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How do you get feedback from customers?

Hey all,

Getting feedback from customers is crucial but it seems really difficult to get people to answer a survey or get on a call.

I mainly use email to ask for feedback and the response rates are terrible, 2-3%.

Are there any effective ways of getting feedback? Tools or templates?

  1. 4

    I've 3 sources of feedback that are working great for splitbee.io :

    • Hitting up active customers on Twitter, just writing a short message: "Hi xyz, just saw that you are using Splitbee quite actively. Do you have any feedback for me, that would help a lot"

    For this method I got answers from 9/10 people with amazing feedback. Very detailed and long messages. Be sure to target "power" users.

    • I sent automatic emails if someone embeds splitbee successfully to their page & a mail if they don't do it within 24 hours. People often engage with them and explaining why they did not embed it yet. Also pretty helpful

    • We added the feedback.fish widget to all of our docs and in our app. We get about 8-10 submissions a month which is quite a lot for our size.

    1. 1

      will actually look at that splitbee it does sound interesting but is this just analytics or does it allow you to identify users so that you can message them on twitter?

      1. 1

        It's not just analytics, you can do automations (email, telegram, webhooks) and more but sadly not twitter :b

        Mostly you can find them on twitter by their name in email address, or their website! Takes a minute of manual work!

  2. 2

    One of the best effective way is for you to provide your customers with a portal, like how Macro.io (https://feedback.macro.io) does. I build Hellonext (https://hellonext.co) to help companies gather feedback effortlessly.

  3. 2

    Email tends to be a high-performing channel for us. But other avenues you can explore are in-app messages, chat bots, and posting in your own community forum (if you have one).

    I think it's also important to incentivize your customers. It's that "what's in it for me" piece that you need to speak to, since that can help encourage your customers to provide feedback.

    For instance, you could offer each customer gift card as a thank you for them taking the time out of their day to help you out, or enter everyone into a draw to win a giftcard. In some cases, your customers might be willing to offer feedback if you've made it clear in your messaging that you'd like their input to make your product better for them in the long run.

  4. 1

    My experience working on userTrack.net is that valuable feedback is given by the customers without them being asked for it.

    Customers that actually use your product usually have things to say about it, what you have to make sure is that you provide an easy way for them to contact you: either via email or through a platform like uservoice/canny.

    If you look at most popular products that use such feedback tools, almost all feedback comes from the users from their own initiative, without them being asked to provide feedback.

    I also sent a Google Form link once to customers with 4 short (multiple-choice) questions, and some responded, but that was more of a generic "state of the product" survey, not asking for specific feedback.

  5. 1

    I've been pretty successful - a 40 - 50% response rate, with a short open-ended question. Typically my goal is not to get a simple response (like you do through a survey) but create a conversation so I can understand the motivation behind the response.

    1.) Ask an open-ended question OR give them a choice. Keep it short and sweet. I try to keep the question 9 or fewer words. Example:

    ----
    Subject: Advice please

    Hey Hammad,

    What new feature would you like to see A or B?

    Best,
    Bill
    http://FixMyGrowth.com

    P.S. Whenever you’re ready… here are two ways I can help you

    One-on-One: Work with me one-on-one to solve a growth issue over a video call.

    Launch Plan: If you’d like to work with me on creating your complete step-by-step launch plan, schedule a time for a kick-off meeting.
    ---

    1. If they respond, you know they care enough. Be prepared with a follow-up question(s).

    Example:

    Thanks for the response Hammad! That's helpful advice. It's a really popular choice.

    Why is feature A important to you? How would you use that?

    If it's easier, happy to jump on a 15-minute call (I don't want to take up too much of your time) to discuss => <link to my calendar>.

    Here's what others say :
    a.
    b.
    c.

    Which response resonates with your use case the most?

    Thanks!
    Bill

    ---

    1. You can see in point one above, I added a super signature. This reminds the customer who I am and what I offer without taking up room in the email copy itself.

    2. In response two, I ask more questions and try to get them on the phone. Some people will respond with their exact reasons, others will choose from the list I provided. The reason I add the list of choices is to give people less to think about if they don't have time (goal 1 is a conversion, goal 2 is feedback). I typically see a 90%+ response from email two. In the last feedback email I sent I saw a 100% response rate.

    I script this scenario out to lead the customer down a funnel /outcome.

    1. Yes, a survey is easier. This approach is hard to scale BUT the feedback and conversions can't be beat!
      --

    Hope that was helpful.

    You've inspired me to write up a tutorial for this at http://FixMyGrowth.com where I share tested marketing ideas you can do in 30 minutes or less. It's 20 years in the making. You might find the tips helpful as you grow https://twitter.com/play_ht

  6. 1

    I ship physical products and have an older demographic as customers. I have had reasonable success with a simple paper survey/feedback form and a reply paid envelope. It can be anonymous so I can be sure the feedback is unbiased, and it has also been the source of testimonials where people have opted to identify themselves on the form.

  7. 1

    Is it the email itself or email in general? I find when I send bulk emails they get a low response rate but if I take a little time and customise each one to the recipient so it's more personal I get a much better response rate.

    I honestly don't think people mind being asked to provide feedback so long as you ask directly. I.e. don't beat around the bush.

  8. 1

    Like many other times in life, I find bribing people works well ;) £20 gift vouchers work wonders for getting people to fill out your feedback form or even better give you 20 minutes of their time for an interview.

    I talk about how we used JTBD interviews at Twine (twineapp.com) in this post – might be useful. We're doing the same at revelapp.io at the moment.

    https://medium.com/@Rob_McW/how-jobs-to-be-done-won-us-our-dream-customer-26cb8e518605

  9. 1

    just listening in on the comments here!

    for me, i use email in the super-early stages. that's all.

  10. 1

    Frequency and how you frame your question can really affect if you get an answer or not.

    We're changing up the way that we asked for feedback for our intake platform MightyForms.com by using the tool itself.

    The idea is to not take up your user's time, while letting them know that their opinion is important. Which is why you can get a much higher response rate with an embedded choice field straight in your email: http://prntscr.com/vc4fi2

    Their one-click action already gives you an insight as to how many of your users care enough about your products to start answering a survey - the abandoned form recovery feature gives you real-time insight into the submissions.

    We also send an automatic email to users that haven't interacted with the tool for a while to try to find out why.

  11. 1

    When I first started, I personally sent an email to each new paid user. Said thanks, told them we were new and small, and gave them an open invitation to email me directly with and problems or feedback. I got responses from roughly half of them (8-10 customers or so), and really good feedback from 3-5 customers in the first month.

  12. 1

    Hey @hammadh,

    I too have used email primarily for feedback. But I've found the quality of the responses is really high; people respond with thoughtful and detailed feedback and are often happy just to get a response. I have two mechanisms: one is an open-ended email response (reply and let me know your thoughts, etc) and the other is a freebie attached to a survey response — if you respond to this survey (make all fields required) I'll select X customers and send an eBook. This has worked well with my particular audience because I don't do it very often at all.

  13. 1

    Great question. So far, two forms have been super high ROI for me:

    1. [off-product] Direct outreach against target demographics with social listening tools

    2. [on-product] HotJar has been an absolute delight since it doesn't require user action. It just reports behavior and lets you hypothesize against it, while also providing a super simple way for users to provide in-app feedback.

  14. 1

    Hey,

    At https://www.edusign.fr/ we built an NPS tool --> Goes into a Google Sheet

    Integrated a chat in the software has been valuable to increase NPS and get a TON of feedback.

    Sales people are amazing at asking people what they want. Ask them to put the demands somewhere (not just in their heads). We use Trello for that.

    Finally, sometimes, we ask good clients if they could spend a few minutes with us to discuss how we could help them. Don't forget, by building a good product, you are helping your clients before yourself, that's key!

    Best of luck,
    Elliot

  15. 1

    Have you tried selecting your most active users first and emailing them personally? I got 60% success rate doing that and 2 full days of back to back meetings

  16. 1

    Put yourself in their shoes.

    For example, typically I ignore people who ask for feedback. I just don't have the time in the day for it. And I guess you probably do the same. 😇

    Also, 2-3% probably isn't a bad return on feedback emails. It's unrealistic to expect people to jump at the opportunity to give free feedback.

    I do have time in the day to talk to people about interesting things, so perhaps find a way to start conversations with people. Follow them on Twitter/social, read what they might write, comment on their blog/videos/etc.

  17. 0

    Here is how I grow user base that afterwards gives me feedback about my app Folge:

    • Chat window at the landing page - https://folge.me, I always try to answer any question within 1 hour, and then follow up with those users afterwards.
    • Feedback portal - https://folge.shipright.co/requests/v/all. Whenever any user leaves any kind of feedback, I write them a thank you email and try to elaborate more on the feedback they left: negative, positive, feature request, etc. For example If they ask for a feature, I tell them when I plan to develop it.
    • Whenever user purchases a license, I also write them a thank you email, and ask for a small feedback. I try to do a short investigation on what customer is doing and include some personal things in it. Usually 50% of such emails get an answer.
    • If I see some bug report in Sentry coming from a known user I immediately send them an email explaining why that bug has happened, how and when I'm gonna fix it.

    I also keep a page in Notion called 'Followups' where i put user's name, and reason why I should follow up with them. For example next week I'm preparing a new release of the app that has changes, which I know are used heavily by couple users and I will reach out to them this week, give them alpha build and ask for their feedback. Whenever I get an idea of how I can bring someones attention to the product, I add their name to this list.

    I know that this approach is not very scalable, but if you add some personal touch into communication with your customers, afterwards they will be happy to give you any kind of feedback about your product.

    1. 2

      +1 for all of these in the early stage.

  18. 1

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