3 Steps to Collecting More Customer Feedback

If you ask any product manager or product ops team the question “would you like more user feedback?”, the answer is almost always a resounding “yes”. So then the question becomes, how do you get more user feedback?

When it comes time to build your product roadmap, customer feedback is vital in determining what to build. This is especially true if you’re building a B2C software product, as your product evolves quickly, and you have less direct contact with each user. Nearly every product manager or product ops team wants more user feedback, but may not know where to start. Here are three easy ways to collect more feedback.

1. Ensure easy access to your contact information

You likely already have a way for users to get in touch with your company, but how easy is it for your users to find that information? To find out, try sending your landing page to an older family member or friend, like a parent or grandparent. Set up a quick Zoom call, and ask them to send your company an email. You can time them, and see what steps they take. If it takes them more than 30 seconds, chances are they’re going to give up before they find it, as will most of your users. And when they give up, you lose a chance to hear their feedback. 

So make sure your contact links are easily accessible, either by having a direct link on your most visited web pages or even on your platform navigation. Just ensure it takes no more than 2-3 clicks to find the information.

2. Set up a community

Create a community for your most active users to hang out, which gives you a chance to interact with them more frequently, and observe what topics, questions, and bugs come up most. The easiest (and cheapest) way to do this is to create a public slack organization, and have an invite link somewhere on your website. You can also send this link out to your most active users. The value for them is that they get immediate access to your team for help and questions. For your team, this community provides a consistent, growing source of real-time customer feedback. 

3. Implement new feedback channels

The final way to get more user feedback is to add new feedback channels. A feedback channel is any way that your users can get in touch with your company, and may include common channels like email, phone calls, support tickets, and chat. One effective yet often overlooked feedback channel is an always-present chatbot, like one offered by Intercom. These are quite simple to implement (less than 1 hour of an engineer’s time), and allow you to start collecting more feedback immediately. 

Another often overlooked feedback channel is a feedback link in your header or footer of your product pages. Whether you’re building a mobile app, website, or extension, it’s quite simple to implement a link or button that just says “Feedback?”. That link can point to an email address (e.g. feedback@unwrap.com), or a simple form with one or two inputs. With a form, you get the bonus of collecting metadata about the user’s session (browser, page they’re on, or product version) to help enrich your insights. Remember to make this link or button very easy to find, as that will dramatically increase the amount of feedback you collect.

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If you’re working on a software product, chances are your product evolves quickly, and you’re constantly debating what features to build next. Collecting and understanding user feedback is a vital piece of the roadmapping process, and a key ingredient in making your product successful. 

I’d go so far to say that customer feedback is the single most valuable input for coming up with the right product roadmap. Without customer feedback, it’s near impossible to understand what your users want, and so you’re left guessing on what features to prioritize when it comes time to make your roadmap. 

Use these three easy steps to stop guessing and start making more informed decisions. Good luck!

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