Unlock the Power of User Feedback

Are you struggling to get users to stick around and use your product?

Do you find it hard to know what your customers really want?

Maybe you've tried different tactics, but nothing seems to work.

The truth is, you can't build a successful product without understanding your users.

That's why user feedback is so essential.

You can get a ton of valuable insights that could change your business.

When working with teams, I help them set up systems so they:

• speak to minimum of 5 users/month on a call

• get a minimum of 50 survey responses/month

We want to get learnings across the whole user lifecycle so we get insights from:

• New users

• Active users

• Churned users

I'm going to show you my process for doing this.

You will see the types of questions you can ask different segments and how to get feedback on autopilot to help you improve your product and grow your business.

New Users

Your new users are a great source of insight because they recently engaged with your product.

They made a commitment.

You should figure out why they did.

Aside from face-to-face meetings (which aren't the most practical), calls (video or phone) are the way to get user feedback.

You can ask 'why' questions. You can get the context behind decisions. You can go deeper.

This helps you to learn what problems users really want to be solved.

Here are some of the questions you can ask on a call:

However, lots of founders and marketers I speak to don't know how to get users on calls.

Most of the time it just takes a simple email.

Here is the simple outreach message that has worked for me and my clients:

Outreach message to book calls with New Users

Calls can be tricky to get, however. Not everyone has a spare 30 mins in their calendar.

So the other option is to get feedback via email or surveys. This approach is especially useful because you can automate the process.

So here's how I've automated getting feedback from new users before:

How to Automate New User Feedback:

Ask them a short, direct question via drip email during their first few days using your product.

You can change up the questions you ask but setting up this automated email can be extremely valuable in understanding what new users want.

As the responses will come into your inbox, you will need to stay organised by tagging/filtering them.

Now I'm getting to break down the questions you can ask on calls, what messages have worked for me to book calls and how to automate getting feedback for the other two segments.

Active Users

Questions to ask on calls

You don't need to ask tons of questions. You just need to make sure to delve deeper when you can.

Use these as a starting point.

Outreach message to book calls with Active Users

I've added an incentive here. This is to increase the booking conversion rate.

Play around with the incentive.

How to Automate Active User Feedback:

In-app surveys

In-product surveys are low-touch ways to get insights from your users.

You can quickly ask questions to your users as they use your product.

You can segment your surveys to show to different types of users, to show on different pages/screens.

Important: Make sure you ask in-app surveys when a user has done a meaningful event in the product. Don't interrupt their flow.

There are 3 types of in-app surveys that you can use at different times depending on your situation and what you want to learn.

Each gives different insights into what users think.

Net promoter score

A great way to learn how much your users like your product is by asking them if they would recommend it to a friend.

This method is called Net Promoter Score (NPS).

This survey is particularly useful when your product is inherently viral - meaning that inviting others to it is a large component of how it grows.

It helps you quantify your virality potential and get qualitative answers about why people would share it or not.

You should look to measure your NPS monthly and reach out to those who have given low scores.

Product Market Fit (PMF) Test

“Product-market fit is ‘the only thing that matters early on in the startup journey” Marc Andreessen - Co-Founder A16z

Before you can scale, you need to find product/market fit.

This is no easy task but to find out if you are there, you should ask your users how would you feel if they could no longer use the product.

If you get 40%+ saying very Disappointed, then you have Product / Market Fit.

Customer Effort Score (CES)

The Customer Effort Score (CES) is a way to help companies understand how much effort their users need to put into using their product.

It measures things like how easy it is to navigate the product, how simple it is, and how quickly problems get solved.

By using CES, you can make sure their customers have a great experience and keep coming back for more.

Churned Users

The group you definitely want insight from are churned users.

You want to learn why they left.

And what you could do better in future.

Questions to ask on calls

Outreach message to book calls with Churned Users

How to Automate Churned User Feedback:

Longer Surveys

Surveys allow you to get in-depth answers.

At scale.

Use a mix of open-ended questions, true or false, list and rating questions.

This will make analysing easier.

Set up automated email like before 7 days after a user churns and include the link to the survey.

So after all this feedback, you should be armed with the knowledge about what you do next.

Here are some tips:

1) Come up with experiments

You should use the findings to come up with ideas for experiments.

And then run these tests.

Think about how the conversations could help you make a better product.

Take the good and do more of it, find the bad and get rid.

Then test it.

2) Create/refine personas

Use the insight you get to either create or refine the personas you have.

These are the people you're solving problems for.

When you making a product improvement you should mark the change on a scale of 1/5.

“Does this product change make the experience better for our persona?”

This gets you into the habit of ensuring all the conversations you have with your users directly impact the product you are building.

3) Improve your Value Proposition

You should soon be able to know what features and benefits are most important to your customers.

This will help you talk about your product in a way that resonates with them.

You can use this on your landing pages, onboarding flows and more.

4) Share with the wider team

Every 2 weeks, do a show and tell of the insights.

Whilst your lead developer may not be jumping on calls, it’s important for them to know how users view the product.

Share your findings in slack and explain how these insights could help improve the product.

This email is about getting user feedback so I would love to hear what you think.

Please reply:

1) Did you find this email useful?

• Yes

• No

• Could be better

2) Why did you give that answer?

How I can help you grow:

Get the Startup Growth Roadmap - my playbook of 25+ templates that's helped 300+ founders and marketers to scale their startups.

Hire me to audit your onboarding flow.

Work with me 1-1 to solve your most pressing marketing challenges.

Cheers,

Theo