10 User Feedback Questions You Should Ask To Build a Better Product
Imagine this. Your team has spent 6 months building a new product feature only to discover that your customers’ goals and needs don’t align with it. You did your market research, competitor analysis, ran beta tests with focus groups, so what really went wrong?It’s disappointing, isn’t it? The last thing you want to do is invest all that effort and chase growth, only to end up with a product that your customers don’t really care about.
Knowing how your users experience your product, the goals they want to achieve, and what they want from you is crucial for further upgrades. Product feedback from your customers will fuel your product development lifecycle with critical data that’ll give help you validate assumptions and build new functionalities to address people’s challenges.We’ve written other articles on pre-launch survey questions, follow-up questions, and even general feedback questions, but in this article, we want to specifically highlight the most important questions you should ask your customers that set you in the right direction.
10 Product Feedback Questions You Should Collect
First of all, define metrics to identify what kind of constructive feedback you’ll be taking into account. Don’t assume all feedback is valuable, rather focus on the ones that inspire action and are likely to have a positive impact on your churn, acquisition, and sales.A good starting point is creating user personas: fictional characters based on real people who use your product. These personas are super handy and can be used cross-functionally with the marketing, sales, and support teams.Additionally, make sure that you collect feedback from a wide range of sources to get a more complete picture of how the product or feature is perceived by your customers. Also, collecting product feedback consistently will help you quickly spot trends and be able to iterate faster.
1. How likely is it you would recommend our product to a friend or family? (NPS)
“We’re always focused on addressing our customers’ challenges but we want to quantify our customers’ experience.” If this sounds like you, using NPS could be a breakthrough for your team.Research suggests that customers’ readiness or reluctance to recommend your product to friends or family is a great indicator of their level of satisfaction.This is one of the most popular survey questions - even effective - and for good reason. Net promoter score, otherwise called NPS, enables you to get a fresh perspective of your customers, their sentiments about your products, and their perception of your business. It evaluates customer loyalty by defining users as promoters, passives, and detractors.Promoters: Those who answer 9 or 10 on an NPS survey.Passives: Those who answer 7 or 8 on an NPS survey.Detractors: Those who answer between 0-6 on an NPS survey.
2. What is your main goal for using our product/service?
What is the main reason someone is using your product? What are the specific goals they are trying to achieve?It’s simple. Everyone has a defined goal and timeline set for themselves to achieve a milestone. So, it’s undeniably important for you to know their goals and understand how your product plays a role in their journey. Asking this question could unveil aspects of your product that need improvement or even open up avenues for future product upgrades.
3. What are the results of using our product?
The answers from this could build the foundation for your next product development cycle. Learn how to deliver your promise that’s going to improve your customers’ lives in one way or another. Be it saving time, cost, effort, or stress, it’s imperative to know that your users are able to leverage your product in its intended way.Plus, using customer success stories can increase retention by giving a sense of relief to those who might be on a similar journey as your other successful customers.
4. How easy was it to solve your problem with our product/service? (CES)
The key idea of the Customer Effort Score (CES) is that customers are more loyal to a product or service that is easier to use. In general, customers want easy transactions and may switch to an alternative provider if they’re having a difficult time completing a particular task using your product/service.Collecting CES will give you a clear idea of where your product needs improvement.
5. Which features do you like most about our product/service?
This question puts your product directly in the spotlight and prompts users to give accurate answers. Asking users about features they find most valuable in your product/service will help you understand how they interact with your product and what they really need.
Especially SaaS companies that tend to offer dozens of features in their products could ask this question to their customers and immediately identify what’s most important for their users. A good follow-up to this question is “Do you think we can further upgrade this feature to meet your needs better?”. This allows you to identify your users’ future ideas.
6. What do you like least about our product/service?
It’s a sensitive topic but necessary for a good product manager to assess their product/service. You may love the product and even bring your own ideas to the table to improve the product, but this shouldn’t stand in the way of real, constructive feedback from your users who actually use your product.
7. What do you think about a newly released feature?
You’ve done your research, spent hours building a new feature, and released it. What’s next? It’s almost natural to immediately start thinking about how this feature is being used and perceived by your customers. Are they liking it? Do they know how to use it to its max potential? What more could you do to improve it further?It’s necessary to touch base with your customers, share a walkthrough of the new feature, and ask follow-up questions to validate its existence. Plus, unbiased feedback from a fresh audience can help you uncover bugs, issues, and make your product better.
8. How satisfied are you with our product/service? (CSAT)
It’s highly likely that at some point you’ve faced the wrath of dissatisfied users who have voiced their opinions publicly and it can drastically impact your reputation and the solid trust you’ve so painstakingly worked at. Consider using CSAT as it is a fantastic indicator of user satisfaction.
9. If you could change just ONE THING about our product, what would it be?
This is a variation of question 7. Listen to your users on what would make them go “WOW!”. Not all of these suggestions will be feasible, but it’s a great opportunity to get a step closer to your customers, learn their thought process around a certain idea, and see what delights them most.
10. Would you rate our product compared to our competitors as better, worse, or about the same?
Finally, what are the features or services that might deter customers from sticking with you? According to PwC's future of CS study, one out of every three consumers will leave a brand they love after just one bad interaction, and 92 percent will abandon a brand after two or three negative interactions.So, it’s important to identify your product positioning in the market, what your competitors are doing better, and try to minimize these issues.
Collecting & implementing your user feedback to successfully improve your product
Offering exactly what your customers need helps improve their engagement and retention. Make no mistake, even your most satisfied customers may have suggestions and ideas for new features to improve your product.If you show your customers you truly value their opinion and want to help them achieve their goals, you can build strong relationships that would further reflect in marketing, higher NPS scores, customer acquisitions, and sales.Collecting user feedback is half the battle won. What’s next? Implementing your customer feedback the right way is key to building a successful product. Too much data, user journeys, product requests can be overwhelming to manage and take action for. Tools like Upvoty help streamline the user feedback journey in its entirety.Sign up for our free trial to learn more.