Go out, talk to your users | Hacker News Reader

Go out, talk to your users

blog.kippt.com

59 pointsjorde13 comments

Hey Jori, thanks for writing this!

I especially agree with having a real in-app page for gathering feedback. When we were building Flowdock, one of the best things early on was giving the users the simplest possible tool for giving feedback: a single text field (just like you have). Even though this is a little more work than just having a team@... email link, it does have some great benefits:

- Full control on where the feedback gets sent and who/what gets notified (requires some backend code of course)

- Easy for the user, no extra logins or weird popups

- You can send extra information like the browser's user agent string along with the message to help resolve some issues

PS: The last link in the article ("follow me on Kippt") should link to https://kippt.com/jorilallo :)

I actually think that having a textarea form instead of email address is better: there's less pressure for the user and they might not expect an answer

As a user the most important thing is be honest. If you like a suggestion but don't have any intention to implement it or don't have the time: tell me. I've submitted feedback to companies before, been told it's a fantastic suggestion and then nothing has changed, after 2+ years. If my suggestion is fantastic why aren't you implementing it? No time, or it doesn't fit with the companies vision? Tell me!

Guilty as charged. Sometimes it's hard, you really think it's a good idea but if it's a side project not generating any revenue then, as much as you'd like to follow the users' sugestions, you just don't have time to (or any other reason).

The BEST way that I've found so far is Intercom (https://www.intercom.io/) not only are we using Intercom to talk to our early users, we are pulling metrics from Mixpanel and our own database into Intercom in order to communicate with users who are at different stages in the lifecycle.

For example, we do some analysis nightly to see if a user is 'active' and if they are we update the intercom custom data property for that user, we can then do really complex types of messaging to our users such as: 'When a user who is active and created at least 3 widgets has not logged in in a week, send them an email'.

Major props to Des and the whole team at Intercom.

I like the simplicity of your feedback form. But is there a reason for not having the feedback form for non-registered users ? Maybe spam? All contact links are just email@ links

We haven't really thought about this. I think we and users get most out of the discussion if user has actually tried the app.

There are times went people email us or tweet to us before trying the app.

I'm curious to ask, have you gotten any feedback from users who are interested - but havn't actually signed up/used the product?

Almost every week I think. They are mostly asking about differences to other products etc

I wonder if people would use an email form more than a link to post on a feedback forum. If you have both, which should be more prominent? Do most users prefer the private nature of email feedback if given a choice?

Empowering users to see what other users are having problems with, and to potentially help each-other seems like a big win, though it likely decreases their odds of communicating directly with you, for better or worse.

I can't speak for other people, but I'm a lot more inclined to give feedback if there's a simple form available for me to jot down some fast (though thought out) feedback. Talk about a "hassle free" solution!

I am a bit lesser inclined to do so, if the only option is e-mail. Especially if there's no designated e-mail written out (ie. I have to find/guess a e-mail) - but I've done this. It's more hassle.

The chance of me writing out my feedback in a forum? Now we're nearing zero very fast. First thing that comes to mind is; urgh?! I probably have to create yet another account (For some reason, a lot (?) of sites have different accounts for the main site/product and the forums..). Second, oh boy - choosing a topic of my post.. "Yay.. I have no idea who'll read this" - being 'the first one out' on a subject can be quite frightning. This is really a boat load of hassle most often..

Like I started the comment with, this is just how I feel about giving feedback - but I'm of course willing to agree with myself and "bet" that this is possibly valid for a lot more persons than just myself.

We have our email in couple of places but mostly people send feedback via the form. Also Twitter is pretty popular but there it's mostly about questions, not that much about feedback/complements/rants.

Personally I like to keep the feedback one on one as there's no change for trolling etc. Also public feedback boards might turn against the product if small amount of users want a feature that isn't relevant for products roadmap. This is also the reason why I'm not fan of Uservoice's widget.

Careful, he bite..

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