When I read the recommended response in thread you linked, I just feel like they're acknowledging the feature doesn't exist and suggesting to use Send Feedback as a potential avenue to increase the chance that the feature gets implemented. It may be that important features are missing, but I don't think the forum mods can do anything about that and the reply didn't seem rude to me.
That’s a failure on Google’s part. If feedback forum mods can’t also influence the roadmap, that’s a missed opportunity.
Even if it’s as simple as having 50 votes on the bug tracker, there should be some way for forum mods to synthesize and share feedback to the dev team for what to build.
I personally hate how there’s never a feedback loop on these posts noting how a change was made. Microsoft is pretty bad about this too.
“Please submit a suggestion” is a really unsatisfying experience to a user. Especially for really basic functions. Especially when not implementing makes the company money.
I'm not sure what leads you to believe that the forum feedback isn't taken in consideration. My guess is that it is, but that there are about two dozen other things of similar importance and the team can only knock so many of them off.
Good point, I’m assuming because the only advice given by mods is to submit feedback. I’ve never seen “I agree, this is important, I’ll work with the dev team.”
I think that if there was consideration, that would be in the mods scripts and posted on the forum.
I understand it’s hard to prioritize features but I’m familiar with so many years old common sense suggestions that don’t have any explanation of why it won’t be fixed.
The mod in this situation isn't an employee, it looks like. Just a user doing their best to help other users, so directing to the feedback tool sounds reasonable to me...
Maybe an employee could chime in. The problem I've seen with responding "I'll work with the dev team" is that some users at least will then have some timeframe expectations on the order of weeks based on what they imagine a fix to look like. But they don't really have a good idea of the system complexity, and realistically, these kinds of issues can linger for years because either it turns out most users actually care about other issues more, or the business needs to focus on making money, or some other complication shows up; and people end up being disappointed more often than not. I think it's unfortunately better, in this realm, not to say anything until you have the fix implemented, tested, and ready to roll out.
All the free online services that I can think of have this kind of annoying issue that advanced users run into. (And unfortunately the paid ones often have that kind of issue too, but at least they have much more reason to be responsive to support calls.)
I’m taking about paid tools- gmail, google docs. And in Microsoft’s case Office.
I don’t think it’s better to go from recommendation, to X years of silence, to rollout. I’d rather know if something is prioritized and in progress. I’d like to plan for rollout. Maybe it changes my upgrade and purchase planning.
My main point is the current technique sucks and makes me want to use products less. I’ve used support forums for decades and they can be non frustrating when I feel I am part of a community.
The current method seems “us vs. then” with neglect for any meaningful change. They should just do better. Not perfect. Just not horrible.
Yeah it’s so cool how Microsoft Teams hasn’t implemented custom emojis. Had to write a script to pull all our Slack ones down since we’re being mandated to switch over.
This could be because Google may outsource everything, especially their customer service, and so you’re essentially communicating with a call center in another country that has no incentive to be nice.
