Customer Loyalty

[blackstone]

They are not in the forum because they do not know their way around.

[PaoloT]

1 hour ago, blackstone said:

They are not in the forum because they do not know their way around.

I fear this type of user would require one-by-one, constant support. In their language, not knowing a lingua-franca; and possibly at home or at an office next to their home. It's indeed a model that worked in the not-so-distant past, and created a relevant world of support activities.

This is now done on the web, with more capillary reach. If these users can't even find these support materials on the web, or can't read the automatic sub-title translation, I fear there is very little that can be done for them. Unless Serif creates an international network of support offices in each county, and shares the huge costs with the other users.

Paolo

 

[PaulEC]

I find it hard to believe that someone who can learn to use the software in the first place, is incapable of doing simple searches or use an online translator if necessary!

 

[v_kyr]

11 hours ago, R C-R said:

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.

Those who ever used Google Translate will usually recognize those webbrowser translation plugin-icons. Translation service plugins are available for every pluggable webbrowser, and even if a webbrowser won't support pluggins at all, you can always open another webbrowser tab/window with the Google translate website URL preloaded (bookmarks are your friends) to do language and web-link translations. - So you can for example let the whole thread here be translated into some destination language.

Well as I often tend to preach, people have to discover, learn and make use of such web capabilities, aka learning by doing and discovering the possibilities they have in front of them!

[Pšenda]

1 hour ago, PaulEC said:

I find it hard to believe that someone who can learn to use the software in the first place, is incapable of doing simples searches or use an online translator if necessary!

I'll just add - the level and knowledge of users are of course different. But when it comes to users with very little knowledge about PCs and OS updates, any unsolicited email with alarming information about problematic updates and the need to uninstall them will only cause chaos and panic. Especially in the age of fraudulent e-mails and hacking of login data, the technique of sending bulk e-mails is completely undesirable.
A personal question from a user with a possible problem on the forum, which can be responded to and the information adapted to their knowledge, is then completely irreplaceable.

[chrisb123]

Should I report this bug?

At my work it goes like this...

Do you like the software? No
Why are you using it? Work
Can you use something else? No
Has the bug been reported? Yes
Can you recreate the bug? Everyone can even the developers
Has a fix been applied? Yes
Did it fix the bug? No and it created more bugs
 

[thomaso]

57 minutes ago, blackstone said:

They are not in the forum because they do not know their way around.

Back to your initial post: Do you mean they would need an email to get in touch with the forum? A quick search shows that Facebook does contain hints to the Affinity forum's existence, some with direct links to click-on. – Additionally, Facebook appears to offer included translation.

• So, what may indeed prevent Facebook users from visiting the Affinity forum or reading in their preferred language?
• And, what makes you think those would get reached by email in terms of understand what is communicated?
• Can you post screenshots or links of a few according Facebook messages?

[PaoloT]

3 hours ago, thomaso said:

what makes you think those would get reached by email

Something I would add is that the less technically informed often don't even know email exists, or if they know don't know how to access it. They know of Facebook, Instagram or WhatsApp. They might not even know how to open a web browser.

Paolo

 

[PaoloT]

2 hours ago, BAKAI said:

Unfortunately Online translation (google & others) never works for me properly at all. And I have to pay organisation who translate with Human workflow for my client's jobs.

That's for professional translation, to be delivered with a commercial product. Automatic translation can be perfectly fine to collect information for self-training.

Paolo

 

[PaulEC]

17 hours ago, PaoloT said:

Something I would add is that the less technically informed often don't even know email exists, or if they know don't know how to access it. ... They might not even know how to open a web browser.

But are there are significant numbers of people who would know about, purchase and be able to use the Affinity products, but not be capable of the things you mention?

[PaoloT]

52 minutes ago, PaulEC said:

But are there are significant numbers of people who would know about, purchase and be able to use the Affinity products, but not be capable of the things you mention?

As rare as study cases. I would think they should have chosen some point-and-click app, and were mislead at choosing a complex professional-grade software.

Paolo

 

[thomaso]

On 10/25/2022 at 4:01 PM, walt.farrell said:

On 10/25/2022 at 3:38 PM, 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/

Can you shed some light on the criteria for known issues and bugs to get mentioned in this list? To me it appears quite selective and appears not to cover many of the known and logged bugs, for instance caused by issues in the UI, certain tool functions or with colour handling in Affinity.

[Guest]

14 minutes ago, thomaso said:

Can you shed some light on the criteria for known issues and bugs to get mentioned in this list? To me it appears quite selective and appears not to cover many of the known and logged bugs, for instance caused by issues in the UI, certain tool functions or with colour handling in Affinity.

That's an FAQ not a know issues list. That said, a known issues list does not need to go into detail about all known bugs, but rather provide some guidance as to what may or may not be an issue for users with various OS and app versions. The criteria for such a list should be how specific is it to that release, and how common and/or serious is the issue to users. With such a list users can then make a decision whether or not it is worth the risk to them to upgrade either their operating system, or their application to a newer version. While it would be nice to have a comprehensive list of all bugs (and their status) available, a known issues list is most definitely not that.

[thomaso]

7 minutes ago, Bryan Rieger said:

That's an FAQ not a know issues list.

How do you know or mean? To me it says literally "Known Issues & Workarounds" for the last section of the thread – while some of these entries refer to certain hardware or operating system, though those have separate sections above.

I rather have the impression the entire thread is neither filled nor sorted consequently. That is why I would like to understand the criteria … or whether it is kept more randomly, which may be okay, too, but important to know considering how it / its sections are titled.

Does the main title "FAQ" require certain conditions beyond being "frequently asked questions"? For instance being pinned at the top of one of the subforums appears not no be an aspect.

[Guest]

18 minutes ago, thomaso said:

How do you know or mean?

Because it says “List of all FAQ's” right at the top of the page.

[thomaso]

20 minutes ago, Bryan Rieger said:

Because it says “List of all FAQ's” right at the top of the page.

It's just a title. I was referring to the content of the theme. However, that is what made me wonder and ask. As we can see in various threads, in the worst case a thread title doesn't even have to touch on content, especially if it drifts in its discussion over time. That thread, on the other hand, is filled only by Serif, which is a different pair of socks.

So, again, what is an FAQ in the understanding of “List of all FAQ's”? The parameters frequent & asked appear to be insufficient.