Yesterday, we posted about Realmac Software’s experience with negative reviews on the App Store and their inability to reach out to the user directly to address the problem.

Reaching out to the customer directly would allow a developer to quickly aid a confused user, gain valuable insight into a problem and, perhaps, avoid more poor reviews. Ideally, a newly satisfied user would change their 1 star review to a 5 star review. But even without that last bit, the shortened feedback cycle would certainly lead to improved software.

That said, Microsoft is now rolling out the ability to respond to feedback directly from Dev Center.

This new capability enables developers to respond to reviews of Windows Phone apps directly from Dev Center. Once you create a response, users will receive the comment via email from Microsoft and can even contact you directly if you included your support email address in the app submission ‘Support email address’ metadata.

If you are an iOS developer, I’d encourage you to look at the linked article and leave a comment on this post. Is this the right approach? Would you be for this same approach on the App Store? Something different? [Via iOS Dev Weekly]