Play Store Support Program Updates

TL;DR: By the end of March, 2021, the Play Store Support program will be moving from the Respond Tool to Conversocial. If you want to keep helping Firefox for Android users by responding to their reviews in the Google Play Store, please fill out this form to request a Conversocial account. You can learn more about the program here

 

In late August last year, to support the transition of Firefox for Android from the old engine (fennec) to the new one (fenix), we officially introduced a tool that we build in-house called the Respond Tool to support the Play Store Support campaign. The Respond Tool lets contributors and staff provide answers to reviews under 3-stars on the Google Play Store. That program was known as Play Store Support.

We learned a lot from the campaign and identified a number of improvements to functionality and user experience that were necessary. In the end, we decided to migrate the program from the Respond Tool to Conversocial, a third-party tool that we are already using with our community to support users on Twitter. This change will enable us to:

  • Segment reviews and set priorities.
  • Filter out reviews with profanity.
  • See when users change their ratings.
  • Track trends with a powerful reporting dashboard.
  • Save costs and engineering resources.

As a consequence of this change, we’re going to decommission the Respond Tool by March 31, 2021. You’re encouraged to request an account in Conversocial if you want to keep supporting Firefox for Android users. You can read more about the decommission plan in the Contributor Forum.

We have also updated the guidelines to reflect this change that you can learn more from the following article: Getting started with Play Store Support.

This will not be possible without your help

All this will not be possible without contributors like you, who have been helping us to provide great support for Firefox for Android users through the Respond Tool. From the Play Store Support campaign last year until today, 99 contributors have helped to reply to a total of 14484 reviews on the Google Play Store.

I’d like to extend my gratitude to Paul W, Christophe V, Andrew Truong, Danny Colin, and Ankit Kumar who have been very supportive and accommodating by giving us feedback throughout the transition process.

We’re excited about this change and hope that you can help us to spread the word and share this announcement to your fellow contributors.

Let’s keep on rocking the helpful web!

 

On behalf of the SUMO team,

Kiki