You’ve just launched your new product or you just finished building a new website, and now you wonder what your customers think about those changes. You need product feedback, but can’t get it yet. We know the struggle.
Also, can customer feedback really provide insights to help your company propel itself into product-led growth?
Let’s see 6 ways you can approach this challenge.
🤩 Shameless content plug: if there are some information gaps in your product or customer feedback game, head straight over to our ultimate guide on customer feedback now. 🤩
Collecting product feedback effectively
Many discussions are popping up on Quora about how to effectively collect customer feedback in a recent couple of years.
Interestingly, the questions are mainly coming from the Software industry. As software move from on-premise to online self-service, the disconnection between companies and their customers started growing.
Online web products have no salesman to introduce the features. When customers have difficulty using the product it is also less direct to find support than just dropping in a store to demand a new one.
Yet this gap between customers and online businesses makes it all more important for websites to offer a channel to allow customer feedback.
No or too much product feedback
When companies start to collect feedback, overall, there are two different situations:
- Scenario 1: They don’t get a lot of feedback from their customer base
- Scenario 2: They get TONS and TONS of feedback from their customer base
Depending on the situation – scenario 1 (no feedback) or scenario 2 (too much feedback) – you should set different goals and use separate strategies in reaching that goal.
1. Attracting customers, the agile way
Getting feedback for a newly launched (or even a product in closed alpha/beta) isn’t that easy, as there will still be bugs and failures of your product.
But having no finished product, and no customers you can ask for feedback isn’t as bad as it may sound.
On the contrary, this is the time which offers you a chance to build some strong and sustainable relationships. The earlier you include potential users into your product development, the less likely it will be that your software fails.
Evaluating, testing, and collecting customer feedback is relevant in every development step. So, it can be helpful to build relationships early.
Of course, you might ask: OK, and where can I get those first customers?
There are various ways to reach out to potential customers and users. Here are some tips you will find helpful:
- Get listed on the beta list and get early adopters on board
- Launch on ProductHunt and get feedback from the tech community
- Join local meetups in your industry and ask for product demos
- Join public Slack channels
- Reach out to potential customers & users asking for help
- Reach out to influencers and experts in your industry
2. Attracting the right customers
When thinking about whom of your customers to ask, you’ll think about the following funnel.
The more customers you have, the better the chances that you’ll find the customers who are willing to give feedback, and then you actually give feedback.
If you don’t get a lot of feedback, you can either find ways to bring more customers into this funnel, or you can increase conversion rates through this funnel (e.g. you make it easier for customers who are willing to give feedback to actually give feedback).
As we now have a clear understanding of how to attract the right customers (not everyone would be a good fit for feedback), we need to think about ways on how to engage with them.
3. On-site / in-app feedback
As you may have experienced, not all feedback is “helpful”.
Some feedback is vague and inaccurate, which most likely reflects the customers’ knowledge of your product. Some feedback is very aggressive but fails to pinpoint the exact problem.
The best feedback is found at the time your customers are using your product.
Think of it as watching a movie with your friends: if you go to the cinema together you would laugh at the same time, shed a tear at the same scene. But if you were just discussing the movie over coffee break a day after watching it separately at home, you might not get why he is having such reaction or why she is so moved by another character. It’s just not the same.
Get your customers to share feedback at the moment. This will immensely improve the accuracy and value of the feedback.
Implement a customer feedback solution inside your product, and enable your users to easily leave feedback at the time the encounter problems or troubles.
The feedback and information get even more powerful when you actually get qualitative feedback as well.
Going back to the movie reference, an 8/10 review says so much less than a critic’s 5 lines remark.
Usersnap is a responsive customer feedback tool made for web applications, websites and other software products. You can get screen recordings, screenshots, comments, and customer satisfaction ratings sent to the same dashboard.
Simply embed the Usersnap feedback button inside your application which allows your users to leave feedback in the form of annotated screenshots.
Usersnap can also help you collect rating surveys, such as NPS, and follow-up customers to get written feedback. This will provide you a wide range of data to analyze and truly understand what makes your customers happy and why they like using your product.
Why should you give such a feedback tool a try? Because:
- It allows your users to easily leave qualitative feedback
- You can see your product through your users’ eyes
- It provides you with visual feedback in real-time
You can also talk to one of our customer feedback experts. No strings attached.
4. 1-on-1 feedback
One of the best ways to get in-depth customer feedback in an efficient way is to simply ask them in person.
When you have a customer’s email address, you have the opportunity to send out a personal email asking a single question.
Keep your email short and simple.
You can ask about challenges and problems, or about features, your customer might like to see.
Make sure to keep the email personal and try to avoid marketing speech. Try to start a conversation instead. And better make sure you’re replying to emails on time.
Arrange a call or interview would be your next step.
Often when you treat your customers with care, they go on to become your loyal advocates!
5. Customer surveys
Customer surveys are a great way to gather feedback and insights into the life of your customers. Those customer surveys might pop up in your software product, or you might send out emails asking for participation.
There are many options in the market for getting your survey up and running.
Before adding too many questions to your survey, consider the following thoughts:
- Only ask questions that fulfill your aim
- Ask one question at a time
- Avoid complete, irritating or loaded questions
- Make sure all questions are consistent
6. Usability tests
Usability tests are the costliest form to ask for customer feedback. However, they deliver by far the best and most comprehensive feedback you can get.
Usability tests can be run during every single project stage. You test first ideas, mockups, prototypes or finished products via usability tests.
Usually, these tests are done with a very small and well-selected user group, preferably in an observable environment.
If you want to learn more about Usability Testing and User Acceptance Testing, check out the following articles.
Start listening to customers for product feedback
Streamlining your customer feedback isn’t easy. There are a lot of questions you need to answer in advance – What’s your goal? Who’s the best person to ask? And a lot of feedback channels to consider – How to measure? What approach is scalable?
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We won’t pretend there is an absolute solution. But we offer customizable plans and flexible feedback widget types to try to suit different use cases.
Most companies lack an in-depth understanding of their customers. That’s why product decisions are often based on lucky guesses or gut feelings. Only your users have the answers. We help you to start listening.
Usersnap is a customer feedback tool to help you collect both qualitative and quantitative insights from your customers. Its user-friendly widget and intuitive backend analysis will get you right inside of your customers’ heads.
Once you’ve defined your customer’s needs, you have to go above and beyond meeting the functional need, you need to think about the emotional one, too.
Bonzena Pienazek, Head of Product at Typeform
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