Can we please get a field for the username on an exit survey? it’s been a 4 years of frustration not knowing who left what exit survey. Was it a problem I could have fixed? if I only knew who left the exit survey I could have possibly saved hundreds of patreons because often their issues are with your system, not something I’ve done and a simple explanation might have retained them as supporters.
Sadly however, like asking for a Gallery for my page for some 4 years now, I feel this will probably fall on deaf ears too.
Hi @Geoff - exit surveys are kept anonymous for the patrons privacy. But I hear you that adding a field option to add a name if the patron is comfortable would be beneficial for creators. Thanks for adding your feedback, I am passing it along to the right teams.
I understand this but - MANY patrons do not. They write their exit surveys as a personal message thinking I am going to know who was writing it when its maybe 1 out of 100 people that I can ascertain who wrote it, and in the rare case contact them and retain their membership.
Like I said we haven’t gotten a basic image gallery on our pages I don’t expect this in the next 4 years anyway. By that time paypals subscription service will probably have landing pages and we will have other direct payment options without having patreon in the way.
Except it doesn’t, as it is trivial to know who actually created the survey. The only time there is any confusion is if two patrons at the same tier cancel the same day. Given it is trivial to do, and provides only the illusion of anonymity, why not just add the feature?
Yeah, I get so many replies like “could not access content.” or “creator was not active enough.” It’d be nice to be able to follow through with these problems and try to resolve them. I’d even offer refunds to people who were genuinely unsatisfied with membership.
Exactly, I always know who left the feedback, as it would be the one that cancelled last (or on that specific day). Might be tricky for very busy accounts to figure out where there is a high rate of cancellation daily, but there certainly is no anonymity when it comes to smaller accounts where there might be a cancellation every few days/weeks only.
How about this idea: add a checkbox that is blank by default, asking if they would volunteer their name? If they don’t check, they are anon, but if they want to give their name they can.
I can appreciate the idea of making it optional. As someone with anxiety, I would absolutely hate it if my name was put out there as someone who ended their support, especially since the attitude on this forum is people wanting to reach out and talk about it. I think privacy is important.
I can appreciate the idea of making it optional. As someone with anxiety, I would absolutely hate it if my name was put out there as someone who ended their support, especially since the attitude on this forum is people wanting to reach out and talk about it. I think privacy is important.
That is a very closeted way to look at it. In the 4 years I’ve been on patreon I have never seen anyone sling mud at someone, to other people… because they unsubscribed from a patreon.
The only reason I can see people wanting to stay anonymous is if they leave a review where they are rude or abusive and want to hide behind the veil of anonymity. Otherwise what would it matter either way?
I mean, 99.9% of mine lately have all been “lost work from Covid” but you always get that .1% and think, you know I could have saved that person as a patreon only if i’d actually known about their problem sooner.
I think either I worded my post badly or was misinterpreted. I’m not saying creators want to attack their supporters, I’m saying I wouldn’t want to be contacted at all. Many people on here want to reach out and ask why the person left, what they can improve, etc. I get wanting to do that, but I personally hate being put on the spot and especially guilt-tripped into having to reply. I could be best friends with the person, and it would still be uncomfortable. I don’t want to do that to other people.
Like I said, I’m fine with it being optional. For people open to being contacted, they can put their name. For others like me, we can stay anonymous. (And yes, I know it’s “anonymous”.)
i feel the same. if a creator i was supporting messaged me after i left to ask me questions, it would feel guilt trippy and awkward. i much MUCH prefer the exit surveys to be anonymous as both a creator and a patron of others.
To anyone saying privacy/anonymity matters: we are already notified who cancels their pledge, so this is nothing new. We can semi-reliably link exit surveys to patrons who cancelled based on the date, unless there are multiple patrons who cancelled and left an exit survey on the same day.
What’s really bad is when patrons leave an exit survey assuming we know who they are, but we cannot reply to them because we’re unsure who it belongs to. I personally don’t ask questions, I just acknowledge them, thanking them for all the support they have given me.
It should be made more obvious to patrons that their feedback is anonymously shared with creators or add a checkbox or something to give patrons the option to have their name shared with creators.
Ps. I agree with the sentiment that asking questions or guilt tripping patrons is not the reason to want this, but not being able to respond to a message when a patron expects it, that’s confusing and requires some clarification.
I’m usually OK with the anonymity, because I can usually track by date who filled out each one.
But I will say this: I had a patron who died. Someone from her family filled out the exit survey. Reason for leaving: death. If that had showed up in a flurry of exits, I would not have known who had passed. I would not have been able to let my community know of her passing, or to post about all the wonderful things she had done for me over the years.
So maybe there’s some value in allowing, but not requiring, patrons to attach their name to their exit survey.
That’s a good way of looking at it, especially when you have patrons for such a long time, in my case some just passed 4 years and i’d be pretty upset if that happened to me and I didn’t know at the time.
For me so far, its little things like Patron accidentally double charging them or something like that, I get reviews like this:
“Dec 1, 2020 $10.00 I was overcharged”
I mean… gee that would have been nice to know - Sorry patron, no it wasn’t me - it was Patreon, it’s an easy problem to fix, we can refund etc - but its too late by then.
Geoff, I’ve asked for a gallery or library to help classify my posts as well. I do hope we get this soon. The search function was added, and I’m grateful but it wasn’t as functional as I had hoped. It seems to not be an intuitive search feature, as it won’t pick up on a post unless it is perfectly and specifically worded.
I, too, would love to have an empty field to state a user name on exit surveys but my concern would be as follows. Due to lack of privacy in this asking, would patrons then no longer be interested in participating? At the risk of being called “controlling” and “bizarre” the last time I suggested any changes that would provide more analytical value, I will only say that I agree with your suggestion.
Geoff I concur. Insofar as anxiety, what is there to be anxious about unless you’ve done something rude of poorly rated someone, or harassed the creator?