Firefox Home hit the Apple App Store late last Thursday night and quickly shot up to number 10 on the free apps list. So early on Friday we were getting lots of questions from users in the forums. Here’s how we were able to identify common issues, take care of everyone and help the developers prepare an update within the first 24 hours.
Our preparation began more than a month ago. I was one of the beta testers for the app and used that experience to create four articles for the Knowledge Base. Cheng got a new Firefox Home support forum in place and began meeting regularly with the Firefox Home team.
Then, on release day, as Cheng and I answered people’s questions in the forum, a few distinct issues began to emerge. By working with Dan, the developer, and Ragavan the project lead, we were able to get solutions out to users and get feedback about what worked and what didn’t. Later in the day, Cheng met with the Firefox Home team to go through forum feedback and App Store comments. Based on this, they came up with plan of action. We immediately updated all of the existing documentation to show users how to avoid or fix the issues we’d seen (Cheng even created an entirely new article). The Firefox Home team prepared an update for the app, updated it’s description and emailed users with solutions from our updated articles. In addition, the app update included a direct link to the new article that Cheng wrote which required an emergency SUMO push late Friday night (thanks paulc and fox2mike!).
The result was that we were able to answer everyone’s questions in the forum that first day. And with the updated documentation in place, we’ve seen almost no new forum traffic. I’m really excited about how responsive we were able to be by working closely with the Firefox Home team and I’m looking forward to being able to repeat this with other releases.