“Hello? Anybody home? Think, MacBU, think!”
[This is Part I in a three part series about Microsoft and customer feedback.
Part I: The best methods to send Microsoft feedback.
Part II: What happens to customer feedback?
Part III: Criticism of how Microsoft responds to customer feedback.]
Much our focus for The Entourage Help Blog comes from participating in the public newsgroup for Microsoft Entourage microsoft.public.mac.office.entourage. If you haven’t already subscribed this this online newsgroup then you’re missing a wealth of information.
One of the many reasons Entourage users go to that forum is because they believe it’s a means of communicating with Microsoft. Some are looking for help, others want a new feature and still others just want to shout, “Hello? Anybody home? Think, MacBU, think!” While the folks at the MacBU may be lurking there, they have only rarely identified themselves as Microsoft employees.
How can we communicate with Microsoft?
First, we must realize that Microsoft does not respond very often to individual users. Frankly, if they did then the majority of its software developers would turn into Help Desk employees and then no software would be produced. Other than a call or an E-mail to Microsoft’s Help and Support resources, two-way communication is practically non-existent. (More on this in Part III.)
Next, we must realize what support and information options are already provided us:
- Help menu in each application
- The Microsoft Knowledge Base
- The Entourage newsgroup
- Numerous third party websites such as The Entourage Help Page, MacOSXHints.com and MacWindows.com
- Mac Mojo - The Office for Mac Team Blog
- Numerous personal blogs
- and finally Mac MVPs
As I said before none of these options offer two-way communication with Microsoft. Some do offer a limited ability to respond to Microsoft such as posting comments on their blogs but that still doesn’t offer acknowledgement that we’ve been heard.
As Microsoft MVPs, some of us do get to interact with the MacBU on a limited basis and voice collective concerns for ourselves and those we help support in the newsgroups and other forums. However, because we don’t work for Microsoft we are not the voice of Microsoft. Instead, some of us who assume this role prefer to think we help bring Microsoft the voices of their customers.
Only one good method exists to send feedback to Microsoft and that is the Send Feedback mechanism built into the Help menu every Office:mac application. Sending feedback to Microsoft is easy and, while it doesn’t offer the satisfaction that your voice counts, it does lend itself to helping turn feedback into features.
To encourage you to use the Send Feedback tool, I’ve sifted through six months of newsgroup posts (January 9 - July 24, 2007) and pulled the following 70 feature requests for Entourage. I found these by simply searching Google for “Feedback” in the Microsoft Entourage newsgroup. If you find feature where you’d like to add your “me too” then click the Send Feedback link and let Microsoft know. Of course, you can select Send Feedback from the Help menu in any Office:mac application at any time.
[After you take all this time to tell Microsoft what you think, then what? In Part II of my posts about Microsoft and feedback I include remarks from MacBU’s Nadyne Mielke. She gives some of her own feedback about the Send Feedback system and details some of its positive results.]
