Seeking Advice: 27 paying customers, yet none respond to give feedback. What to do?
TL;DR: I have 27 paying customers who aren't responding to my requests for feedback despite asking multiple times in different emails. Looking for advice on how I can get feedback or know better what to build next and improve the product.
2 months ago I created Sqriblr (www.sqriblr.com), a ChatGPT add-on (not a plugin in the official terms of OpenAI) that allows to have images inserted directly in ChatGPT response by using a specific prompt.
1 month ago, as I wasn't sure if it was worth continuing working on it since I only had a few clients, I launched on Product Hunt and got a shocking surprise. Over my previous launch, I had an average of 32.2 upvotes, and with this launch it reached 400+ upvotes at its peak.
In the first 60 days, I got to a total of 51 customers, but my biggest issue was, and still is, churn. There's a ~50% churn rate due to lack of time (didn't try the tool), not a good fit/no use case, doesn't integrate in the user workflow).
Currently, Sqriblr has 27 paying users (hooray!). But! The biggest problem I'm facing, which doesn't help with my churn, is that none of my customers are responding to my emails when I ask for feedback or suggestions for improvement.
I strongly believe in the "Build in Public" principles, and I understand the importance of customer feedback in driving the growth and development of a product. After all, they're the ones using it. Their input is vital to tailoring the product to better suit their needs.
I asked 3 times over 3 weeks to get feedback, and to give you an example of the results, I sent 2 emails which were entirely about asking for feedback:
FEEDBACK EMAIL #1
Total recipients: 30
Opened email: 18 (59%)
Responded: 2 --> 1. Questions / 2. Help about using Sqriblr
Unsubscribed: 2
FEEDBACK EMAIL #2
Total recipients: 45
Opened email: 23 (50%)
Responded: 0
Unsubscribed: 1
This is where I need your help.
Apart from continuing to ask for feedback, I don't know what would be best to do to improve Sqriblr to make it better for my users, so it can solve a problem they have and fill their needs, so it can help lower my churn rate.
Should I continue to send emails asking for feedback?
Should I ask people that aren't my customers for feedback to know what they would find valuable to have?
I'm a bit lost on what I should be doing, and wondering if there's anything I am not doing right to encourage these paying customers to provide feedback. Here's what I've been doing:
Would love to hear your advice.
What strategies have worked for you? How do you encourage your customers to respond and provide valuable feedback?
Any ideas are welcome.
Thank you in advance!
You may offer cashback/discount to your paying customers for their feedback😁
⬆ yes, every time I need to gather informations, get feedbacks or testimonials, I need to put something on the table or else users/customers are not really interested.
Even for UX feedback on tools that not yet exists I give amazon gift cards
I thought about it... But if I pay to get feedback, wouldn't it beat the purpose of having authentic feedback that people truly care about? Because feedback for feedback, I can probably get some for free from anyone online, if you get what I mean.
You are not wrong. However, I'd prefer to be extra sweet to early adopters of my application (Its like offering a glass of water/tea/coffee to someone who visit my house for the first time, just a small gesture from my end).
Paid/unpaid feedback from active paying users and from anyone online (non-user) would be very different.
Also suggestions made by @AkshayRaveendran & @ilkek are excellent and you may follow them. Please don't forget to share your experience so that we all can learn from it. All the best👍
Very true! Thanks for the help :)
Maybe paying can skew your feedback, but this is a common practice in my day job (user experience design). It's not really paying for feedback, but paying for their time when they provide that feedback. Imo, it's a nice way of saying you appreciate the time and effort they took.
For sure, it's a nice gesture to the user. For sure, if giving feedback is your job, it makes sense that you're being compensated for your work :P
@hugohamelcom I agree with @AkshayRaveendran that at this stage it's better to gather in-person feedback. If there are a few customers who previously contacted you for some purpose (for asking technical support, asking discount etc.) you may approach these users directly to convince them to hop on a 25-30 minute user feedback session. Believe me some people are open to sharing feedback in a verbal way. At the start of each session, you may get permission from your users to record their sessions (remember to open English captions option), then use ChatGPT to analyze the captions in the session and apply a sentiment analysis. You can even ask ChatGPT for suggestions on how to improve the product by analyzing the user session interview captions. It is good if you speak with 7-8 customers to understand the patterns in their responses. Let me know if you need more help!
I love these ideas! That's a good point that users that previously reached out, are probably more proned to reply back.
Using ChatGPT with the audio translation is a really smart way to it, love that suggestion!!!
Thanks for your advice :)
I tried to get feedback via email and it was exceedingly difficult. I speculate for a number of reasons including: 1) there's too much noise in email, 2) it's very likely that your email went to spam in some cases, 3) they're not in the flow of your app when they open the email so it requires a context switch for the user.
My advice is to do the following:
Get feedback in the LOWEST friction way possible. If you deploy a new feature and the user interacts with the feature for the first time, pop up a little "thumbs up" / "thumbs down" interaction. This is extremely low friction for the user to provide feedback
Piggy back off of that and then ask if they want to provide more feedback and then link them to a survey.
Alternatively, I have also found that showing a small banner asking for feedback (linking to a survey, for example) in the context of the app works as well.
These are indeed very good reasons of why there might be a low feedback response... Thanks for pointing it out, that helps me better understand.
I love these suggestions to get feedback in a better context (low friction) situation.
Thanks again for that :D
Tighten it down to a few customers and then have in-person feedback ( virtual or physical meeting). Don't be defensive at all and be open to feedback. you may want to thank you for your time with an Amazon or Starbucks voucher or early access to the next version, etc.
That's a good point! I guess I'd have to check who are my power users. Thanks for the suggestion :)
Congrats on your first paying customers. Many small AI companies open and invite their users (paying or not) to a Discord community where they can share announcements (new updates, etc) provide support and get feedback. Why not give it a try?
That could be an idea, thanks for the suggestion :)
From my experience, getting genuine feedback from 1 of every 50 or 100 customers is pretty good. I don't think you have enough customers yet to harvest feedback.
I wouldn't offer incentives. The feedback will be dishonest. People will give you BS to get whatever benefit you're promising.
I also wouldn't email people asking for feedback, that feels desperate and can be annoying.
Since the responses you got were questions, I'd just offer personal support, maybe by phone while scale allows. Talking with people about things they need help with related to your product will probably be the best feedback you can get. Offering your personal help is enough incentive to get people to act, and the complaints you get will be more honest than someone putting on their "feedback hat" and trying to be helpful.
Love that honesty and different perspective here! Since the number of customers is not enough yet to get feedback, what would you recommend best to know what next feature to add to the product or what to improve?
I think what you have to do is make yourself accessible to complaints, and you can kind of derive feedback from those complaints.
Feedback for feedback sake is... unreliable.
Very true! What would you say is the best way to make yourself available to complaints?
I'd say just by offering solid support, maybe by phone even.
Could be worth trying indeed!
As @chrlschn pointed out, there's way too much noise in email these days. Also, it would be better to ask for feedback in-context i.e. while the user is in your app rather than some other time or in another app (email). Preferably try to ask for feedback as soon as the user successfully finishes a task on your product. Of course, you might not get very detailed feedback here but it's a start. You can always ask them 'Is it okay to contact you for more detailed feedback?' and perhaps throw in an incentive like @tusharthe mentioned. Incentive need not necessarily be monetary, you can even offer them a chance to get early access to Beta features.
These are indeed good point! Thanks for the help :)
Congratulations on the success of Sqriblr! To encourage customer engagement and gather valuable feedback, consider these strategies.
First, continue asking for customer feedback, but refine your approach by framing specific questions around pain points and potential improvements. Additionally, reach out to individuals who could benefit from Sqriblr but have yet to be customers to gather their perspectives on valuable features. Offering incentives, such as discounts or exclusive access, can motivate customers to provide feedback. Make the feedback process simple by offering multiple channels and ensuring convenience. Engage customers through community and social media to foster discussions and encourage feedback. Utilize surveys and analyze user behavior to gain actionable insights.
As the team behind logomakerr.ai (https://logomakerr.ai/), an AI-powered logo design platform, we've encountered similar challenges and successfully overcome them by implementing these strategies. Give them a try to enhance Sqriblr's growth and better meet your customers' needs.
Thank you for the support :) That's indeed a good point to narrow down the feedback request to make it less generic.
That's a good point to reach out to potential customers to understand what's missing for them to be interested.
How much time did you have to put into reaching out to potential customers?
This sounds really frustrating 😣
It is 😅
Hey Hugo,
Make a free demo account option that is valid for 12H or 24H and add it to your post or as a comment. I'll be happy to provide my feedback and I'm pretty sure you'll get another 5-6 people here.
I actually added a $1 trial for 7 day access for people that are serious about considering the tool to try it out first. Otherwise, I think it's risky to ask feedback for people that aren't user and are not planning to become, it would biased too much the feedback in my opinion.
How did you ask for their input? If you asked an open ended 'please help me improve?' this can seem like a lot of work - you are asking them to stop, really think about you and your problems (even though you are trying to help them). Other than framing the email in a really human, friendly way - one suggestion is to give them very tight questions that are easy to answer i.e. from 'how can I improve this?' to 'Would you prefer A or B?'.
That might lower the hurdle and get you some basic responses.
That's the last email I sent: https://imgur.com/a/2yx0FX2
You right about the fact that I ask them to switch context and think about something they were ready/prepared to think about...
I like the idea of having predefined answers to pick from.
Thanks for the idea :)
After reading the email here are my thoughts:
Once they have started that they might be prepared to answer one open ended question i.e. what else should the product do?
Hope of some help.
That truly helps! Thank you so much, I will make the changes to make it better :) Thank you!!!
MrTMan's recommendations are spot on.
Thank you for sharing some context with that email screenshot, because it makes it easier to pinpoint any areas for improvement regarding the way you make the ask.
One other thing I'd consider is setting up a simple form. This will make the email shorter and it won't feel as much work for the recipient. And it also makes it easier to go through from the respondent's POV. (An email is a good idea if you ask ONE question. In all other cases, a survey's worth trying out.)
Just make sure to:
Hope some of this helps, Hugo!
Very good points! Thanks for the suggestions :)
7 times is the magic number to get any form of interaction . beyond that , they just want to be left alone.
I get that, just don't want to be annoying before that ahah
Hey @hugohamelcom 👋
I'm actually building TinySurvey to solve this exact problem!
It's a survey tool that lets you embed surveys directly into your product/website to capture feedback at that point in time.
It's in a closed-beta right now, but if you'd like to give it a try, pop your name on the waitlist here and I'll help you get set up!
Thanks, will check it out!
Instead of relying solely on email requests, consider using user-friendly feedback forms or surveys that are directly accessible within your product or through a dedicated feedback portal. It may help.
Before it wasn't possible since there was no official backend, but recently added a backend where I direct all my users to, and in it there's a chat bubble with a way to submit feature requests. Maybe it's not obvious enough...