Support:Overview
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IMPORTANT NOTICE : As of March 2020, IRC.mozilla.org has been permanently decommissioned
As of 2nd March 2020, Mozilla has moved away from IRC to Matrix for its public channels and the IRC server was shut down.
Firefox Support Overview
Firefox Support Plan Feedback Sessions-Tuesday May 22 at 9am and 6pm PST Call in info:
- 650-903-0800 x91 Conf #284
- 1-800-707-2533 (pin 369) Conf #284 (US)
- Mozilla IRC server and channel: ?
To date, Mozilla community volunteers have provided user support for Firefox that has met and exceeded the needs of the technology users and the early adopters of Firefox. As Firefox’s market share grows beyond early adopters, our user support needs to evolve. This Firefox Support Working Group has spent the last month doing research and community outreach (see below for details) on how Mozilla should evolve user support through a community based approach.
Why should we focus on Firefox support?
Currently, there are approximately 1 million visits to en-us support site a month, so this is a very high leverage area
- Current disparate and often confusing support offerings no longer meet the needs of the expanding Firefox user base
What problems are we trying to solve:
Simplify navigation to relevant and enhanced content
Support and expand the volunteer support community
Make international support and scaling easier
Improve metrics and feedback loops for a better product
Simplify navigation to relevant and enhanced content
Currently, Firefox support is spread across Mozilla.com, Mozilla.org, MozillaZine.org, in addition to many others. The way we present support options to users is verbose and overly confusing.
-Currently, we have poor integration of “Help” (in product help) and “Support”(MozillaZine Knowledge Base) documentation
-While there tends to be a good amount of content, it is not always easy to find or understand
-In addition, we need to organize, integrate and leverage new content like the over 500 YouTube videos, and 150,000 "Firefox tips" that have been produced and published across the web
Support and expand the volunteer support community
Community is key: success of Firefox support depends on continued involvement of community of volunteers and engaging new ones
We’ve engaged the support community from the start in the improvement planning process through:
- chofmann’s initial MozillaZine forum post
- newsgroups/Google group (15 participants)
- open forum sessions (5 call-ins and IRC chats)
“Supporting our Supporters”
Identify and support our supporters the same way we do our developer community (t-shirts, resources (training and technical), “support” versions/components of dev days, Firefox Summit participation)
Make support easier for volunteers (reduce duplication of posts, better support through tools and training)
Make international support and scaling easier
- Allow for support to scale with growth of Firefox--not crash servers during product launches
- As international market share grows, international users are finding it harder to find support (especially when they come to the Mozilla.com site—we don’t have anything)
- Make localization easier—current scattered content makes localization more difficult
Improve metrics for feedback loops for a better product
Good metrics on severity and frequency of problems will help us build better products
- Feedback loop to Firefox developers and product team
-Provide escalation path for unanswered questions
- Don’t wait until the exit survey to figure out where our problems are
Good metrics around how helpful our support offerings are help us continually improve retention through better support
How we think should address this:
-Develop an integrated community based support platform on mozilla.com (that includes “Firefox Help”) Firefox Support Work Flow
Knowledge base and good search tools are the backbone of system
- KB content is main hub of “how to” and “troubleshooting” content and is first point of reference for users seeking help
Support forums and live chat are communications channels for more complex questions not answered in knowledge base.
International: Short term provide "directory" of community generated support sites
Appoint/hire Firefox support coordinator
Responsible for day to day operations of infrastructure
Organize and coordinate efforts of the support community, monitoring program health through metrics
Position could sit within the retention team of marketing
Some initial indicators of success
- Reduce # of webmaster emails, phone calls, bugzilla, hendrix and letters
- Forum volume decreases only to questions not in kb
- # of community members involved increases
- Signal to noise ratio in bugzilla continues to go up
- Retention rates should increase
Next steps: see Support:PRD and provide feedback through Firefox.support.planning newsgroup
Other Documents
Support:PRD Product Requirements Doc (Draft)
Firefox Support Work Flow
Firefox Support Home Page Mock-up (Draft)
