Talking with first customers

Today we want to share an article from Belle Beth Cooper (Belle Beth Cooper) - chief content specialist at Buffer, co-founder of the analytics platform Exist. We were very helpful to these tips, we hope, and you will be useful.

Creating a valuable product requires valuable feedback. The one with whom you speak from the very beginning affects the outcome of the entire game.
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A few weeks ago, co-founder and I began a private beta test of our second product.
The first Exist product has been in the public beta for almost a year. We made a lot of mistakes, thanks to which we learned a lot. This time, we know what we will do differently, so this time to make some fresh mistakes:) Here are a few lessons that I would like to share.

Carefully select users
Our biggest mistake was choosing the wrong users. We tried to protect our fragile ego and invited only acquaintances to test the product. We hoped to get honest (but polite) feedback, which will help us improve the product, avoiding falling into the abyss of frustration before the start.
Reality hit us hard: we heard only useless rustling.

We could not get the necessary feedback because we did not speak with interested users. Our “users” were people who had five extra minutes to get acquainted with the service and no real motivation to tell us how they would use our product.

Why? Because they were not potential customers. We did not solve their pain. They saw no value and could not hold out for long. Most of them logged in only once and disappeared or returned once a month if we were lucky.

Do not waste your and other people's time, you will never get a good feedback from people who do not need you.

How to: select users from your target market.

For a new product, you must look for users who have pain, they see the need and are willing to invest in to get a result.

If you build a business over time, it becomes easier. With our second product, we focused on similar types of customers who have already used Exist.

When you build relationships with people who use your products, they are often more interested in your other projects.

We can see similar examples in other businesses. When Basecamp was known as 37 Signals , they had several products with a similar target market. It is much easier to search for beta testers and potentially paying customers among people who already know you and trust you.

If you started with the first product, it is obvious that you do not have a user base, but you can gather an audience in other ways. More than 6 months ago, we presented Exist in public, I began to regularly blog, where I talked about news and new products in the field of self-service. Taking into account the fact that I continued to post posts every week, we had an archive of content for our target market and an audience of people who were interested in the subject of the blog were selected.

We created an email waiting list for Exist to always have an updated database of potential customers. Through regular mailings and the creation of interesting content, we were able to communicate with many of our customers before they even tried our product.
In the later beta rounds, we interviewed customers from our waiting list to find people who were interested in our product.

Ask for feedback
The faster you get feedback, the better. Good ideas should sound, and bad ideas stall.
Do not understand customers is dangerous. You will not know which part of your product is the best and you will not know why customers left or stayed. Feedback will fix this.

As in ordinary life, you will not know anything until you ask, and often people are much more willing to help than you think.

Do not think that customers themselves will unexpectedly send you a feedback. That you should start a conversation.

How correctly: ask often and in different ways.

Talking to clients via Skype is one of the best ways that I discovered to get useful feedback. When you talk face to face, you can dig deeper down to the smallest detail. This is the best way to get a complete picture of who this user is and how your product fits into his life.

But sometimes you need a different kind of feedback. When we wanted to know which features of our product are most popular, we sent out a survey for all our users by email. It was not personal, but we were able to collect information from a multitude of users in a short period of time. We could ask exactly what we wanted to know. Sometimes you just want to understand the clear, overall rating of your product or service. In these cases, use the simple question: “Would you recommend our product to a friend?”. Or you can ask clients to evaluate the quality of service after you have solved their problem.

The way of feedback depends on what kind of feedback you are looking for.

Adhere to one major approach to feedback in the early days. In the same month when you conduct problem interviews, do not send a mass survey with the same information. Focusing on one type of feedback gives the most meaningful insight.

Attention to the minority
Ah, minority. When you fight for feedback, any bit of it is pure gold for you.
But there is a trap here. You hear that several users are asking for a feature and think that every user should want the same one. It is clear that they simply did not bother to tell us! Let's do it already!
Worse, you haven't started making a feature yet, as 6 or 7 users require it on the same day. You can easily get ahead of events from a sense of urgency and necessity, which in reality does not exist. It sounds silly, but we are all susceptible to this.

Before making the function that customers want, first check that they actually want it.

How to: test hypotheses.

Feedback is best used to create a hypothesis: what most users might want. As De Traynor said : “Treat each feedback result as a hypothesis, test it before you implement it.”

You can continue customer research if your hypothesis is confirmed. When it is confirmed that most users think the same way, start to go deep. Find out why they need this feature and how you can solve their problem.

Feedback is a multifaceted part of the company's construction process. If you get too much confusing or conflicting feedback, you're not alone. Carefully select customers, ask for feedback more often and always test the hypothesis before implementation. Easier said than done, but every improvement based on feedback helped me to create a better product for my users.

We will use the Usedesk team to add that there is a “middle ground” between Skype and mailing list - a phone call. Skype may not find the time, and the newsletter does not respond. But if you call, nowhere to go. Even if it is “let's call you tomorrow” - the hook is thrown, contact is established. Perhaps this will be your most "dear customer".