Customer Loyalty

[blackstone]

I'm glad that the problems with some Microsoft updates are addressed here. However, this is not helpful for many users. Either they're not in the forum or they don't speak English. Where is the problem, please, when the Serif company writes a circular email to all buyers. Who solves these problems now? Experienced users in different forums? Microsoft? There are also people who earn their money with the affinity programs. This is where Serif would do well to engage with users. We call that customer loyalty.

[Pšenda]

6 minutes ago, blackstone said:

when the Serif company writes a circular email to all buyers.

Rather than pestering your customers with unsolicited email (not everyone has/needs to have the listed problems), information could be provided on the Welcome screen. Here, for example, there could be information about an available update - not to be constantly annoyed by an unsolicited dialog, that has to be tapped off all the time. If the user is not interested in this "service" information, the Welcome screen will be turned off, or it could be configured (already requested).

[blackstone]

I made this suggestion over a year ago.

[thomaso]

Isn't this forum with the Serif moderators activity a proof of Serif's customer loyality?

Do you indeed expect an Email for every bug that gets found in Affinity for Windows? If not every, what criteria? And how about issues in printer drivers or PDF viewing apps as possibly involved parts in a designers workflow with Affinity? Finally an Email could get send for every new camera on the market where Affinity hasn't implemented a new lens profile yet which could cause unexpected results for Affinity users?

Although it could be helpful to have an overview of known bugs in Affinity applications, at least problems caused by third-party software or hardware may exceed the benefit of such a general but focused information pool. Not only because it might be difficult to find the desired information in what is likely to be a long list of known problems that would have to be sorted by many different aspects, e.g. various user workflows, known vs. unknown keywords & Affinity terms, user expectations for app behaviour vs. issue results etc.

Luckily, for Windows it appears Microsoft announces issues caused by their updates, published either by themself or others, for instance:

https://www.windowslatest.com/2022/09/16/windows-10-kb5017308-update-is-causing-new-issues/

https://www.windowslatest.com/2022/10/23/windows-11-kb5019509-22h2-watch-out-for-these-potential-known-issues/

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/release-health/status-windows-11-22h2

[blackstone]

Special offers from Serif are also sent via email. Where is the problem? This can also be done via the info screen in the programs. And I've already written it, many don't speak English.

[walt.farrell]

9 minutes ago, blackstone said:

Special offers from Serif are also sent via email. Where is the problem?

They are only sent to customers who have chosen to receive them. And those offers would be of interest to all Affinity users.

Notifications of bugs would normally be of interest only to a smaller subset of users. For example, Mac users would have no interest in a Microsoft error that causes problems with the Affinity applications. And Windows users would have no interest in issues caused by macOS. Therefore they would not appreciate getting those emails.

11 minutes ago, blackstone said:

And I've already written it, many don't speak English.

There are several web-based translation services those users can use.

[walt.farrell]

29 minutes ago, N.P.M. said:

Build into browsers nowadays. 

But that may not help users who receive an email.

[Guest]

This could easily be solved by keeping a public facing known issues support page (or pages), much like Adobe does with the majority of their software.

A link to these pages could be pinned in the forums, sent out via email updates (for those who choose to opt-in), and provided by the support teams in their signatures, and support requests.

As for supported languages, I would hope the information would be provided in the languages Serif already supports on their website; UK English, US English, Portuguese, Dutch, Spanish, French, Italian, Mandarin, and Japanese.

Edited October 25, 2022 by Guest
Added info re: language translations.

[thomaso]

1 hour ago, blackstone said:

Special offers from Serif are also sent via email. Where is the problem? This can also be done via the info screen in the programs. And I've already written it, many don't speak English.

The problem is the possibly required number & frequency of Emails. – How would you want them to be selected or filtered?

The welcome screen doesn't work, as mentioned before for those who have it deactivated. And I definitely would not want additional info screens on app launch – although I am absolutely interested in information about bugs. Yes, language is a problem, globally, since centuries – but fortunately this becomes disappearing nowadays by the various available technical support that even can make people hear a displayed text … max. customer loyalty.

By the way: As kind of loyalty service we already got the option to Subscribe selected forums (e.g. Windows Bugs, News, or this listed issues or that of 3rd-party software) and thus achieve an Email according to your forums email settings.

[Guest]

Yes, I know some known issues are posted in the forum FAQ’s, but they are only in English and requires that the user go hunting for them.

An easily discoverable (via Google etc) single support page on the website with descriptive links to these FAQs would be a good start.

[thomaso]

5 minutes ago, Bryan Rieger said:

requires that the user go hunting for them.

An easily discoverable (via Google etc)

How do you mean? Users should not "hunt" but "search"… and not get the forum threads as search results but a certain website only, which then displays links to the forum?

[Guest]

For me (and I suspect many folks, YMMV) having links to all of the known issues from a single page is far easier to scan than having to scroll through a forum or a search listing of forum entries.

The forum threads should still be indexed so that if somewhat searches for that specific issue it’ll come up in the top results. Having a separate page linking all known issues that comes up at the top of search results would really help those folks who are interested in what issues currently exists, rather than a single, specific issue.

[walt.farrell]

22 minutes ago, Bryan Rieger said:

For me (and I suspect many folks, YMMV) having links to all of the known issues from a single page is far easier to scan than having to scroll through a forum or a search listing of forum entries.

https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/122151-list-of-all-faqs/

 

[thomaso]

28 minutes ago, Bryan Rieger said:

if somewhat searches for that specific issue it’ll come up in the top results

That is how internet search engines already work, right? Some of them even fuzzy.

But you can't avoid the problem that users don't use or know the required keywords that were used for your requested indexing. For instance, should "cursor" be included if in the Text Editor window a Colour definition does not allow us to enter a Field for a numerical Value? Or should e.g. "colour" + "value" + "field" be required to offer the according result in the list? Or, how often would you think, a search for "issue", "problem", "doesn't work", "wrong" or "help" etc. would be required to be linked in the sake not exclude those users who don't know what to search for because of personal issues to describe their problems in a way that they don't fit with hundred others? Or would you prefer a full text search, just finding every possible instance, to deliver a quick response on your list you want to scroll through?

[Guest]

🏳️ I give up

I’m obviously doing the whole internet wrong. My apologies, everything is absolutely wonderful as it is.

[thomaso]

29 minutes ago, Bryan Rieger said:

I’m obviously doing the whole internet wrong.

"Many roads lead to Rome" was discovered long before the Internet. Not only nowadays we need to know a specific address in order to be guided to the desired destination. Otherwise we have to search, or ask …

[blackstone]

Thank you for the many views. Perhaps certain ways of communicating are not quite so simple. It was important to me to make it clear that there are also somewhat clumsy users. I see that in the many calls for help on Facebook. It would also be a shame if users turned away from Affinity because of this.

[thomaso]

1 hour ago, blackstone said:

important to me to make it clear that there are also somewhat clumsy users. (...) It would also be a shame if users turned away from Affinity because of this.

Don't you confuse cause & effect, or correlation & causality? If people feel Affinity as too complex, where do you see a "shame" if they decide for other workflows: in being clumsy or being complex? I mean, as long as there are alternatives that feel better to users, what right would Serif have to try and tie them to Affinity? Whereas the decision for one of several software programmes is quite different from the fundamental decision for education, – agree?

Besides the forum, Serif invests in various offers to "educate" / "bind" customers: For instance in their Spotlight articles about general topics, with "Learning" as 1 of 4 categories especially for those who were not educated as designers … plus in many video tutorials, at different spots in the internet. – But, again, the agony of choice remains ... as in the search for a solution to a problem, even if it's one of Microsoft.

[blackstone]

These are not offers for users who do not speak English. And there are many of them. I see it on Facebook.

[thomaso]

It appears for online text material are even more languages available than for app interfaces:

 

For video tutorials I experience at least two languages for the sound, respectively subtitles. I assume there are more if I would search in a different language. Video tutorials aren't offered or created by Serif only but by people from "all over the globe".

Why Facebook in particular? A study on Facebook users, their language skills or their level of education compared to non-users of Facebook could be interesting. The same applies to the ratio of Facebook users among all Affinity users or Affinity Forum users. In case you know of a source with reliable numbers, I'd be interested!

[R C-R]

12 minutes ago, thomaso said:

It appears for online text material are even more languages available than for app interfaces:

What browser are you using for that?

[thomaso]

Firefox + https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/traduzir-paginas-web/

It appears the preferred language of the plugin creator "Filipe Ps" is neither English nor German but, tataa!, Portuguese or Brasilian. @blackstone, what is your preferred language?

[R C-R]

2 hours ago, thomaso said:

Firefox + https://addons.mozilla.org/de/firefox/addon/traduzir-paginas-web/

Just FWIW, since it is not obvious from the video that this requires an add on (& Firefox?) it might have been something you could have mentioned in that post.

Regardless, it still should be useful for non-English speakers to know about.

[Pšenda]

For example Chrome with Translate:

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/google-translate

I have been using it on PC and Android for several years.

[PaoloT]

21 hours ago, blackstone said:

Either they're not in the forum

Something that doesn’t appear to be forbidden in any country, if I’m not mistaken.

Paolo