How to Collect User Feedback: X Effective Methods

Simon Zynda12 minJune 08, 2023

Diving headfirst into the world of user feedback can feel like navigating a labyrinth. It’s a crucial part of any business strategy, yet it’s often overlooked or mishandled. This article will serve as your compass, guiding you through the maze of user feedback.

What is User Feedback?

User feedback is the information provided by customers about their experiences with a product, service, or brand.

Importance of User Feedback

Is user feedback important, but, for real? Yes. User feedback allows for discovering insights that otherwise you might have never gotten – but you’ll need in your design process.

1. Enhances Product Development

User feedback is crucial in identifying what works and what doesn’t with your product or service. It allows you to understand the needs and problems of your users directly, enabling you to tailor your product development strategies accordingly. By acting on customer feedback, you can create a product that truly meets user demands and expectations, which in turn increases customer loyalty. By taking stock of customer concerns, BrushDial was able to effectively bring free procreate brushes to the table and enhance product discovery.

2. Fuels Innovation

Feedback provides fresh perspectives and ideas, potentially leading to innovative solutions that you might not have otherwise considered. Users can often offer unique insights into the usage of your product or service, helping you uncover hidden opportunities and ideas for improvement. Thus, users’ feedback can serve as a catalyst for innovation and continuous improvement of UX or ways to use your product.

3. Boosts Customer Satisfaction

When customers see that their feedback is being taken seriously and acted upon, it fosters a sense of importance and trust. They feel valued and heard, which significantly boosts customer satisfaction. Improvements made based on feedback will likely make your product or service more user-friendly, leading to a better UX and higher satisfaction rates. Show your users that you take their feedback (even negative feedback) into consideration.

4. Improves Customer Retention

Feedback not only helps in attracting new customers but also plays a key role in retaining existing clients. By regularly collecting and implementing user feedback, you show customers that their opinions matter, which in turn fosters loyalty. Satisfied customers are more likely to stick with your brand and become repeat customers which can play a big part in your company’s annual recurring revenue.

5. Provides Insights for Marketing and Sales

Customer feedback can offer valuable insights into how your product or service is perceived by users. These insights can inform your marketing and sales strategies, helping you understand what to highlight in your marketing materials, analytics, and sales pitches. Positive feedback can also be used as testimonials, adding credibility and authenticity to your marketing efforts.

6. Helps Identify and Resolve Problems

User feedback can act as an early warning system for identifying issues or problems that may not be immediately apparent. It’s users who interact with your product or service the most, and they are often the first to notice and report any bugs, errors, or areas of friction. Acting on qualitative feedback, you can resolve issues quickly and prevent them from becoming larger problems down the line.

What are Different Types of User Feedback?

You need to gather user feedback to help yourself and your team develop products or services that have that “user feel and touch”. Feedback also serves as a roadmap for the next improvements. The most popular types of feedback include:

Direct User Feedback

Direct feedback involves clear, straightforward communication from the user. Often collected through methods like surveys, interviews, and direct emails, it provides explicit insights into users’ experiences, perceptions, and expectations.

Indirect User Feedback

Indirect feedback isn’t consciously given but is incredibly valuable. It’s often derived from user behavior data, like browsing patterns, session lengths, or heat maps. This type of feedback is crucial in unveiling hidden insights that users might not express openly.

Solicited User Feedback

Solicited feedback occurs when you reach out to users to gather their thoughts. This could take the form of customer surveys, user testing, or formal interviews. Solicited feedback allows you to collect specific information aligned with your current business goals.

Unsolicited User Feedback

Unsolicited feedback comes from users without any prompt. This can occur through social media comments, reviews on third-party websites, or emails sent directly to your customer support team. You can use social media listening tools to help you track them.It can provide an unfiltered perspective of users’ experiences and feelings about your product or service.

Positive User Feedback

Positive feedback applauds the aspects of your product or service that users love. It’s a treasure trove of quotes for testimonials and success stories, but it also identifies the strengths of your product that you may want to maintain or enhance.

Constructive User Feedback

Constructive feedback focuses on areas for improvement. It pinpoints problems, challenges, or shortcomings in your product or service. Users providing it are typically invested in your product and want to see it improve. Listening to this feedback and making appropriate adjustments can lead to significant product enhancements.

How to Collect User Feedback: Best User Experience Feedback Methods

While there are many ways to collect user feedback from your website or mobile app, let us focus on the most successful ones you can use to get feedback on your new product.

1. User Surveys

Surveying users offers a direct approach to gathering feedback. You can ask specific questions about your product or service, or leave room for open-ended responses. Online survey tools make it easy to distribute, collect, and analyze survey responses.

2. User Interviews

One-on-one interviews provide an opportunity to dive deep into a user’s experience. They allow for a conversation that can reveal nuances and details that might be missed in a survey. These can be conducted in person, over the phone, or via video conferencing.

3. Focus Groups

Gathering a group of users together for a discussion can provide a wealth of feedback. This method allows you to observe interactions, generate group dynamics, and collect various viewpoints. It’s particularly useful when exploring new ideas or major changes.

4. Feedback Forms on Website

Embedding feedback forms on your website provides an easy and convenient way for users to share their thoughts. These can be placed on key pages or triggered by specific user actions, capturing feedback at crucial moments in the user journey.

5. Usability Tests

In a usability test, users complete tasks while observers watch, listen, and take notes. It’s a great way to identify usability issues and understand how users interact with your product or service in real-world conditions.

People often share their opinions and experiences on social media. Monitoring mentions of your brand on platforms like Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn can provide valuable, unsolicited feedback.

7. Net Promoter Score (NPS)

The Net Promoter Score is a simple metric that measures customer loyalty. It’s based on one question: “On a scale of 0-10, how likely are you to recommend our company/product/service to a friend or colleague?” The responses can give you a quick indication of overall user sentiment.

8. Customer Support Interactions

Interactions between your users and your customer support team can be a goldmine of feedback. Based on user support tickets, chat logs, and call records, you can identify common issues, pain points, and areas for improvement. User feedback is any information left via these channels.

You can also use customer support interactions for insights when creating new training courses for your support reps. These interactions can shed light on specific skill gaps and areas of improvement, which when addressed in training can enhance performance. Some examples include: negotiation. active listening, and conflict resolution.

9. Gamified Feedback Collection

To make the feedback process more engaging, consider incorporating game mechanics like quizzes, points, or badges. For example, they can recommend your product to a friend and ask for even more feedback to collect. This fun, interactive approach can improve response rates and encourage more detailed responses.

10. Beta Testing Programs

Launching a beta testing program lets you gather feedback from a select group of users who trial your product or service before it’s officially released. These early adopters can provide valuable insights into usability and functionality.

11. Customer Advisory Boards

Establishing a customer advisory board consists of inviting a group of your most loyal or knowledgeable customers to provide feedback regularly. Their deep understanding of your product can help you make informed decisions.

12. Diary Studies

In a diary study, users document their experiences with your product over a certain period. This method to collect customer feedback provides insight into long-term user experiences and how usage patterns change over time – which is crucial for efficient feedback management.

13. Heatmap Tools

Heatmap tools visually represent how users interact with your website, showing where they click, scroll, and spend time. This indirect method can help identify problematic areas or successful features within your design.

Best User Feedback Tools in 2023

1. Online Survey Tools

These tools allow you to create and distribute surveys to your users, gather responses, and analyze the results. They can be used to collect feedback on anything from user experience to product features. Sometimes, they are more of a passive feedback not specific feedback you might be looking for, though.

2. In-App Feedback Tools

These tools enable users to leave feedback directly within your application or website, providing real-time insights. If you weren’t getting any feedback using other ways to collect feedback, in-app feedback may be what you need.

3. User Testing Platforms

Tools like user testing platforms provide a space for users to test your product and share their feedback. These tools often include features for screen recording and task tracking, allowing you to see exactly how users interact with your product.

Social media monitoring tools track mentions of your brand across various social media platforms, allowing you to gather unsolicited feedback and gauge overall sentiment towards your brand, feedback and product.

Feedback widgets are simple tools you can use to allow users to leave feedback at any time. They provide a convenient and accessible way for users to share their thoughts.

6. Live Chat Tools

Live chat tools enable real-time communication with users. This allows you to gather instant feedback and address any questions or concerns on the spot.

7. Customer Support Ticketing Systems

These tools help manage and track interactions with users, including complaints and issues. This can provide valuable insights into common problems and areas for improvement.

Software like Descope can help applications move past passwords, enabling a more secure and user-friendly authentication process, which in turn enhances the overall customer support experience.

8. Net Promoter Score (NPS) Tools

NPS tools provide a simple way to measure customer loyalty by asking users how likely they are to recommend your product or service. The results can give you a quick snapshot of overall user sentiment.

9. Online Review Platforms

These platforms collect reviews from your customers, providing a wealth of feedback on your product or service. They also offer a way for potential customers to gauge the quality of your offerings based on the experiences of others.

Collect feedback: how to ask for feedback?

Be Specific with Your Requests

When asking for feedback, guide your users to provide the most valuable insights. Ask pointed, specific questions about the aspects of your product or service that you’re interested in improving. This can help users focus their responses and provide more actionable feedback.

Use the Right Timing

Request feedback at a moment that makes sense within the user’s journey. This could be immediately after a purchase, at the end of a customer support interaction, or after a user has had enough time to use your product or service extensively.

Show Appreciation

Let your users know that their feedback is valuable and appreciated. This not only encourages more detailed responses, but it can also foster positive relationships and loyalty among your user base.

Make It Easy and Convenient

Eliminate as many barriers to feedback as possible. Provide a simple, user-friendly platform for feedback collection. This could be an embedded form on your website, an in-app prompt, or a quick and easy-to-access online survey. The easier you make it for users to give feedback, the more likely they are to do so. One of the best ways to do so is to get also a “reactive” feedback in the forms of heatmaps of session recordings.

Ask the Right Type of Questions

If you never ask, you never get. But it’s not just about asking – it’s about asking the right questions. Make sure your feedback form includes open-ended, detailed questions that encourage users to think critically and provide thoughtful responses. Ask a mix of multiple choice and text box questions for greater accuracy in response analysis. Interview questions are difficult, open-ended questions are difficult to predict, but you need to start the process of collecting user feedback this way, too.

Use Various Feedback Channels

Email feedback, mobile feedback, survey questions, feedback via phone calls, feedback within your app… the possibilities are endless. Give users multiple ways to provide feedback and you will get more responses as a result. Make sure to ask for feedback at the right time or user engagement - when users have just experienced an interaction or reached a milestone, for example. Gathering user feedback is only the beginning – then, you need to manage user feedback in a customer feedback tool or feedback portal, for example.

Make the Most of Feedback Loops

User experience research isn’t a one-time event but rather an ongoing process. Collecting feedback is just the first step; make sure to also act on the feedback you receive by implementing design changes or fixing bugs as needed. This will demonstrate to users that user feedback insights are valuable and will build trust in your brand.

Is User Feedback Important? More Than You Think It Is

User feedback helps to ensure that customers actively participate in the development of your product or service. It also helps you understand what problems your users are experiencing, which can lead to valuable insights on how to improve user experience.

Therefore, this is a crucial metric for user or customer experience. And no matter if you have your customer feedback coming in via leading questions, analytics tools, user stories, follow up questions to ask – ANY user feedback is important if you want to develop your product.

Getting customer feedback is not a one-off – it’s a journey. And you need user feedback, constantly, like a fuel, to improve the user feedback strategy and experience.