Des Traynor is the co-founder of Intercom, the easiest way for web and mobile businesses understand and communicate with their customers. This post originally appeared on InsideIntercom.
is rarely logical to take feedback from all users and it never made sense to get it all at once.
At the beginning of a new project, or especially if you have recently taken over a product, it is tempting to survey all users to assess where things are. It is usually a mistake.
In fact, there are five common mistakes that we see again and again. We use Intercom to comment it simple, and therefore it is easy to become a little trigger happy with requests for feedback. Here are five quick ways to deal with product evaluations:
1. Stop talking to "all users"
When you survey all users at the same time you ignore the specifics. You mix sign-ups yesterday with life long customers. Those who have used your product every day with those who just connect to update billing information. Those who only use a specific characteristic with those who use them all. It is a mess.
Solution : There is a much cleaner way to get much better feedback. Here are some examples:.
- If you want to improve your onboarding, only listen to people who have recently signed up
- If you want to improve a function, not to speak to those who use it.
- If you want to understand why people are not using a function, not talk to those who do not use it.
- If you want to find areas of interest, just talk to active users who use all of your functions.
2. Comments should be underway
The default approach is to solicit feedback on request. But this means that when you realize that you need, you have to wait a week to do nothing when he comes in.
To compensate for this you cast a wide net, ask lots of questions, and sit down. If you are particularly naive, you act on each piece as it happens, rather than wait and analyze it as a whole.
The problem here is twofold: on one hand you have ever handy comments when you need it, but then you hear only problems when you choose to ask about them. This means that you are blind to the progressive degradation of your product.
Solution : Periodically check with users. The simplest, but still precious, this version is to ask for feedback from users on day 30, 60, 120, 365, etc. It takes about 20 seconds to set up in Intercom, and will pay for itself in a day or two.
A slightly more advanced version would be to gather specific feedback functionality based on use. For example, if you have a calendar tool, you could ask someone their thoughts on the first, twentieth and fiftieth time they use.
As a user is used for a product their feedback matures. The first returns of use will explain what is confusing the twentieth explain the frustrations, the fiftieth explain the limits.
3. Distinguish without paying feedback
associated with point 1, it is easy to assume all claims are of equal value, regardless the status of an account. This is almost true within certain thresholds (for example $ 50 -> $ 500). But there is a notable difference between the types of applications you get free and paying users users
long-term users are only able to give you feedback on how to improve your free plan this is rarely a priority for a company. Typically, the free plans exist to attract customers and upsell them. You can not listen to the hypothetical comments :. "I'll upgrade if ...", "I'll upgrade when ..."
espoused behavior is rarely useful, learning things that really happened
Solution :.
- To improve your product for your paying customers not to talk to your paying customers
- To learn what makes people upgrade free, just talk to customers who upgraded free.
- When you want to improve your free product, just talk to your customers for free. I think they will want more features, free
4. Do not fall into the vocal minority
it is often said the plural of anecdote is not data, but that does not mean anecdotal evidence is not helpful. The plural of anecdote is a hypothesis, or narrative. Something that is easily verifiable.
So one day when five users require a simple form event in the calendar, you do not assume five people representing all users and immediately kick off a project "simplification event" .
first, you should try to verify if these five users account for all users. you start talking to calendar users, and see what else happens.
solution : Treat each grouping comments that you see as a hypothesis, then do not build it, check once you have verified that the pain is real, the next step is never "build the required solution." you need to go further. Which brings us to the last point.
5. Do not assume users ask the right soft
To paraphrase Confucious, when customers point to the moon, the head of naive product reviews their finger. The tale of the fastest horses is often used to justify not listening to customers, but that is an epic way to miss the point. If a customer says they want a faster horse, what they actually say is that speed is a key requirement for transportation.
So you think about how you deliver it.
In our previous example, our friend had five people complain that the new form of the event was too complex. She might have lost weeks building a natural language input, or streamlining the UX of form, but it turns out none of this would have helped.
When she spoke to all calendar users, she quickly learned the pain was not from the complex shape, but how many times he had to be used. What is actually resolved the pain has been recurring calendar events, and events make easy to reproduce.
Solution : Be aware that customer feature requests are a cocktail of their design skills, knowledge of your product, and their understanding of their current pain point. They know nothing of your vision of the product, what features you are currently working, or what is technically possible.
This is why it is essential to an abstract level or two above what is required, something that makes sense to you, and benefits all your customers.
Of course, it is interesting to note in connection with a feature request will be on hand. It rhymes with anything else and well in the world as you see it. On these occasions, you can skip steps, namely verification, abstraction and aggregation and trust your gut. Your intuition gives you wonderful product shortcuts, while you're still a real user of your product, and constantly in touch with the needs of your users.
But on other occasions, speak to your customers, it makes you smarter.
Why should you do customer interviews (even if you do not think you need)
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