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Customize Article Vote Counts & Gather "Unhelpful" Vote Feedback
Posted Nov 17, 2023
Problem 1: Admins can't control how vote counts display, leading to negatively biased customer perception about article content.
Users can vote on articles as "Helpful" or "Unhelpful", but admins cannot choose whether the votes are displayed as part of a total (ex.: "10 users found this helpful" instead of "10 out of 30 found this helpful".)
As a customer, I'm more likely to have an optimistic view of an article 10 people found helpful full-stop, and I'm more likely to read the content.
This is a big psychological contrast to the second, extremely negative example where I can see that 70% of other users found the article UNhelpful. Seeing the "out of" count makes me unlikely to bother reading the article, even if it contains the answer I need.
Problem 2: "Unhelpful" votes are ultimately unhelpful and not actionable for admins.
Although I can pull a report with my "helpful" and "unhelpful" votes on any given article, this data is utterly useless because it leaves me blindly guessing about why a customer voted negatively on an article.
Is the article too long? Not long enough? Is it missing a key piece of information? Is there a broken link in my content? Was the article published in the wrong section? Is the labeling and keywording poorly optimized? Is the customer simply clicking "unhelpful" because they're having a bad day? — I have no idea, because I have zero insight into why a user voted the article as "unhelpful."
Admins should be able to:
- Toggle off the "out of" portion of the vote count on articles, so that only "x found this helpful" displays to End Users.
- Gather additional feedback from users who vote articles as "unhelpful," including:
- A comment body (reportable in Explore) and
- (optional to End User) the User fields to collect name + email address, which gives us the opportunity to follow up with the user if needed.
There are half a dozen user-submitted guides in the Community about how to do these things with custom code, but most are many years old and unfortunately none of those custom solutions work as of Nov 2023. Additionally, we can't get Zendesk Support's assistance on this because at this time, the goal is considered too custom.
These features are basic requirements for any Help Center feedback module; they really should be included in Guide natively.
TL;DR: Article votes should not actively amplify negative perceptions about our articles or our brand — and — if negative votes are not actionable, negative vote counts have no practical purpose.
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16 comments
Ariane Mercado
1 +++ to everything said here. We have a lot of the same struggles that Harper mentioned above, especially Problem 2.
4
Sorin Alupoaie
This is great feedback, and that is why I build the Help Center Analytics app as an add-on to Zendesk Guide.
It helps you build a help center powered by actual customer feedback. In few easy steps you can install a feedback form that integrates with the native voting system in Zendesk. Then you can track the feedback in app and (optionally) convert it to tickets in Zendesk.
-2
Cheeny Aban
We truly value customer feedback and your voice and votes in the product feedback topics in the community help influence future Zendesk functionality.
0
Harper Dane
Sorin Alupoaie This app looks interesting and I appreciate that you've developed a solution to this problem. I'll check it out.
That said, Zendesk customers should not have to resort to paid 3rd-party apps to make an existing native feature useful/actionable. Data collection without a purpose in mind can only ever generate junk data, and that's the unfortunate situation Guide customers find themselves in with current state.
8
Anastasia Kachanova
+ 1, completely agree with the feedback provided by Harper. We as Zendesk users should be able to use native Zendesk functionality connected to the reporting in Explore.
8
Atanas Tomov
+1 definitely. It is great to have more control over how vote is displayed without having the need of third party solutions.
7
Mateusz Gamroth
Hello Harper Dane, I had the same issue - but I was following this article to be able to activate submit a request after an article downvote:
https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/5031162785434-Guide-recipe-Requesting-feedback-for-article-downvotes
Had many steps and failures in the beginning, but James was super helpful to get this resolved.
However I also strongly believe we should have an option to have this out of the box :)
0
Harper Dane
I spent several days trying to get the scripting from that solution to work, but I couldn't fix it. ZD support won't assist with fixing it, saying it is out of scope despite the fact that the solution post was put out by their own documentation team.
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Mateusz Gamroth
Harper Dane You can try commenting on the article and tagging the owner, James, that helped me. He was super helpful and responsive. I know it's not ideal :(
1
Edward Teach
Hey Harper Dane
I just posted a new way to do this; you can check it out: https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/6485027590426-Guide-Tip-New-way-to-request-feedback-for-article-downvotes
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Harper Dane
Thanks so much for this, Edward Teach. Seems like exactly what I was looking for. I'll give it a try!
0
Edward Teach
You can let me know if you run into issues, happy to help!
0
Ria Fernandez
+1 to this! Would love a native solution from Zendesk for this. We want to know why some articles are downvoted but we don't want to have to create a ticket that needs to be closed.
1
Gorka Cardona-Lauridsen
Hi Harper Dane and everyone else in this thread
Thank you for taking the time to provide us with this feedback. We apologize for the delay on our end in providing you with a response to your feature request.
This is a great feature request and I have added it to the backlog for future consideration. This means that we will think about adding it as a priority later in our planning cycle. We are going to leave this post open for comment to allow others to provide their feedback and use cases, however please note as is stated in our Community Guidelines that we can not commit to prioritizing any one piece of feedback we receive in the community.
Meanwhile I have reached out to our documentation team and I will work with them to fix the article you mention. We are of course responsible for keeping our documentation up to date so it is a mistake that this has not happened in this case. We apologize for that.
4
Harper Dane
Thank you, Gorka Cardona-Lauridsen!
I'm hopeful your product team will put this feature request into the roadmap; but in the meantime, I'll be on the lookout for any updates to the official documentation. If there's still a working recipe we could use to get the desired functionality, that'd be a big win.
In case it's helpful to know, the recipe I originally found (no longer working) is at this link: https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/5031162785434-Guide-recipe-Requesting-feedback-for-article-downvotes%C2%A0
2
Tom
An up or downvote without context is of minimal value. It's like running a software Beta without allowing the beta user group to provide feedback regarding bugs or suggestions. As a “Product Owner” of written help resources, that's untenable.
Sure, I can code or pay for a third-party tool, but in 2024, I would consider the ability to create a few pre-defined checkboxes and a free-form text field for user feedback as ‘table stakes.'
(Note: While direct, please know my feedback is written from a “pro-Zendesk” stance).
And being an election year….
My name is Tom Kline, and I endorse this message :)
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