As Parature’s Technical Writer, I receive negative feedback alerts when someone leaves feedback on a knowledgebase article. There are multiple types of feedback that I receive and I can categorize them into four different groups. The following are some scenarios I have encountered and provided is some tips on how to deal with these types of feedback:

Why doesn’t your product offer “x”? I want it to offer “x”.
Often times, customers may use a knowledgebase article feedback link to offer how they feel about your product. For instance, an article may answer their question about a feature, but it may not be the desired feature the customer would like to see in the product. The feedback box serves as a platform for their feature suggestion even if it is not the proper location to share an idea to your organization. The best way to handle this scenario is to suggest the idea to your product management team or point them in the proper location to submit an idea. At Parature, the customer can use our Share Ideas site (https://shareideas.parature.com/) to submit a feature suggestion, as well as vote on other ideas. In this case, I would reach out to the client and point them in the direction of Share Ideas.

This article is not correct.
Perhaps you recently had a product release that has caused some knowledgebase articles to become outdated. Setting expiration dates on your knowledgebase articles is very helpful in solving this problem. However, if your knowledgebase article does not expire for another month, a customer may come across an outdated article and leave feedback that it is incorrect. This is an article you should fix immediately. Always double check that the article is indeed, incorrect, and fix/delete/update the outdated material as soon as possible. If the customer expressed annoyance that the article was outdated or seemed upset, you may want to follow up via email to show that their suggestion is being taken into consideration. This helps to build trust in your self service content if you’re consistently utilizing the client’s feedback.

This article did not answer my question.
A customer could provide feedback as simple as “this is not the answer I was looking for” or something like “this is not the answer I was looking for; my question was actually ‘(insert question here).’” Begin by analyzing the question first and making sure that it properly answers the published question. If the scenario is like the first statement where the customer does not provide much detail, it is a good idea to reach out to them via email and ask them to clarify why it did not answer their question and what they were looking for-this will ensure you get direct feedback and properly fix the issue.

If the scenario is like the second statement, where the customer provides what they were searching for, you can take that feedback and implement improved content around their question. If you would like, you can also reach out to them if the new question you created or fixed makes sense and answers what they were asking originally.

This article is confusing.
Often times, writers make the mistake of writing something that makes sense to them, but not to the audience. Because you know your product like the back of your hand, it can become difficult to write to an audience who knows nothing or little about it. Review the article to see where you can make changes, and then send it off to a few of your co-workers. This is a good way to see if it makes sense to them and they can provide feedback that will help you to fix the article.

How do you deal with negative feedback on your KB articles? Share with us by commenting below!