5 most effective user feedback methods for product managers

Collecting user feedback for your product is the most powerful way to see where your product is going, and where it can be. User feedback helps you build a solid product roadmap that has a big impact on your business and its revenue.

Today, with all the available tools around you, it could be overwhelming to decide on the best way to collect user feedback for your product. You might find it hard know “where can I start to collect user feedback?”

In this post, we will help you zero down on the best method to collect user feedback for your product.

What is user feedback?

User feedback is the crowdsourced information about your product from your customers. The data points could be insights, usability issues, user interface issues, new feature requests, and other data that is related to using your product by your users.

User feedback isn’t always negative. When you receive a positive feedback on your product, you get the opportunity to double down on that experience, and improve your product.

5 ways to collect user feedback

Deciding on the right strategy to collect user feedback is crucial for your product. For example, if you are a SaaS/digital product, your best bet would be to go with a feedback portal to collect user feedback.

Before you start with any of these methods mentioned below, know what outcomes you would like to see from the user feedback collection activity. You would want to know what to build next for your product, or what UX improvements should be done for your product, etc.

Let us walk you through the best user feedback method for your product:

1. User Feedback Portals

User feedback portals are dedicated website where your users go to give you feedback. Feedback portals like Hellonext allows you to collect, manage, and respond to user feedback all within one single platform.

Feedback portals also allow you to keep your customers in the loop all the time, since they receive updates about the changes in the status of a feedback.

Why use user feedback portal?

1. Single source of truth for user feedback
2. One place to manage all user feedback for your team
3. Automatic updates to users who submitted feedback
4. Reduce tens and hundreds of hours every month in automating certain tasks on feedback portals
5. Ability to publish product roadmap

Why should use user feedback portal? Anyone who is looking to gather user feedback for their digital product is the best way to use user feedback portal.

How to get started with user feedback portal?

1. Sign up for a tool like Hellonext
2. Map your custom domain like feedback.yourproduct.com
3. Share this with your customers wherever appropriate.

How much does a user feedback portal cost? A user feedback portal like Hellonext, starts at just $19 per month.

2. Customer feedback surveys

Customer feedback surveys are the age-old and proven way of gathering user feedback. This is an activity that involves people, technology, and time from your users to help you build a better product.

Fortunately, we have a lot of online tools that you can take advantage of to gather user feedback via a customer survey tool. Tools like Surveymonkey.

How do I get started with user feedback surveys? When you start your user feedback survey activity with your users, make sure to have these things in mind:

1. Keep your questions simple and efficient
2. Make sure there are answers that your users can choose from rather than to have them write one
3. Do not ask complicated questions over a survey
4. Help them understand why they can add value by filling out the survey
5. Rating scales over text based inputs

What tools can I use for customer feedback surveys? Here are top three tools you can choose to run a customer feedback survey activity for your product:

1. Qualtrics
2. Alchemer
3. Surveymonkey

How much does it cost to buy a user survey tool?

Tools that you can use to run your customer feedback survey activity could range anywhere from $20 per month to even thousands of dollars per month depending on your use-case.

3. Contact forms

Contact forms are a great way of gathering user feedback in a non-invasive way. Linking your contact form within your product at right places allows customers to give you feedback really quick.

The most important thing about using a contact form is the response a user would get after submitting the form for you. Make sure to automate a response or reply to your users as soon as they submit a contact form. This reassures your customer that you are there for them to help out with their query.

What tools can I use to embed contact forms? Tools like Tally.so, Typeform, and even Airtable can get the job done for you. But if you need to act on the feedback and keep your users updated automatically about the progress, you are going to have to use an integrated tool like Hellonext, where you can embed the forms directly within your website/product.

4. Customer interviews

Customer interviews are the most active way of getting feedback. These are virtual or face-to-face meetings where you ask your customers for feedback and not it down wherever you are comfortable noting down.

Typically, customers/users are incentivized to give you feedback and for spending their time to help you make your product better for them. Customer interviews could be extensive and resource heavy activity to gather customer feedback.

What tools help with user feedback interviews? Any video conferencing tool would help you run a customer interview activity. Tools like Google Meet, Zoom, or Microsoft Teams could help you out as well.

5. Email based customer feedback

This activity could either be a hit or miss depending on the reputation of your emails to the customers. This activity involves your team running email campaigns to ask them for feedback about your product.

Being vigilant and thoughtful about your email campaign is super essential since the email has to be very appealing for your customers to be able to give you product feedback.

What tools can I use to run email campaign for product feedback? Using tools like Convertkit, Mailchimp or Mailgun could be a big win for you. These tools work straight out of the box,and allow you to run campaigns without breaking a sweat. Even better news is that most of these email campaign tools in 2022 are free to use. So you can test the waters, and then commit to using one tool.

Why you should not ignore user feedback?

Customers are at the core of business growth. Investing time and effort in listening to your customers’ suggestions, issues, and general feedback could be the biggest differentiator between competition.

Customer support channels managed by your support team are crucial when it comes to collecting user feedback for your product. Each interaction with your customer is an opportunity to learn and grow your product.

Want to get started with user feedback?

Try Hellonext →