Fresh stuff from sukhoi.ru (Discussion)

[mazex]

Originally Posted by Insuber

Dear BlackSix - I refer to your post in the locked thread, where you complain about the users negativity and you link this to the absence of a Friday update.
As an experienced manager in the services business let me give you a very friendly advice: closing the communication channels with your customers will not improve a tough situation, on the contrary it will worsen it. I already see - in this very forum - some long-time, faithful and disciplined users turn into angry terrorists. And your company needs prophets and apostles, not terrorists spreading negativity about your product. The success of Il2 Sturmovik was very much due to this "word of mouth" positive publicity. As I see it now you are setting up the stage for a completely opposite result: angry ex-customers telling to their friends to keep away from this product. And I I BELIEVE THAT MG DOESN'T DESERVE IT, BECAUSE OF THE HUNDRED THOUSAND HOURS OF DEDICATED AND PASSIONATE WORK which went into CloD.

In the customer-supplier relationship you have only one option: tell the customer the bad and the good news. Silemce is never a solution.

Cheers,
Insuber

+1 on everything in your post, and I hope you count me in as one of the formerly disciplined users that has turned "to the dark side". I also work as a manager in the software development business and I work a lot with process development for service support and delivery using ITIL as a framework like most other large companies. Customers can take a LOT if you communicate with them and many times you get amazed with the things they can accept if they get a fast response and regular updates on their reported incidents. What does NOT work is blaming others and failing to communicate back that their problem unfortunately is not solved yet.

One can also be amazed at the bad-will that can happen if a user that has an annoying problem with your software files an incident and it gets stuck in the system so the user even doesn't get a response in weeks. Suddenly you make the first page of some major newspaper and then the situation is out of your control... Modern media where all newspaper articles are also posted on websites with public blogs attached to each article makes this even worse. Suddenly the bad publicity article about your company gets a thread with hundreds of other users that whine about the problem that never should have been up for public discussion in the first place. That's a fact with the new communications channels available now.

For a product like this forums are a major communication channel. If you fail to acknowledge that and the irritation among your customers gets as bad as it is here now you have a major problem. Starting to hint that the reason your disappointed customers wont get updates is because they are too irritated about the lack of communication is really not that good of an idea? Kind of like the death penalty... The society says you can't kill people so now we kill you to set an example.

Just as you say, last week many former supporters like myself had enough and joined the irritated group after the over-moderation here combined with the statement that we won't get any updates as we are so irritated... If I was the manager at MG I would take this dead serious and do the only thing possible to correct it by spending an hour posting here this Friday, and then spend 30 minutes each week for the regular Friday updates... But that's my opinion and it seems like the management of MG think another way about how to spend their time. They are really far down the trust road with their most loyal customers - and that is serious business where you have to accept that even if you are dead tired of the childish attitude of them - you have to bite the pillow and respond in a polite manner! That's how it works unfortunately...