Let's Troubleshoot Your Flight Tracker

Please remove this app support form insights section before publishing.

Overall Analysis & Design Philosophy

This form is designed with a clear goal: to enable first-contact resolution. It aims to eliminate the tedious back-and-forth emails that frustrate users and drain support resources. By collecting a structured, logical flow of information, it allows support agents to immediately understand the context, diagnose the problem, and often provide a solution in their first response.

The form uses a progressive disclosure technique—it starts with universal basics and then branches into specific, scenario-based questions. This prevents overwhelming the user with irrelevant fields.

Section-by-Section Insights

Section 1: Your Information & Device Details

• Purpose: To establish the absolute baseline technical context. Problems can be specific to device models, OS versions, or app builds. Without this data, support is guessing.
• Key Insights:
• • Email Address: Critical for communication and linking the ticket to a potential user account in the backend system.
  • App Version: Perhaps the most important field. A bug might have been fixed in the latest version, or a new bug might have been introduced. Knowing the version tells support if "update the app" is the first step.
  • Device & OS Version: Fragmentation is a key challenge in mobile development. A crash might only happen on iPhone 15 Pro with iOS 17.4.1, or only on a specific Android chipset. This data is invaluable for developers.
  • Marketplace: Rules out issues specific to a store (e.g., billing issues from the App Store vs. Google Play).

Section 2: Description of the Problem

• Purpose: To get a high-level, categorical understanding of the issue before diving into specifics. This helps with triage and routing (e.g., a billing issue goes to finance, a crash log goes to development).
• Key Insights:
• • Problem Category: Acts as a "router." The support agent's eye is immediately drawn to the relevant subsection (3a, 3b, 3c) they need to read carefully.
  • Free-Text Description: While categories are efficient, the user's own words are irreplaceable for understanding the nuance and impact of the problem.
  • Timeline & Frequency: Helps distinguish between:
  • • A system-wide outage (everyone reporting it "constantly" starting one hour ago).
    • A localized bug (happening "occasionally" to one user for a week).
    • A one-time data glitch ("only once").

Section 3: Detailed Troubleshooting (The "Brains" of the Form)

This section is where the form's intelligence shines. It acknowledges that different problems require entirely different diagnostic data.

• Subsection 3a: Specific Flight Issues
• • Purpose: To pinpoint the exact data failure. Flight data comes from multiple third-party sources (e.g., FAA, airlines, ADS-B receivers), and failures can be source-specific.
  • Key Insights:
  • • Airline, Flight Number, Date, Route: This is the unique identifier for a flight. With this, a support agent can query their own data pipelines and backend systems to see what information they are receiving for that specific flight, instantly identifying if the problem is on their end or a upstream data provider's end.
    • Specific Data Point: Telling the difference between a "missing flight" (a data feed failure) and a "wrong gate" (a data inaccuracy from a specific source) is crucial for assigning the bug to the correct team.
• Subsection 3b: Push Notification Issues
• • Purpose: To navigate the complex chain of notification delivery, which involves the app, the operating system, and the user's own settings.
  • Key Insights:
  • • The questions lead the user and the agent through a logical debugging flow: Is it one notification or all? Is the in-app setting on? Is the OS-level permission granted? This often leads to a quick resolution: "Please enable notifications in your iPhone Settings > AppName."
• Subsection 3c: App Crashes & Performance
• • Purpose: To reproduce the issue. Crashes are often tied to a specific sequence of actions or environmental factors.
  • Key Insights:
  • • Reproduction Steps: "What were you doing...?" is the first question a developer asks. If the crash happens every time a user views a specific aircraft on the map, it's a huge clue.
    • Network Type: Performance issues (like a slow map) can often be tied to poor network connectivity or a specific problem with a user's mobile carrier or Wi-Fi network.

Section 4: Final Steps

• Purpose: To respect the user's time and avoid suggesting steps they've already taken. It also provides the most powerful diagnostic tool: visual evidence.
• Key Insights:
• • Steps Tried: This prevents a support agent from sending a robotic "Have you tried turning it off and on again?" response. It shows the user their effort is acknowledged and immediately pushes the agent to provide a more advanced solution.
  • Screenshots/Screen Recording: This is invaluable. A user might misdescribe a problem, but a screenshot shows it perfectly. A screen recording can capture a complex UI bug or a crash sequence that is impossible to describe in words. It dramatically reduces resolution time.
  • The warning about reinstalling is a thoughtful user experience (UX) touch, preventing users from accidentally losing their data.

Benefits for the Support Team & Business

1. Efficient Triage: Tickets arrive pre-sorted and with critical data. A crash on iOS can be immediately forwarded to the iOS developer, along with the device and OS version.
2. Data-Driven Bug Reports: The form generates consistent, structured data. This allows the product team to easily aggregate reports. For example: "We've had 25 reports of missing gate data for Flight XYZ on April 12th," confirming a widespread data source issue.
3. Reduced Resolution Time (and Cost): Less back-and-forth means each agent can handle more tickets per day, reducing the cost of support.
4. Improved Customer Satisfaction: Users feel heard and understood when they are not asked for basic information they've already provided. A faster resolution leads to happier customers.
5. Proactive Problem Identification: If a sudden spike of tickets comes in with the same app version, it immediately flags a potential bad update that needs to be rolled back or hot-fixed.

In conclusion, this form transforms support from a reactive, chaotic process into a structured, efficient, and data-rich system. It benefits the user through faster resolutions and benefits the business through operational efficiency and valuable product insights.

Please remove this mandatory questions recommendation before publishing.

Here is the list of mandatory questions and a detailed elaboration on why each is critical.

The Mandatory Questions:

1. Email Address
2. App Version
3. Device Model
4. Operating System (OS) Version
5. Marketplace where you purchased the app
6. Problem Category
7. Please describe the issue you are experiencing
8. When did the problem first start?
9. How often does this problem occur?

Elaboration on Why Each is Mandatory:

1. Email Address

• Why it's mandatory: This is the primary and only channel for communication. Without it, the support team cannot send a response, ask for clarification, or provide a solution. A ticket without contact information is useless.
• What it prevents: Dozens of orphaned tickets with no way to follow up, rendering the entire support process ineffective.

2. App Version

• Why it's mandatory: This is arguably the most important technical field. Bugs are version-specific. A problem could be:
• • Fixed in a newer version: The immediate solution is to instruct the user to update.
  • A new regression in the current version: This alerts developers to a new bug introduced in the latest release.
  • A long-standing issue: If the problem exists across multiple versions, it indicates a deeper, unresolved bug.
• What it prevents: Wasting time diagnosing a bug that was already patched. It instantly tells the support agent if the user is even on a supported version.

3. Device Model & 4. Operating System (OS) Version

• Why they're mandatory: These two pieces of information are intrinsically linked and provide the essential environmental context.
• • Device Model: A performance issue or crash might be specific to a device's hardware (e.g., a specific GPU, chipset, or amount of RAM).
  • OS Version: Apple and Google frequently update their operating systems, which can break app functionality. A bug might only occur on iOS 17.4.1 or Android 14. Support cannot check compatibility without this data.
• What it prevents: Agents asking, "What phone do you have?" and "What version of iOS/Android are you running?" as their first follow-up questions. It allows them to immediately check for known issues with that specific device/OS combination.

5. Marketplace where you purchased the app

• Why it's mandatory: This determines the rules of engagement for support, especially regarding purchases and subscriptions.
• • Billing Issues: Apple and Google handle all in-app purchases and subscriptions themselves. If a user has a billing problem, the support team must direct them to the correct marketplace's support team, as the app developer does not have access to manage refunds or payment details.
  • Version Differences: Occasionally, update rollouts or even app features can differ slightly between the App Store and Play Store.
• What it prevents: The support team wasting time trying to solve a billing issue they have no control over. It sets the correct expectation from the very beginning.

6. Problem Category

• Why it's mandatory: This is the primary tool for triage and routing. It immediately tells the support agent what type of problem they are dealing with and which part of the form to focus on.
• • A "Flight Data" issue requires questions about a specific flight.
  • A "Push Notification" issue requires a checklist of settings.
  • An "App Crash" issue requires knowledge of what the user was doing.
• What it prevents: The agent from having to read the entire description first to manually categorize the issue, slowing down their response time.

7. Please describe the issue you are experiencing

• Why it's mandatory: While categories and dropdowns are efficient, they cannot capture nuance. The user's own description provides critical context that predefined options might miss.
• • It answers the fundamental questions: "What did you expect to happen?" vs. "What actually happened?"
  • It often contains unique details (e.g., "the map flashes green before crashing") that are the key to reproducing a bug.
• What it prevents: Misdiagnosis based on an incorrect assumption from a checked box. The human description is the narrative that ties all the technical data together.

8. When did the problem first start? & 9. How often does this problem occur?

• Why they're mandatory: These two questions work together to establish the pattern and scope of the issue, which is vital for identifying its root cause.
• • A problem that started "Today" and occurs "Constantly" suggests a system-wide outage or a failed backend service that began at a specific time.
  • A problem that started "Over a week ago" and occurs "Occasionally" suggests a persistent, hard-to-reproduce bug or an issue specific to the user's device or usage pattern.
  • A problem that "Only Once" is likely a temporary network glitch or data anomaly, not a code-level bug.
• What it prevents: Treating every bug report with the same level of urgency. It helps prioritize widespread, critical issues over intermittent ones and guides the agent's diagnostic approach.

Summary:

These nine mandatory questions form the absolute minimum viable dataset required to open a useful support ticket. They provide the who (email), the what (description, category), the where (app version, device, OS, store), and the when (timeline, frequency). Without any one of these, the support team's ability to provide a swift and accurate resolution is severely compromised.