5 mistakes that we all make when collecting feedback

Rarely does it make sense to get feedback from all consumers, and there is never any point in getting them immediately.

At the beginning of a new project, or especially when you have mastered a new product, there is a desire to interview all of its customers in order to learn the state of things. Most often this is the wrong way. In fact, there are five common mistakes that are made again and again. Intercom makes it very easy to get information from the consumer, and as a result, it is easy to arm yourself with questionnaires with reviews. Here we present five simple ways to cope with the management of information from the consumer:


1. DO NOT TAKE TO “ALL CONSUMERS”
')
When all consumers are surveyed, specificity is completely ignored. You throw in one heap both those who found out about you yesterday and regular customers. Those who use your products constantly, and those who have registered only in order to find out the prices. Those who use only one function of your products with those who use them all. This is a failure.

Solution: There is a way to collect better feedback. Here are some examples:

- If you want to increase the influx of new customers, ask for the opinions of only those who have recently become them.
- If you want to improve any property, ask for the opinion of only those who use it.
- If you want to understand why people do not use any function, ask for the opinion of those who do not use it.
- If you want to find an area of ​​interest, ask for the opinion of only active users who use all the functions of your products.


2. FEEDBACK MUST BE CONSTANT

The standard approach to obtaining information from the consumer is that it is requested as needed. But this means that when you realize that you need it, you will have to sit back and wait a week until it reaches you. In order to compensate for this, you create a huge network, ask dozens of questions and wait. If you are completely naive, you process each response received immediately after receipt, instead of waiting and conducting a comprehensive analysis of the entire volume of information. In this case, it is a double-edged sword: firstly, you will never have information from the consumer when you need it, and secondly, you learn about problems only when you ask about them. Thus, you will not see a gradual deterioration in the attitude to your product.

Solution: Regularly interview consumers. The simplest but no less effective way is to interrogate users on the 30th, 60th, 120th, 365th day, etc. For example, if you have a calendar tool, you can ask the users for the first, twentieth, and fiftieth use of your product. As the user continues to use your product, the feedback gets stronger. The review, taken at first use, shows that it is incomprehensible in your product, the twentieth shows disappointment, and the fiftieth indicates limitations.

3. SHARE FEEDBACK ABOUT PAID AND FREE PRODUCT

With regard to paragraph 1, it is easy to accept that all requests are equivalent, regardless of the state of the account. Roughly speaking, this is true within certain thresholds (for example, from $ 50 to $ 500), however, there is a noticeable difference between users who pay for your product and users who use it for free. Free users, who have been with you for a long time, can only share their thoughts on how to improve the free segment of your product, which rarely coincides with the interests of the business. Usually a free segment exists to attract a buyer and try to sell a more expensive product to it. You will not constantly listen to a hypothetical feedback: "I will buy a paid account if ...", "I will buy a paid account when ...". This behavior is of little use, you need to take information from the place where something really happens.

Decision:

- To improve the product only for paid users, ask for the opinion of only paid users.
- To find out what makes people switch from free to paid accounts, ask for the opinions of customers who have switched.
- If you suddenly want to improve a free product, ask for the opinion of free users only. I think they will want more features for free.

4. DON'T GET ON THE VOICE OF MINORITY

It is often said that many individual cases are not yet data, but this does not mean that scattered information is useless. Many individual cases are a hypothesis or a chronicle. This is something that is easy to check. So, if five users write to you one day and are asked to simplify the form of events in the calendar, you will not assume that these five users represent all users, and you will not immediately launch a project to simplify the form. To begin with, you should try to check whether these five users represent the interests of all. You refer to the calendar users, and see what happens.

Solution: Look at each set of information from users as a hypothesis, and check it before execution. And as soon as you make sure that the problem really exists, the next step should be not to “create the necessary solution”, but to go even deeper. And that brings us to the last point.

5. DO NOT THINK USERS WANT REALLY NEED FUNCTION

Paraphrasing Confucius when the user points to the moon, a naive production manager examines a finger. The parable of the faster horses is often used to justify not listening to the customer, but this is a big mistake. If the buyer says that he needs a faster horse, he actually says that speed is a key parameter of transport. So you just have to figure out how to give them what they want. In the previous example, five clients of our friend complained about a new, too complex form of the event. She could spend a week writing normal language input, or refining the UX of that form, but it turned out that none of this would have helped. When she asked the users of the calendar, she quickly found out that the problem was not the complexity of the form, but how often it should be used. The situation was saved, in fact, by using repetitive events and facilitating event cloning.

Solution: Be careful, user requests are an explosive mixture of their design skills, your product knowledge, and their understanding of the current problem. They know nothing about your vision of the product, what functions you are currently developing, and what is technologically possible in general. Therefore, it is extremely important to soar a level or two above the user's point of view, where your goals and interests are visible from, as well as the benefits to all your users.

However, all of the above loses its meaning if the request to fasten one or another function falls into the bull's eye. This request fits perfectly into the picture of the world as you see it. In such a situation, you can skip the steps listed, namely, verification, abstraction and collection of statistics, and trust your gut. Your intuition gives you a great opportunity to cut the corner, as if you were a real user of the product, and constantly keep abreast of your clientele.

And in any incomprehensible situation, ask for the opinion of consumers - it makes you smarter.