Management of stock responses

[AlanOfTheBerg]

I've had the "forward this email" request in my responses for several months. Response is better than it was last year. Not sure if that's the reason though.

[AlanOfTheBerg]

On a related note, does anyone have any suggestions for ways to better manage the UR list?

I use the state-wide UR RSS feed in Google Reader and star the ones I have requested a response. Each day, I go back to the ones which are a week old, add some notes about not receiving a response and to resubmit the problem if it happens again, and close it. Unstar it. I think this is mentioned previously in this thread.

[AlanOfTheBerg]

There are also RSS feeds for metro-area and for all cities in the US. There is no feed for areas outside of cities, except the state-wide ones.

Wishlist is to have a country-wide RSS feed for the world server.

[AlanOfTheBerg]

I did sign up for all the rss that apply to my area and bookmarked it. I just haven't figured out how to effectively use that info. It doesn't include a map link that I can tell. And city "Chicago" doesn't narrow things down to find stuff manually. I either look for tight clusters of UR to work on, or page through until I find one with a solid description to work with.

Put it into a feed reader. Just using your browser isn't going to cut it. Google Reader is simple and effective. There are others, but the Reader feature to "star" things to look up later is fast and easy.

[AlanOfTheBerg]

One thing I have found useful when closing off a non-responsive user's request is to insert the permalink. That way, if they actually do respond, you don't need to hunt around to find the problem. In fact, I'm starting to do this on "live" requests too. It might also encourage users to go online and see the editor.

Though that's kinda redundant since it's included in the email already where it says "The main map in the site does not update daily and it is possible your update does not appear yet, alternatively the update can be viewed at:
Map Link"

[AlanOfTheBerg]

I wonder how many emails are bouncing back because Waze doesn't require any kind of email verification? A lot of what we are sending for updates could just be going nowhere.

[bgodette]

Other than a few tweaks that's all I do though I think I need to adjust them as I think folk are hitting reply rather than forwarding to my account!

Yea, I wonder how many responses to Update Requests Alpha is getting!

Groan... I hadn't even considered that, that would explain why the response rates are so incredibly low as anyone who could be bothered enough to report a problem from their car is not likely to be unresponsive.

[bkayrac]

Peter's magical stock responses

i can vouch for these things, just started using them, and got 2 responses in 2 days, i only had 1 response to quite a few before, and the responses were either minutes, or within the day that i sent them

[dknight212]

How do you other area managers handle stock responses to user requests? For example, a thank you for the request with details of how long edits take to get to the client, links to FAQs etc or a request for more information with links to the forum, my email address, etc.

I've been through various iterations of text editor files, tomboy notes and clipboard managers with static entries, coming back to the last one again and again. Ideally I'd like some system by which I can keep in sync and edit the responses on any computer, and then with a single click on the user request box just paste in the appropriate response.

On a related note, how do you get hard returns to show in your response? Some of my responses are quite long and I'd like to divide them up into neat paragraphs. Normal returns get splatted to spaces.

[dknight212]

Thanks, I like Evernote a lot for some things (though gone off it recently). Do you use the Chrome extension or app?