Replying to App Store reviews | Hacker News Reader

Replying to App Store reviews

mattgemmell.com

23 pointsLinaLauneBaer20 comments

I have an issue right now, where I would love to have the ability to respond to customer reviews: I'm the author of InstaDesk, a Instagram Mac Client. I just released version 2.0 a couple of days ago, a huge update with lots of new features and improvements. Now that Instagram is offline, people who update to 2.0 think 2.0 is the culprit and write bad reviews telling other users not to update to version 2.0. I already put a big banner onto my website (http://www.instadesk-app.com) explaining the situation, but most people never go there, and those that do don't even read the banner oftentimes (People can send bug reports from the website, and I still get bug reports every so many minutes even though the website itself says that Instagram is down). So right now it would be really helpful for me, to reply to the review and tell people that the app will work fine again in a couple of hours.

There is error detection code in InstaDesk that checks for faulty network connections and brings up appropriate errors, but I failed to take into account that the complete instagram.com could time out. Matt Gemmell is correct in that we, as developers, shouldn't try to reply to users but instead find the root cause and fix it, but that doesn't work if the root cause is beyond our control.

I think that your responses to the reviews would only be seen by a fraction of unsatisfied users. Wouldn't it be much better to be able to inform your users via an unobtrusive push notification that Instagram is down and that hopefully everything will be working again in a couple of hours/days? This could prevent bad reviews in the first place and would be seen by more users. I am not saying that you should have built in something like this but what do you think about it - for your app and in general?

Hey, absolutely, yes. It is something I should have implemented, and will implement in one of the next updates, but this doesn't help the users right now.

Thats true and I sympathize with you. I experienced something similar and I felt helpless and frustrated. By the way: I am really impressed by the screenshots of InstaDesk. Looks like a nice and polished app. Lets hope that everything works out fine...

Thanks! Yeah, the earlier Instagram comes back online, the better. And I guess I learned a valuable lesson here; I need a way to directly address users. Btw. Nice user name, I loved the children's TV show when I was young :)

Actually the TV show is called Lila Laune Bär and not Lina Laune Bär. I don't know why I picked Lina instead...

This article is not claiming that /you/ should solve the root cause, but that Google should: that the real problem is not "reply to reviews", but that users use the review system as a crappy support forum.

He explicitly states, despite his title, that replying to reviews is important and useful, but would be better done in private, not in public, as that is a more appropriate place to solve an individual issue.

In this particular case, it shoulds like what you really need (the root problem here) is that Google should provide the ability for you to add an important-banner to the top of your package description (such as in a different color).

(For disclosure, Cydia, the software marketplace I run, has "depictions" rather than descriptions, allowing developers to customize how their packages are seen an marketed. In practice this is used by repositories to show ads, but for the more savvy developers it solves your use case and provides a lot of power.)

You're right there, a facility from Apple or Google to allow for urgent messages would be the best solution for the type of problem that I've outlined.

Well, if your app doesn't properly identify the root cause of its problems, why do you think it shouldn't be getting unfavorable reviews?

It's less about the reviews, more about the users that won't update to the new, better, version because the reviews state something wrong. In hindsight, I should have added a mechanism to explain to users that Instagram is down. I'll also add such a mechanism, but that doesn't help the users right now.

>>Google understands that, but they’ve (as usual) chosen an odd and poorly-considered mechanism of encouraging app devs to air dirty laundry in public, and burn out due to having an additional public support forum over which they have zero control. That’s horrible. Count me out.

It is true that some developers may not be able to engage in a constructive conversation. It is also true that some other developers may not want this "additional public support forum".

However, for other developers (and their current/potential customers), a 2-way conversation will work out much better than a 1-sided conversation (i.e. app store review) where the other party isn't able to respond

Many developers are capable of providing a constructive reply to user reviews and imo Apple shouldn't deny them the chance to respond to a user review. I certainly wouldn't describe Google's attempt as odd and poorly considered.

"It would be better for everyone if we had this disagreement in public. -- Nobody, ever"

I disagree. I am hugely glad on both eBay and travel sites when I can see a scathing review from one person and a response from a seller or hotelier like "you tried to pay with monopoly money and you tried to return a bag of rocks"

Private responses are an acceptable alternative to public responses. They are not a substitute, especially if it leaves the original negative review standing in public.

I don't necessarily think the details of an eBay dispute between two parties should be public. A feedback score and, more importantly, a graph of feedback score over time* should be enough to tell you if a seller is reputable.

(I got ripped off once by a seller that had 99% positive feedback, and only recently had they started screwing over every single customer. I wish I had read the _recent_ feedback posts...)

It's seems that what the author has against responding publicly is that he cannot control himself when someone posts a bad review. If you can't do that, then do not respond, it's as simply as that. The rest of us, who want to read discussions between users and developers, and see how developers care about the problems would like to see public responses.

In fact, I think the developers could greatly benefit from public responses by doing PR and by explaining that some bugs have already been fixed or that they are going to be fixed in the next version. Or by explaining that some problem is due to user configuration or at least post a workaround publicly in the store.

Don't get me wrong, some ideas from the post are great. Like upvoting and downvoting, somewhat like many other e-commerce sites that have "Was this answer heplful?". But that doesn't mean that having public responses is a bad idea. Maybe he's not good are answering questions, but the rest of the developers would like to do so. So, no, the lack of a feature is not a feature.

Is it just me, or does this come off as incredibly cynical?

We’re petty, emotional and vindictive

We can’t think properly

We don’t do due diligence or reasonable research about anything

We’re poorly educated

We lack empathy, and have a deep distrust of companies

We universally dehumanise businesses

We don’t read, and we’re not interested in starting now

I mean, I do agree with the overall point, but I like to think humanity is better than this (even if not by much).

I believe humanity is; however, we are discussing the subset of humanity that leaves comments on packages, which is a skewed distribution. People who tend to be more civil in general might have tried numerous other means of solving their problem or getting support before leaving a "verdict" in public; in my experience this causes the sample population of comments to be people who fall into these categories, as they are, at best, "at their worst" (stressed, angry, or confused).

To me, the issue isn't of 'reviews' as some abstract form of human expression (which surely would reflect the good and bad of humanity as the author states), but that Apple's specific implementation of reviews offers no chance for app developers to offer any customer service.

A person who complains, but then has their complaint heard and acted upon often becomes a star customer and evangelist for a service.

I've often thought that if Apple offered a separate "Report an Issue" or "Tell the Developer Something Broke" button they'd help both sides of the equation out as well as improve their overall happiness.

While I agree that up/down voting for individual comments would be a good step forward, I don't particularly care for talking to support. If I am already in the App Store thinking of leaving the feedback, it is all too late to try and steer me to the support. I came to speak up my mind, not to find the solution. If I wanted latter, I would've gone to the app's site directly.

Google understands that, but they’ve (as usual) chosen an odd and poorly-considered mechanism of encouraging app devs to air dirty laundry in public

My reading of the announcement is that this is a way for developers to respond privately & directly to individual users, not in public for all users to see. Is that not the case?

A reasonable argument can be made that responding to reviews has helped improve yelp.

While some slice of humanity exhibit those article mentioned qualities, there's also a review process that goes on the person reading the review. When I read a review I asses the likely educational level, their domain specific knowledge and the way they phrase their words. This then brings a 'reviewer rank' to the equation, so I automatically weight the reviews positive or negative comments appropriately.

I think adding the developers voice adds an Interestimg dimension.

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