Working a lot with customers who don't really know how to submit bugs, I never really succeeded in explaining to the customer how to do it right. But some people may notice they are doing it wrong, especially when you repeat the same question again and again, or if you guide them.
Repeat yourself
For example:
Bug report 1: The left panel is not displayed correctly in my browser.
Answer to the bug report 1: Thank you for submitting the bug. Can you please provide us the name and the version of the browser you used and the screenshot of the problem? Thank you.
Bug report 2: When I move my mouse over the button "Submit" on "Submit the order" page, the text below disappears.
Answer to the bug report 2: Thank you for submitting the bug. Can you please provide us the name and the version of the browser you used and the screenshot of the problem? Thank you.
...
Bug report 1024: Hey, I think there is a bug on the home page when I use Firefox 4.0 Release Candidate. When I hover the side panels, their color remains black, while in Firefox 3.6 and Internet Explhorror 8, the color is switched to dark blue. See the screenshot below.
When asked to do repetitive things, the customer understands more or less quickly that it will be easier to do it by herself the next time.
Note that it's very important to make copy-paste of your requests. If you formulate the requests differently every time, it will take longer for the customer to notice that you ask the same thing for every similar bug.
Bot repetition is even better
If there is a thing which helps a lot in "teaching" the customer, it's to send automated answers. If you use a product for bugs submission, it would be difficult to do, but if you've done your own bugs tracking system, the thing may be easy.
Automated answers help because they give a stronger feel of repetition and their deterministic behavior means that their answer will be the same. When you ask something to a human being and she refuses it, you can ask the same thing in a week. If a robot refuses something, there are chances that it will refuse the same thing again and again for years.
It's also very easy to make the difference between automated and human-made answers. Example (let's imagine we deal with a customer we know for years and are very close with her):
Response by a human
Bug report 256: Hi. I requested yesterday to modify the links because of the changes in the requirements, but half of the links are still the same. Is there a problem?
Answer to the bug report 256: Oh, I'm sorry, but what are precisely the links you are talking about? I've checked the ten pages affected by the requirement and don't see any problem.
Response by a bot
Bug report 256: Hi. I requested yesterday to modify the links because of the changes in the requirements, but half of the links are still the same. Is there a problem?
Answer to the bug report 256: Your bug report was not accepted by the system for the following reason:
· The URIs of the affected pages are not specified.
We apologize for the inconvenience. You can submit the bug again by providing the requested information.
Guide people who submit bug reports
Again, if you are able to customize the bug reporting system, it may be a good idea to add some guidance and hints.
Instead of letting the user fill the textarea and click "Submit", make a few wizards or just forms with mandatory fields for common situations.
For example, for a website project, create a form "Rendering issues" with following fields:
- What is the affected page? (mandatory) (Set to "All" if every page of the website is affected)
- What do you see? (mandatory)
- What do you expected to see instead? (optional)
- What browser do you use [FF|IE|Opera|Safari|Other:_]? (mandatory)
- What is the version of the browser you use? (mandatory)
- Is it a beta or a release candidate version of a browser, if not specified above [Yes:_|No]? (mandatory)
- Have you checked the same page in other browsers [Yes|No]? (mandatory)
- If you answered "yes", do you observe the same issue in other browsers [Yes|No]? (...)
- Do you have JavaScript disabled [Yes|No]? (mandatory)
- Do you have custom options, like larger or smaller text, custom colors, etc. [Yes:_|No]? (mandatory)
- Please, provide a screenshot of the full page or a part of the page showing the rendering issue. The screenshot must be a PNG or a JPG image. To learn how to make screenshots, visit our <a href="...">online help</a>. (mandatory)
