User Feedback

User Feedback gathers users' thoughts about your product, service, or website. It measures satisfaction - features and flows that are working and those that are not. User feedback is collected directly from users, guiding improvements to your product. Listening to user feedback is the best way to grow your product and make it more successful.

Feedback takes many forms. It can be favorable about your product roadmap, a complaint about a particular flow, or a feature request that explains how your product could be more helpful. Gathering user feedback helps:

  • Increase retention
  • Prioritize features
  • Inform product roadmaps
  • Understand your customers

Gathering Feedback

User feedback is collected continuously throughout the product lifecycle, and there are several ways to gather it.

  • Customer support teams interact with customers constantly. Customer service software like Zendesk actively collects quantitative and qualitative feedback.
  • User interviews allow you to engage directly with your users.
  • Bug or crash monitoring tools like Instabug can identify roadblocks and errors in your product.
  • Sales calls can be recorded with Gong and then searched for visibility around specific topics.
  • Product analytics is an in-app means of asking for feedback (system-triggered) or gathering it (user-triggered).

User feedback is bi-directional. Feedback loops occur when user feedback turns into new features or change requests for product teams. Integrating feedback into the product demonstrates that user feedback is valued and encourages them to provide it more often.

Analyzing Feedback

After collecting user feedback, analyzing it is a challenge. Feedback tends to be incomplete, inconsistent, or occasionally contradictory. User feedback skews to the negative. The volume and repetition of feedback are most important. Avoid focusing on one-off comments or zeroing in on easy-to-fix items.

Segment your customers, identify the most common complaints or requests, and develop a plan to address them. Create a list of the top 10 recommendations, measure design and development efforts, and build a product roadmap or Trello board. Properly analyzing feedback will help you invest your time and effort into the right changes.

Popular Feedback Metrics

  • Net Promoter Score (NPS) divides your users into promoters, neutrals, and detractors based on how likely they would recommend your product to their friends and colleagues on a scale of 1–10. Promoters would recommend your product, while detractors would not.
  • On a scale of 1 to 5, the Customer Effort Score (CES) measures how much effort it takes for a user to complete a task. Low CES scores indicate roadblocks.
  • Customer Satisfaction Survey (CSAT) measures overall customer satisfaction and helps identify potential areas of improvement in your product.