Any information coming from your product users about their experience and satisfaction with the product; in short, product feedback, plays a crucial role in your business success. User interviews, reviewing customer service query tickets, consumer surveys, and other research approaches can all be used to gather valuable product feedback. Product feedback should drive decision-making no matter what kind of product you sell or provide on a subscription model or a SaaS solution. Feedback on a product can be requested or it may arrive at your desk uninvited. When you specifically request feedback, it is called solicited feedback, such as a feedback form. When people provide it on their initiative, it is called unsolicited feedback, such as a tweet. You need to include both sorts of feedback from as many outlets as possible to gain a complete picture of your customer's experiences.
When it comes to gathering client feedback, it is easy to become overwhelmed by the sheer number of options. It might be difficult to know where to begin, with so many options to interact with. One thing is certain. Collecting client input in a proactive manner guarantees that you never stray too far from the needs of your community, even as those need a “change”. But what is product feedback exactly?
How does it help anyway?
Product feedback can provide your leadership team with insights that can help them design a course forward for all aspects of their business, from product to UX design and customer service. That adds to overall customer happiness. So, how do you do it? How would you ensure maintaining high levels of product feedback? Let’s find out
One of the simplest and old-school ways to obtain genuine client feedback is via email. Nearly all big organizations utilize it as a support channel. You can use each interaction to gather valuable feedback. Do the following three steps to increase your chances of receiving a response from a customer: For getting an appropriate response, or getting a response in the first place, you should focus on setting specific goals and objectives. Customers often don’t provide crucial feedback because they might not believe anyone is interested. Many of those same consumers might have provided feedback if they knew they would get a response. They want their service providers or product manufacturers to remember them post-sale. Consider including a short statement in your emails that informs recipients of when they can expect to hear from you.
Even a small statement, such as "We are happy to learn from your experience. Call us for feedback” can not only reassure the customer but also earn you the next oil; i.e. data. Embedded contact forms in emails can help you meet customer expectations and establish trust with your community. You may try experimenting with some email newsletter designs and find out which one helps you build an emotional connection with your customers
The Product-Market survey is very effective. The Product Market Fit survey is especially effective for new products because it asks the customer how they feel if they cannot use the product any longer. Customer feedback surveys help you stay on top of things. With surveys, you get continuous, rapid, and specific feedback. Loyalty evaluating Net Promoter Score (NPS) surveys and Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) feedback surveys are among the most common types of surveys that organizations often employ. It helps you evaluate how your product is valuable to your customers or if they are lagging in some aspects.
The opportunity for gradual improvement is the key factor here. With the correct survey tools, it's simple to set up. Besides, they are inexpensive and scalable.
If done correctly, customer interviews can be a flexible research tool for gathering valuable feedback during the product development process. Speaking with the actual product users can always generate new insights, from doing an initial design study to receiving post-launch feedback. Collect a lot of feedback from consumers before developing your product to ensure that you are building something that people truly want. Regardless of the purpose, the key to successful customer interviews is to ask non-leading questions and allow the dialogue to run naturally and spontaneously.
Customers frequently submit unsolicited feedback for products they care about. Imagine enthusiasts speaking about Marvel’s brilliant VFX or how Apple innovated the smartphone market. Choose review sites that are most appropriate for the type of goods you are selling. Here are several examples:
App reviews: Google Play, iOS AppStore, etc.
Reviewing physical things: E-commerce platforms like Amazon.
Hotel reviews: Booking.com
Public sentiment: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.
Try gaining product input about both your and your competition’s products. Find a system or integration that unifies and collects all your customer’s reviews in one location, allowing for easy comparisons and detecting temporal trends. Take a look at what customers are saying about your competitors! Include their comments in your product feedback loop to identify and exploit competitive gaps.
It takes more planning than you may think for usability testing to help you gain deep insights about your product or service. However, with a clear plan, you can identify difficulties that your extended customer base isn't yet aware of and take actionable insights to improve their experience. You might even think about compensating your user research volunteers in the same way that Google does. Assume you own a restaurant. Offer customers a free cup of cappuccino on their visit and record their expressions and ask them what they think about your products.
Learning about your company from your customer’s point of view reveals modest changes that you may initiate. Changes that may have a big impact on the future customer experience. If you run an eCommerce business brand, you should treat customer feedback as the holy grail. The right way of usability testing your product will enable you to build a better version of it. This would help you eventually build a persuasive catalog, leading to more customers in the future, and, with that comes revenue. Yes, you got that right. Usability testing is a long-term game. It’s a grand war, not a small battle.
Social listening gives you access to a hitherto untapped pool of frank, spontaneous, and authentic customer feedback. Direct comments, social media mentions, polling posts, you name it, there are multiple ways of gaining customer feedback. Remember we talked about solicited and unsolicited feedback? You may need to recall them for a bit. If your community is formed on a public forum like Facebook, LinkedIn, Reddit, or Discord; where information flows freely at the will of those providing it, this would be unsolicited feedback. Here you are not asking someone to give feedback.
As you understand, forums and communities are mostly unmoderated and unfiltered. As a result, they provide the most accurate input. We recommend that you start with existing communities before building your forums. Find out where your and competitors’ users meet and talk about your products. Take notes and build up from there. You may try finding audience feedback on public commenting platforms like Quora. If you are a garage fashion brand, you could use a one-question Instagram poll to ask your audience (followers) if they want something unique next year. This kind of natural participation ensures that their organization's product decisions are in line with your community's purchase habits.
There are several advantages to gathering and assessing product feedback. They may be boiled down to these three main phases:
Improve customer happiness and experience
Organize the right product strategy and test new concepts according to your audience’s preference
Create a profitable product
Here are some setups you can establish if your capacity permits:
A hotline or a call center for assistance
A live chat features
Complain to desk via email
Social media engagement groups
These mediums can prove to be excellent ways to get feedback on your products. They can help you figure out what isn't working as well as the aspects of your product that customers like the most.
In this age of digital prominence, you have all the resources to transform the way your audience perceives your business. By implementing the essential strategies, you can hopefully maintain high levels of product feedback. It’s all about conducting research and doing the needful as and when required. Before we wrap up for the day, we would like to offer a bonus tip. Try to set up a system in which your organization routinely receives user feedback; i.e., routine feedback. More importantly, the feedback should be acted upon. Overlooked feedback may often be a lost opportunity. At the end of the day, your goal should be to improve your products based on your audience’s preferences. Isn’t that so?
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