Can you please stop sending surveys to our users? Please?

[JohnJOSullivan]

So, I logged into Workfront this morning and I was greeted to this:

Oh wait, sorry, that wasn't it. It looked more like this:

Now. We have begged Adobe, through our TAM, our CSM, and other acronyms to stop sending surveys to our users. And this one...I'm really hoping it only went to admins. I took the survey only so I could get to the end so I could say "STOP SENDING OUR USERS SURVEYS."

The questions had NOTHING to do with a typical user's day-to-day use of the tool. It had more to do with config and the like. Is there any way to know the scope of this pointless survey? I pray that it was only sent to sysadmins...but similar surveys have been sent out to our entire user base in the past.

The typical response is that your marketing department needs this data. I'm sorry, but no. If you really want to run surveys, it should NOT be within the tool that my company pays a huge amount of money to use. And if you're sending a survey to everyone, the data is going to be garbage.

And here's the kicker: We are currently running a survey of our users. So now, do I have to fear that the users are going to get "survey fatigue" and not fill out the survey that we need? We need that data. Your marketing department doesn't. 

Ugh...I'm even sick of hearing me complain about this. Can we just use the tool without being harassed to take surveys? Or do we have to pay an add-on to be left alone?

So, on behalf of every single system administrator who got this survey--STOP. 

[JohnJOSullivan]

My goodness, y'all are tenacious:

[KristinFarwell]

@JohnJOSullivan - Hey, John. Thanks for flagging this. This guide was created and sent by the Workfront Product team. I've just checked and the good news is, it was ONLY sent to System Admins. I have asked them to amend the messaging to include that as I can absolutely see the concern with something like this going to all users. 

[JohnJOSullivan]

Thank you for validating this! As I mentioned, the threat of a survey right before we're launching an extremely important survey was infuriating.

That said, as a company we would prefer that only sys-admins get those messages. I cannot tell you how many tickets we received about the API depreciation. We have a very robust instance with solid governance and communication. We go out of our way to let our users know when things are changing. 

I get that marketing folks like data. But we are your customers. Frankly, I don't care about your marketing people. We care about our users, ensuring that their use of the tool is as painless as possible.

[KatherineLa]

Thank you for helping validate that @KristinFarwell . I logged in here today with much the same concerns. The Marketing team could avoid much of our angst, and probably get better engagement, if we got a heads-up ahead of time that a survey was coming only to us. I'm generally happy to give feedback, but not if I first have to worry that 600+ people including our customers, just got the same spam-y pop-ups. 

I will also add that if a survey ever DID go to my entire user-base without permission, my next email to them would explicitly request that they DO answer the questions. But I would also ask them to answer with complete nonsense to make our data unusable.  @JohnJOSullivan perhaps an option for your folks as well in that case?

[JohnJOSullivan]

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@KatherineLa wrote:

I will also add that if a survey ever DID go to my entire user-base without permission, my next email to them would explicitly request that they DO answer the questions. But I would also ask them to answer with complete nonsense to make our data unusable.  @JohnJOSullivan perhaps an option for your folks as well in that case?

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We have discussed that "nuclear option" as well. If product cannot promise to not send surveys to our user base, we will ask our user base to make that data pointless. Again, we're really not asking for much here. Let us run our instance. We're really good at it and we're passionate about it (as you can probably tell).

[KristinFarwell]

Appreciate the feedback from you both. Truly. One thing worth noting is that these guides are not from the Marketing team, they are from the Workfront Product Management org asking for feedback for their development roadmap next year. I can't guarantee they won't share surveys again as they are trying hard to ask for feedback before developing new things, and sometimes these surveys may go to users. I've scheduled time with that team to review their guide creation process and determine a better way to message these so a) it's clear who is receiving them (i.e. "You are receiving this because you are an Admin"), and b) there is a bit more context in the message of what is being asked (vs. just "feedback.").

My team (which is in Marketing, please don't hate me), is currently looking at a better way to include in-product guides for ENABLEMENT. We're very likely going to go back to more of a "Help Center" style button in the product where folks can click if they want more info on a particular feature vs. showing a tip on the interface itself. I think between that and the AI Assistant, that may give you a lot more control over how you get help when you need it.

Would either of you be open to reviewing that strategy when I get a little farther along?

[KatherineLa]

Looks like they made that update quickly, this is MUCH better! Something like this, I'm happy to give feedback on to help make the product better. 

In-product guides/enablement I'm generally happy to support, provided that it's applicable to features my org actually uses. Getting panicked emails/teams/carrier pigeons from people with genuine data security concerns that an unapproved AI has ingested our protected client data into some public LLM model is something I'm much less enthused about however. Maybe suggest only showing those tool-tips to orgs that have a signed AI agreement? 

[JohnJOSullivan]

Hi again,

So, I think the fact that I didn't know that these were coming from product--as opposed to marketing--is also an issue. There is a total lack of transparency when it comes to who is sending what when.

This is more problematic when we've asked at least three times to stop doing this. This includes both the enterprise-wide governance board (including the owner of the Adobe stack) and the admin board, of which I am a member. Product should really promise to stop sending surveys in the tool. Again, how much are we paying for these services? 

Again, the API depreciation pop ups are an excellent example. Who is sending these--and why is the entire user base receiving them? It caused needless confusion and fear that our processes were going to collapse.

I'm not opposed to a help center with tips, tricks, enablement, links to trainings, etc. etc. It's the pop-ups which have always been a problem. 

And I'm not opposed to surveys or providing feedback. I must have done at least six or so since I started working with Workfront eight years ago. We are in constant communication with y'all when it comes to new feature requests, pain points, concerns, etc. It's just that we have a particular way of communicating new features among all three business units which use our instance of Workfront.

Most of our users use the tool for submitting work, asking for legal review, etc. They don't need to know about some brand new project feature--usually that confuses them as well. And then, our small support team has to field more support tickets.

I'm fine with targeted announcements. They cause the least amount of churn among our users. This is a baked-in out-of-the-box solution and should be the go-to. 

I think the main point is that in-tool notifications that don't come from us cause more harm than good. If you all want to use these features, there has to be a way for us to opt to either turn them on or off. We're the users of our instance--not Product, not Marketing. 

I'm sorry if I'm sounding hostile, I'm really trying not to. But I am channeling the frustration of the people who have to support this platform and feel as if our very valid concerns are ignored.

[KristinFarwell]

I don't take your feedback as hostile, its actually means a lot that you care enough to engage. What I can tell you is that I hear you, and I have scheduled time with the Product team next week to talk about better governance and an aligned strategy so this doesn't keep happening. I can't guarantee that will fix everything, but I hope you can take it in good faith that there are people on the inside who hear you and want to make it better.

BTW, if you ever want to chat 1:1 about this, let me know.