A unique selling point of Open Source Software is that developers can interact directly with users of the software through a transparent development process.

Proprietary vendors can only aspire to do this.

Being close to your users means that you get faster feedback...

Meaning that you can react faster to make a product your users want!

This could be suggestions for improvements, bug reports, requests for changes or complements for a great job!

More communication is a very good thing!

Interacting with Drupal Developers

Have you noticed, that in the Drupal community, we often try to funnel users of our software into communicating in ways that suit us, but not them?

As a user of Drupal, you must create an account on Drupal.org and find a relevant issue queue. Once there, even then, you may be off for not using the correct issue status.

We have improved recently by embracing website such as Drupal Answers.

But still, Drupal does not make communicating with developers easy for new users!

A Lesson from Capitalism

As I mentioned, proprietary ventures would love to have as much opportunity to talk to users as we do in Open Source Software.

Whilst not in software, Innocent Smoothies has championed customer relations - which is why when you go to their website, you can easily find their contact details.

They even include a phone number that goes directly through to their office (it's a banana phone!)

A physical phone may be out of the question for Drupal.org (cue: Drupal Association fundraiser for banana phone).

But I think there is a valuable lesson here about how we approach "customer relations".

We need to realise that talking to customers (users) is if anything more useful for the ongoing success of the project as it is for the individual concerned.

A personal quest... to see what works

To try to cater better for all users, I've thought about the possible ways of communicating with users of a Drupal module.

What's more, I'm testing a lot of them out*.

For the new release of the Project Management Module for Drupal 7, we have:

• Drupal.org Project Page
• Drupal.org Issues Queue
• Drupal Groups
• Social Networks (Twitter - also considering LinkedIn & Facebook)
• Drupal Answers
• Mailing List
• Project Homepage
• A Demo website (and for Drupal 6)
• Email
• Drupal.org Contact Form
• Banana Phone?!*

In a few months time, I'll see what is working well, and feed back.

Do you use any other ways to engage users that I have missed?

* I'm not testing the banana phone option this time!

Category: WebsitesTags: DrupalDrupal Planetbanana phonecommunicationOpen Sourcecustomer relations