Feedback collection cannot be kicked off only when we hit a problem, such as if we see a volley of complaints and someone higher up tells us to find out what’s going on. We explore possible interaction analytics that can be hooked up. We explore feedback collection tools. We even send out surveys. We clamor for a conversation with consumers and so on. This, needless to say, is the most ineffective way to approach product feedback. We must consider every opportunity to understand how consumers perceive our product. There are two aspects to this:
- What external channels can we leverage to gain these insights?
- What feedback channels can we build within the product?
Sales and customer support are both essential channels to engage a consumer. Product teams must make it a part of their routine process to drive sales and support conversations. The following are some techniques we can use to understand customer feedback through channels external to the product itself:
- Social media sentiment is a great indicator of understanding about what consumers are saying about our product. While influencers may be somewhat overrated in driving loyalty, there have also been instances where an influencer’s actions or social comments have brought significant financial losses to brands. For instance, Kylie Jenner’s tweet on her disappointment about Snapchat’s redesign, cost Snapchat $1.3 billion (https://techcrunch.com/2018/01/11/snapchat-redesign-uninstall/).
- Exploring the competition's value proposition, is also another input that can feed into our product feedback.
- A/B testing with content, messaging, and pricing on the product website / marketing content / targeted user groups can help us to understand how customers perceive product value.
- Creating channels to engage the consumer through conversations can be beneficial. In-person conversations, especially in the case of B2B products, can help to uncover contextual information about the customer’s organization. We should explore opportunities to observe how consumers use our product, and the context setting under which they use the product. Our mental model as a product developer can be very different from that of the end user. Even a silent observation of how the actual user interacts with our product can be quite an eye-opener. The in-person sales interactions for medical conferences were an important forum for understanding the context of the doctors.
- Getting out of the building. This is not just a product manager’s or the founding team’s responsibility. Every person on the product team must try to sell the product, market the product, demo the product, support a product complaint, and try to speak to as many customers as possible. The impact of such first-hand interactions with users of our product is invaluable.
- Sales and revenue numbers are an important source of product feedback. A drop in retention rates, drop in sales, drop in subscription renewals, or even active cancellations and so on can unearth why the perceived value of our product is changing.
Our product itself can have in-built options to capture user interaction metrics:
- User interaction analytics on core functional flows can tell us where consumers drop off and how long they spend at each stage of our product workflow. We can use heat maps of product usage, active usage times (peaks/troughs), and so on.
- Include feedback rating/questionnaires as part of core user flows.
- Making support/help accessible and visible in our product flow can also help. Being present for support when a consumer is facing a block can unearth a great deal about the user’s context.
- Capture referrals from existing customers. Word of mouth or referrals are a great way to assess how well we perform on product loyalty.