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The Feedback Loop
chicknMelt
Member Posts: 1,159
Im sure intentions are good with the feedback area, but from the customers perspective all that happens is:
1. Suggestion is made
2. Suggestion is acknowledged
3. Thread gets bumped every now and then til the OP forgets about it/ gives up
4. Someone else posts about the same thing later down the line
5. See step 2
maybe I'm being unfair, I dunno.
I'm sure there is at least some work goin on in the background & legitimate reasons why problems dont get solved...... but some additional feedback would definately help people's perception. Even if you're just saying "sorry guys, we wont be able to do anything with this for a few months because everyone is flat out working on X", or " There are some legal issues that need to be approved before we can proceed, another update will follow in a few weeks"
There is another site, that has a thread on a popular poker forum for feedback. They are very quick to make changes based on the suggestions they get, and business is booming for them now! I don't expect the same level of service from a much smaller site with presumably a much smaller team... but c'mon, surely we can do better than this??
Comments
Some of that is fair comment, but EVERY feedback thread gets sent up to Head Office by me, & in most cases they read it anyway.
All feedback is appreciated, & all of it is noted. They just don't have the resource to comment as often as they would like, or do all the things they want & need to do, & that's the top & bottom of it.
Some days the Forum does have a good deal of negativity & sarcasm, fair to say, & it's good that players care. As it happens, the business is doing very well, showing strong growth in a declining market, thanks to a very loyal player base, so it can't be all bad, but yeah, you make some fair points, & I hope that they'll soon have enough resource to do all these things, & feed back what they are doing.
The post IS appreciated & understood, thanks.
Ante's in tournaments - we have no plans to introduce these.
Automatic Add-On option - looking to introduce this feature in Q2 2016.
Fix of unable to re-open lobby in DC - should be fixed this year.
Just a few that I thought of off the top of my head, will be lots of others, but is obviously only useful if someone can keep it up to date and if the Business wants to give people an idea of if they are actually thinking of doing something or not.
As you know, if they say "we will do this in March 2016" & they don't (maybe because, in the prevailing business climate, the priorities changed) then they get slaughtered.
If it were down to me, I'd do exactly as you suggest - I would. But the Business is run by very bright people, far brighter than me, who have access to shed loads of data that you & I don't, so from where I sit, I have trust in them to continue doing the right things. Ideally, quicker, mind....
^^^^
Thanks Melty.
Yes, much of that make sense. It's also the case that if dates are announced, & they are missed (change of circumstances, something more important comes up, or just plan never got round to it) those dates become a stick to beat Sky Poker with, usually tinged with a considerable degree of sarcasm or rudeness, which seems unfair, as The Business can never reply in kind, which feels a bit unfair really.
To try & address "wishy washy", yes, Auto Add-On is on the list of priorities, & quite near the top, too. However, priorities, priorities, priorities etc mean it's unlikely to be in the next few months from what I can gather.
I'm not sure how we define "soon", of course.
It's on the "Road Map" (ugh at that expression), yes, no dates though.
Sorry, just seen this (was offline this morning).
Will try & reply in the morning.
Some background......
A few years ago, I had quite a tussle with the Suits - it was my view that they should make it known what was in the development queue.
Grudgingly, I suspect, they said OK, but warned me to tread carefully, in case priorities changed.
And so I listed the items that were in the development queue, including, famously, antes. Well priorities changed - they do in the world of Online, the landscape changes so rapidly - & you know the rest, we get repeated sarcasm at the failure to facilitate antes. Hardly encourages The Business to be open about these things, does it?
"visible updates" in the last year or two? Nope, not many, but the clue is in "visible".
One example would be the new Rewards system, which contrary to early negativity, has worked very well indeed. That can be proven by data. It has helped to grow traffic here, fact. However, it took a whole bunch of new back office functionality to enable it to work, & players to be able to see where they were at all times, in real time, & be paid - without fail so far - every Monday. There are numerous such examples, but few of them are "visible" as such.
Now lets go back a few years & conduct a straw poll as to what the players on here would most like to see. What do you think they said they most wanted? Probably antes, auto top up, those sort of things. All, I agree, are worthy additions.
Can you put a value on them though? Can you - or even The Business - make a financial case, by saying, with some credibility - how much additional traffic/Margin these things would drive? I doubt anyone could make that case. But let's say those 2 things drove a 2.5% or 5% increase. I think that is highly unlikely, to be honest, but its impossible to prove.
Now lets look sat what they DID decide to prioritise - something very few on the Forum wanted - a quality Mobile App. (Prior to that of course was the then new HTML site which transformed Sky Poker).
I was fortunate to se the proposal that was made for that decision to develop the App. It listed the cost in terms of resource & cost - & it then projected, over a 5 year period, the benefits that would accrue. They were eye-watering. In Year 1 alone, a 6 figure benefit from traffic & Margin growth.
So they went down that route, which was very resource heavy, & in due course the App was developed, approved by the Regulator (all these things have to get Regulatory approval), was approved by Apple (some task, let me tell you) & eventually was launched.
And it proved, for this Site, & The Business generally, an absolute game-changer. You would be staggered if you knew the % of traffic that now goes via the App. And I'm not talking 5% or 10% either - it's much much bigger, by a long chalk. Who'd have thought?
So that decision alone was a major contributor to Sky Poker growing considerably over the last 2 years, whilst the Market as a whole is declining. Would antes & Auto Top Up have produced that growth? No, of course not. But it would make the site a better player experience, & so I guess they will happen eventually.
So yes, I'll ask them if they are prepared to make it known what's in the Development queue, but I fancy they will decline.
Very few businesses do make these things known in advance, if you think about it, they prefer to keep stuff under the radar until they actually happen, for a whole variety of good reasons.
I'll give you a personal guess though, & I promise I have no inside info on this, but thinking logically.....
They will be going for whatever best serves both parties, that has the greatest benefit to the most.
So I'm going to guess that multi tabling functionality to the App will be near the top of their wish list. I can't emphasise enough what a game-changer the App has been for Sky Poker.
And, as it happens - this will go down well - but the Sky Poker App is a very good Product indeed, & stands comparison with the very best offered by other sites with whom Sky Poker competes. (who Sky Poker competes with is a whole other story, incidentally).
Anyway, we shall see. I've asked the question, so I'll let you know what they say.