Back in June 2012, Google gave ‘top developers’ the ability to respond directly to user reviews through the Play Store, which is great for communication between customers and developers. Then in January this year, Google started giving more developers the ability to respond and now Google have officially announced that all developers can reply to user reviews.
This is another step in the road to improving the quality of reviews in the Play Store following on from linking reviews through to Google+ users accounts.
In the blog post, Google have provided developers with some best practices that have been most effective for the ‘top developers’ in improving their apps and building strong relationships with their users.
- Check reviews frequently, and involve people from all parts of your organization
- Identify and prioritize bugs based on user impact
- Let users know when their problems are resolved
- Reply constructively to both negative and positive reviews
- Refer users to documentation or other support channels
- Get ideas about new improvements or features
- Thank the users who are your biggest advocates
Google also points developers to the posting guidelines to ensure that all developers are complying with the Google Play policies.
What do you think about developers having the ability to reply to your reviews? If you are a developer, do you see this as a good opportunity to connect with your customers?
It’s about time. All the time I’m looking for reviews of an application and you get idiots who rate it 1 star because “This app sucks” “it works but it’s useless” “1 star because it is missing that feature that I demand!”
well this is really great imo.