Customer Feedback

We love getting feedback. Our favourites are the unsolicited emails we get telling us about your parties, but sometimes we send out our feedback form. In March we did just that and sent out 1200 feedback requests to our most recent purchasers of our games.

Actually, when I say we’ve got them back, we only received 11 responses. We think a lot of this is due to the emails being caught in spam filters, but perhaps we need to redesign our emails to make them more appealing.

Players enjoying Lord and Lady Westing's Will
Lord and Lady Westing’s Will

Anyway, thank you to everyone who responded. We’ve read all of them and here are some of the key points.

Just the numbers

Most of the feedback was returned within 48 hours, and it mostly came from the United States (no surprise as that’s where most of our customers are), but also from the UK, Canada, and Australia.
Most people had found us via the internet or a search engine, although 3 (27%) found us through word of mouth. We’d like to improve our search engine presence, but word of mouth is valuable too.

We ask our customers to rate how likely they are to recommend us. From this we’ve calculated that our “Net Promoter Score” for March 2014 was 64%. (Note – Net Promoter Score is a registered trademark of Fred Reichheld, Bain & Company, and Satmetrix.)

Party size ranged from 9 to 16 players, but that’s not surprising as the feedback came from just four games: Curse of the Pharaoh, Davy Jones’ Locker, Spellbound and A Will to Murder. None of those are our larger games.

Comments

Our feedback form has some space for customers to write their own comments – here are the key themes:

  • There were several comments about the host role being too complicated for a first-time host. I’ve got a bit of sympathy for this. While we design our games so that anyone can host them, some of them are more complicated than others – particularly those that involve combat. We’ll consider highlighting the games that we think are most suitable for first-time hosts – perhaps a section on our site with games for beginners.
  • Several people commented that a second host would have helped. We often recommend that in our instructions, but it’s not always possible to arrange.
  • One person suggested sending rules out in advance to the players so that they could become familiar with them – that’s something we could look at making easier to do.
  • Two people liked the smaller games (8-12 people) and one person specifically appreciated the fact that we have gender neutral roles that make it easy to cast.
  • Quite a few people gave lovely comments such as, “EVERYBODY LOVED IT”, “Everybody was talking to everyone else, despite them not having met previously” “All attendees said they had a good time”.

Our actions

There’s no point asking for customer feedback if we’re not going to do anything about it! So here are the actions we’re taking from this feedback:

  • We are going to see if we can redesign the request for feedback emails to improve response.
  • We’re going to look at a section on our site covering games for beginners.
  • We’re going to see if we can make it easy to share game rules in advance.
This entry was posted in Design on by .

About Steve Hatherley

Steve is one half of Freeform Games and wrote Death on the Gambia, The Roswell Incident, Hollywood Lies (and its seasonal variants Halloween Lies and Christmas Lies). He has edited many, many others. He lives in Yorkshire, England with his wife, daughter and dog.

4 thoughts on “Customer Feedback

    1. Mo

      Mm, unfortunately we think most of them got spamtrapped at a high level, possibly because we sent out a large volume all at once. We’ve now resent yours to you individually — could you have a quick peek and see if it made it through, or if it’s in your spam folder perhaps?

      Reply
  1. Katie

    Hi! I am currently writing my own murder mystery based on your format. I used All at Sea before and loved it, but wanted to try writing one myself this time. I found the instructions you leave writers and am using them as a starting point. I am testing it out in a couple of weeks. I no longer have the copy of All at Sea I purchased, and was wondering if there is some way I could get the rules for my guests, or to get any more tips? I am finding the clues a little challenging, and how to put it all together to run smoothly. Thanks so much!

    Reply
    1. Mo

      Hi Katie,

      Sure, we’d be happy to send you a fresh copy of All at Sea. You’ll need to let us have your email address so we can send it to you — easiest way is probably to mail us at info@freeformgames.com, or use the contact form on our website.

      best wishes,

      Mo

      Reply

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