Hi Product People, Carlos here. Getting customer feedback is crucial, and implementing it is just as important. Combine the two, and you get the customer feedback loop.
Creating customer feedback loops for your product is one of the best things you can do to grow and improve it. Customer feedback loops help you find out how well your product solves your user’s problem, how easy it is for them to use, and whether they’re willing to pay for it.
Why is this so important? When our customers feel like they’re handing us their money and then shouting into a void, they leave and never come back. Even if your customers aren’t paying (like in the case of freemium products), you’re still competing for your user’s time and attention. Aside from telling you where improvements need to be made to your product, allowing users to share their feedback helps you have a better understanding of how the user experiences your product, identify where you might be losing customers, and highlights areas for growth.
You might also be interested in: Delight Customers in Margin-Enhancing Ways with former Netflix VP of Product
What is a Customer Feedback Loop?
A customer feedback loop is a process which allows your customers to keep you updated on their experience. This could be built within your app, be a feature on your website, or even be in-person.
For example…
Apple’s Genius bars provide tech support and give customers a place to take their complaints/problems.
Twitter has dedicated accounts for communicating with customers about tech issues (@TwitterSupport) and safety concerns (@TwitterSafety).
There are several methods for gathering customer feedback data.
Social media is one such option, and a great example of how marketing benefits Product Managers. Social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter are excellent ways of reaching your customers in a way they’re familiar and comfortable with. They’re more likely to tell you what they really think, not what they think you want to hear.
Another method, one that’s highly scalable, is to build feedback loops directly into your product.
You can also use proactive outreach by identifying which users have low usage, or did not complete the on-boarding process, and reaching out to offer help or training.
There’s also the option of following up with ex-customers. Many companies with subscription based models ask for a reason for cancellation before letting customers proceed, with the option to leave comments with more feedback. This will help you get a better understanding of your churn rate.
Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT)
If you’ve been around the internet for more than one minute, you’ll surely have come across one of these at some point:
Examples from Rentently.com
A Customer Satisfaction Score, or CSAT, tells you how happy your customers are with your product over all. This question can be implemented as a pop up or on a landing page customers are led to after completing an action. Or if you want more in-depth information, it can be sent out as part of a fuller survey.
Customer Effort Scores (CES)
A Customer Effort Score is a feature often included in various user onboarding tools. It helps you identify how easy customers find it to navigate your app/website. It’s a little different to a CSAT score, as it focuses on the ease of use as opposed to overall satisfaction.
These are particularly useful to implement at potential pain points, to identify whether the issue comes from your product or from an external source.
For example, if you have an eCommerce product, and you find that many users add items to their basket but don’t complete the transaction, asking them how easy the checkout page is to navigate will tell you if that’s a contributing factor.
If the checkout process is incredibly easy, then you can focus your efforts elsewhere. If it turns out to be very difficult, you have your next problem to fix!
Net Promoter Score (NPS) Surveys
NPS Score surveys are one of the most common ways to gather information on how customers feel while on your website/within your app.
It helps you get a general feel for how users receive your product in real time. It allows you to segment them into 3 categories: Detractors, Passives, and Promoters.
For a full explanation of NPS and how it works, check out our handy guide: NPS for Product Managers.
When you’ve successfully gathered and analyzed the data from the NPS surveys, you should be able to segment your users into these three categories.
A smart Product Manager knows how best to leverage their promoters, as you can use these users as beta testers, encourage them to be content creators, and even leaders within your community.
Some tech brands do this very well by partnering with the top promoters, offering them roles within the community, or if they have their own medium (a blog, a YouTube channel etc) by sending them products and trials to review.
The Customer Feedback Loop Process
It’s all very well and good building great feedback loops into your product. But the effort is wasted if you don’t get the steps right!
Gathering: All good learning starts with data!
Learn: There’s no point in gathering data if you don’t learn from it. Go through your new dataset and use it to answer a specific set of questions.
Apply: Take what you’ve learned and create a set of action points. If you learn that your check out page is too complex, for example, collaborate with your designers and work out how best to simplify it.
Following this process will allow you to close the customer feedback loop and turn insights into action. Rather than gathering data for the sake of it, closing the customer feedback loop will allow you to improve your product and your customer retention.
Close The Feedback Loop
You might have heard the phrase “closing the customer feedback loop.” When building loops, this is the desired outcome (it’s not really a loop if it doesn’t close, after all). Closing the loop means acting on the feedback you’ve received, improving your product, and communicating these improvements to your users.
Both you and your customers benefit from successful loops, but in different ways.
You: Get to collect customer feedback and increase customer loyalty.
They: Feel like you’re listening to them and care about providing them with a good (and even delightful) experience.
A good exercise is to look out for closed customer loops outside of work, when you’re the user of a product. When you contact a brand for any reason, be it chasing up a delivery on an item or reaching out with a complaint, observe how the experience makes you feel. What steps did the company take, or could the company have taken, to make you feel satisfied as a user?
Best Practices
When you fix a problem, tell the world! It might be tempting to just fix it quietly and hope no one notices the problem in the first place, but you’re much better off getting back to the customers who reported the bug.
Don’t green-light every user request. Sometimes the customer doesn’t know best. You don’t have to give in to their every whim, but you do have to tell them the reason why.
Feedback loops are a long-term investment. They’re not just useful for a newly launched product. Throughout the lifecycle of your product, you should have feedback loops in place.
Be transparent. You don’t have to air all of your dirty laundry for your customers, but you should keep them updated. Tell them what you’re working on, what features they can expect soon, why a new launch has been delayed, etc. It helps to build trust.
Troubleshoot low response rates. If you’re sending your survey out into the world and no one seems to be responding, don’t just put it down to lazy/unengaged users. Play around with the placement of your surveys. Instead of simply having a banner on the bottom of your website, try sending recent customers an email with the survey embedded. Experiment with a variety of tools and methods until you find what works!
Check out some of the previous issues:
Understanding Product-Market Fit: A Product Manager’s Guide