Being a part of the entire product development process, consumers now expect more while they make a purchase. By now, businesses have realized that responding to customer’s queries and grievances have actually become necessary to be on the top. Upgrading their product design is what smart entrepreneurs are choosing nowadays.
Focusing on customer-centric design has become an integral part of the product development process. It ensures that you are getting good feedback from your customers. Smarter companies now ask the customers for providing reviews of their products and services.
What’s Your Benefit In Gathering Customer Feedback?
Customer feedback is even more powerful than proper marketing. Yeah! Your loyal customers could turn out to be the best advocates for your brand, although there are numerous ways of managing reviews.
However, if you never ask for customer feedback, you will never understand what actually drives customer satisfaction. If you do not know what would satisfy your customer, then you can never build customer loyalty.
Hard to believe?
Well, let me disclose some of the facts:
- It costs more money to acquire a new customer than to keep existing ones happy.
- One of the most common sources of new leads is referrals.
- Highly-engaged customers buy 90% more often.
Customer Feedback Guidelines That You Ought To Follow
Your returning or loyal customers are the only people who can help your business grow, now let’s see how you can upgrade product design through these customer feedback guidelines.
1. Set The Stage
Before directly jumping to the feedback session, you must first set the stage. Here’s what you need to do:
First, provide your customers with advanced notice and share your work with them. This will ensure that they have enough time to think about your product design. Next, if you have a prototype ready then let them experience the real design of your product.
Also, before you begin with anything else, research more on your target audience. See what’s the overall goal of your product design? If it’s capable of solving any problem? Only after you have found answers to these questions, start asking for feedback.
2. Ask Questions Constantly
Ask specific and open-ended questions to your customers.
Do not ask if they are liking the product design or not as this appears too common and vague. Instead, you can ask them if they have understood the purpose of the product design. The customer would either reply yes or no. In this way, you can always ask clear questions and get meaningful answers in return.
One of the most important things that you need to keep in mind is that you need to get into the core of the issue. Remember, the feedback session should be a kind of discussion and not just a mere interview session.
3. Stay Problem-Focussed
Keep your discussion on track by keeping the customers glued to the problem. If they veer away from the problem, bring them back to the goal. For instance, your customers can be too direct and subjective.
They might say “I like this” or “I do not like this”. Bring them back to the problem by using open-ended questions. In such a situation, you need to think from the perspective of your customers. You have to realize how they would react.
If your product is not providing a solution to the problem, then you have to think of some other ways through which it can actually work.
4. Stay Positive
Being an entrepreneur, you must be ready to endure the feedback that you get for your products. Feedbacks that you are asking for, might be good or bad. Try accepting them graciously.
I know how much it hurts to see negative feedback about your products, but still, you ought to be open to it. If you are not open to receiving feedback, then your customers will become hesitant to provide you feedback in the future. They are actually commenting on your product designs and in one way trying to help you to improvise your design.
So, even if you feel insulted or embarrassed, keep a positive mindset. Remember, with negative feedback, you can hone your skills as a developer. So, feedback is actually a good opportunity for you to learn as well.
5. Take All The Necessary Notes
You cannot analyze and act on all the feedback if you do not take notes of it. So, while you receive feedback from your customers, make sure that you are noting down all the feedback that you are getting.
Apart from virtually taking down notes on a notepad, you can also bookmark them in other ways. Like, you can take screenshots of the InVision comments and recordings.
Do whatever is required and then work accordingly.
To Sum Up
Customer feedback is one of the most invaluable resources; whether you are in your beta testing stage or in your post product launch stage. Customers love to be a part of your product development process, when they see improvements made as per their feedback.
There could not be any other way of product development than making customers a part of this intrinsic product development. A mobile app development company can guide you in the process of product design through customer feedback.
