I removed several off topic posts,  It was either that or i was going to lock the Topic 

Aahh, Err...(backing off rapidly, visibly trembling) I see....err...thank you the Poppet.

 

[simbol 5,819]

Dear all,

This has been a very interesting post and I have picked up a couple of good advises, feedback, etc. so I will try my best to remember these in order to provide the best service posible in the future.

However as usual there is always two sides with each history, so I guess we 3rd party content providers could aso start a topic about "Why is it so hard for flying simulator users to not alienate developers" .

Personally I would like to see both sides becoming closer, I have been working on IT for 25+ years and there has been always a tendency to isolate software developers from direct contact with users / customers. There are many reasons for this but I consider it a fundamental mistake as the results are always developers growing apart from the real needs of the customers, which in return causes more frustrations from both sides as both cannot understand each other limitations, needs and developed solutions, and as a result most of the time developers are seeing as arrogant people that don't understand what the user wants / needs.

We are now in the 21st century and times are changing, the world is globalised with people from all over the world connected in a blink of an eye, and it is time for developers to be part of all this. It is way much more productive for 3rd party flying sim content providers to listen what users think, want, wish and need (they are all different things), as it helps to measure how the market is changing so they can continue improving products and creating new releases.

If you pay close attention to this and many other forums, there are some developers already communicating directly with the flying simulation community, and interesting enough those are being very successful in releasing products that become "must have add-on's" for any new and current flying simulator users.

Asking a developer to go and hide and don't talk to customers would be in my opinion very counter productive, instead we all should embrace developers that are here sharing their limited time and as many others have advised, if you approach such developer with very good manners it is almost certain you will get gold results, however when things go wrong AKA you receive a rude response, etc. (there is always ways for things to go wrong while humans are communicating) don't be afraid to tell us in a polite way that our comments, post or emails came across too strong, we are humans like you, we get affected my the same things as you, and some times, we don't respond to requests in the best way posible due to "human factors", after all we are developers not computers, these things can happen and there are always ways to get back on tract with the correct approach.

I take my hat off for Kyle for taking his time to come here and face the public opinion, it tells a lot about his character, well done.

My two cents,
Simbol

 

Edited November 6, 2018 by simbol

[jabloomf1230 2,445]

I'd like to add something to this thread that has nothing directly to do either PMDG. Most of the frustration on the part of both users and developers stems from the open architecture of both P3d and XP. We are not dealing with a closed system like what is found in consoles like the PS4 and Xbox. On a console, the hardware is the same as is the OS. And the game developer controls all additional content that can be added to enhance the game.

On a PC, developers have to cope with a myriad of hardware combinations and a spectrum of Windows versions. But then an additional factor also leads to conflicts. It is hard for one developer to tell if there might be a conflict with another add-on. Perusing the LM official forums, the most common official support response is, "Does the problem occur with all add-ons disabled?"

Users need to recognize that this problem is inherent to an open design. But that said, support tends to be defined by two factors, warmth and competency. Warmth is how tolerant the support is of user frustration. Competency is how rapid and accurately the support staff respond to requests. In my experience, A2A typifies the warm/competent sector of flightsim developer support. Their staff are almost always friendly and capable. Other developers have reputations as being cold/competent. That combination is still better than the remaining two possibilities.

Finally, support is not the only reason to buy an add-on. There are a number of great, relatively problem-free add-ons that don't have or need any support. Look how long that the RealAir Turbine Duke has persisted without any official support. I guess that shows that the secret to support is to produce an outstanding product in the first place. Sometimes, the product is so complex though, that may not be possible. As the Clint Eastwood Dirty Harry character said, "A man's got to know his limitations."