Support for a Tesla UserVoice

[eXntrc]

I recently submitted a feature request to Tesla, and in the e-mail exchange that followed it became clear to me there is currently no way for owners to vote on the issues that affect us most.

In reply to my original request, the support person said:

"We thank you for reaching out to us regarding your feature request. I have noted it for consideration in the future when we are developing future products."

To that I asked:

"Is there a Tesla UserVoice or something similar where owners can vote on the features they want most?"

The reply:

"We recommend that you contact us when you have suggestions regarding possible vehicle features."

And my final reply:

"I’m happy to do that. But without a public forum like UserVoice.com, you won’t have any signal about how many other owners are impacted by the same issue. (Or who desire the same feature). Without that signal, it will be difficult to figure out which features / issues will lead to the greatest return in customer satisfaction. Please consider opening a UserVoice account or Similar. I know many of us in the community would be active contributors."


If you too would like to see Tesla take advantage of a service like UserVoice.com, please consider doing the following:

1. Go to www.tesla.com and click Sign In
2. Next to your vehicle, click the Manage button
3. Underneath the vehicle panel click the Request Help button
4. in the dropdown select Feedback

In the Subject and Description fields, just mention that you'd like to see Tesla take advantage of a service like UserVoice.com. If you don't know what to say, you can copy and past the following and tweak it to meet your needs:


Subject:
A Vote for UserVoice

Description:
I would love to see Tesla start using a service like UserVoice.com to interact with customers. UserVoice allows owners like me to vote on the most frustrating issues as well as the features I'd like most. Leveraging a service like UserVoice would allow Tesla to prioritize efforts that will lead to the greatest customer satisfaction. It's a win for both Tesla and it's customers, and I hope you'll consider. Thank you!

 

[HankLloydRight]

We tried that a while ago with FW 7.1 (see: Tesla Owners Vote on 7.1 Features & Enhancements) and really got nowhere with Tesla.

The bottom line is that Tesla only cares about what Tesla wants, not the owners/customers. Look no further than the disaster of how FW 9.0 has been received by most people, and how it made the interface phenomenally worse and significantly UNSAFE. But not a single word from Tesla, other than one small change to make the backup camera window appear a little higher up. Gee, thanks, Tesla.

In addition, Tesla spends time on arcade games and easter eggs instead of fixing real bugs that have existed for years. That's their priority.

We can certainly try again, but even reading the tone of the replies you recieved (which are identical to the replies everyone else received), it's just lip service, and most requests/feedback to Tesla go nowhere.

 

[eXntrc]

Wow @HankLloydRight. I'm really sorry to hear about the experience with 7.1. I've only been an owner since February and had really good experiences with customer service so far. I guess when you've been around since 2015 it's a lot harder to remain optimistic.

I still have some hope that the company may be in a better place these days to take action on feedback than they were 3 and a half years ago. That may be naive of me, but being a new customer I'd still like to give it a shot. The worst that could happen is they ignore the requests and we're no better off than we are today.

I won't hold my breath, but I'll at least hold onto some optimism. For now anyway.

 

[HankLloydRight]

Optimism is good, you'll need it.

 

[pvandamcom]

Bumping this thread. Maybe there is a bit more appetite a year later..
If not through Tesla directly, would the combined Tesla Owners Clubs be a good starting point?
For the Netherlands Owners club division we've been thinking of setting up some feedback system to be able to better feed Tesla on hot topic. Tesla often asks that feedback is supported with user data. And that's where Uservoice could come in for sure.

Tesla Owners Club Directory

Anyone here from one of the owners clubs that would be willing to work together trying to sort this out?

 

[eXntrc]

I'd personally still love to see progress in this area. The only official feedback channels I know of are:

1. Open a support ticket at Tesla SSO – Login
2. Send feedback to [email protected]

I have tried submitting feedback through both channels, and each time I received the same canned response:

"We thank you for reaching out to us regarding your feature request. I have noted it for consideration in the future when we are developing future products."​

This of course provides no way for other owners to vote on how important feedback is to them. Nor does it provide a way for the original submitter to follow up and see if Tesla has decided to work on it.

I actually asked Tesla support "Is there a Tesla uservoice or something similar where owners can vote on the features they want most?" The support person replied "We recommend that you contact us when you have suggestions regarding possible vehicle features." I replied:

"I’m happy to do that. But without a public forum like UserVoice you won’t have any signal about how many other owners are impacted by the same issue. (Or who desire the same feature). Without that signal, it will be difficult to figure out which features / issues will lead to the greatest return in customer satisfaction. Please consider opening a UserVoice account or Similar. I know many of us in the community would be active contributors."​

Unfortunately they never responded.

 

[eXntrc]

I think it would be fantastic for someone from the Tesla Owners Club to create even an unofficial feature voting system. The main problem I see with this being a community run system is cost. UserVoice does not post their pricing, but from what I can see it runs around $500 a month!

One completely free option would be to create a GitHub project for feedback and use reactions to upvote and downvote Issues. Microsoft replaced UserVoice for Visual Studio for a while using this approach, and you can see how it worked in this official blog post.

Another very cheap option would be to use Fider. Fider is an open source alternative to UserVoice and it looks like this. Fiders source is available here and it can be hosted anywhere that runs docker.

There are also other paid services that are still much cheaper than UserVoice, such as Feature Upvote and HelloNext.

 

[eXntrc]

(Sorry for all the separate replies. I do realize I could have posted these together.)

Last thing I'll say is that I've created and participated in many GitHub projects. I would be happy to create a Tesla Feature Request project on GitHub if the community would use it and find it valuable. I would need at least a few volunteers to help manage duplicate issues or close issues as Tesla makes features available.

Of course this doesn't at all guarantee Tesla would even look at it, but if enough people participated they might quietly take notice.

 

[pvandamcom]

Those links and resources are a great start! Thanks for getting those together.
The problem with setting up such system (regardless of platform used), is that if you do it from one location (e.g. a country), it won't get that international traction. Also, if it doesn't have the support from at least a few official Tesla Owners Clubs, it might not fly.

I'll go ahead and browse through the Tesla Ownersclub directory and see if I can make some matches of the contacts and their handle here, so that we can get some of them drawn into this idea.

 

[robertmhoehn]

We’ve been working pretty hard on this solution over at teslaideas.ideascale.com. Here is a summary of what we’ve been able to accomplish:

• multi-lingual support
• Social login support (including reddit)
• Similar idea linking (ver2 of this coming soon)
• Tracking acknowledged by Elon ideas
• Tracking implemented ideas

Some other things we’ve been doing behind the scenes is find discussions about particular ideas in various forums and link over to the particular idea. It’s time consuming, but also super helpful for the community.

Some other things we are working on:

• Single sign-on with TMC (I might need help here)
• Better integration with the Tesla Owners Club Directory (need ideas here)

We also encourage the community to share their ideas with Elon on Twitter. We managed to get Tesla to make switching to Bluetooth much better using this approach.

Would love to hear feedback on what more we can do. I think a community driven approach by consolidating around the most important ideas is so important.

 

[eXntrc]

Thank you for posting this @robertmhoehn. This site looks very well organized and I see a lot of great asks from the community already in there. I've joined under the same username (exntrc) and I'll start contributing right away. Also happy to help track issues through the funnel stages as I see things get announced on Twitter / Reddit.

 

[robertmhoehn]

@eXntrc thanks. Actually that would be really helpful. This latest that is coming has a slew of new features - so I have a lot of updating to do.

 

[theganjaguru]

I wish they’d just have a portal through your account/app that you could submit. Make it logical and more and each option a path path to the option you’d like to enhance. Example:

Vehicle Controls > quick controls > Mirrors > Auto tilt > Insert request, which in my case would be enable auto fold toggle so only one mirror tilts. I had the option in my i3 and it was VERY useful to only toggle one switch.