The Mystery of the Silent User
And why no feedback is bad feedback.
In the last post we learnt that opening ourselves up to user feedback is probably not going to induce Armageddon — a couple of anxiety-ridden nights, perhaps, but nothing that scores too highly on the world catastrophe scale. In this post, we’re going to explore exactly how to open the floodgates, why assumptions are our worst enemy, and how to solve the mystery of the Silent User.
Put yourself in the shoes of somebody using your product. Now let’s imagine you’ve come up against a friction point and find yourself getting increasingly frustrated. You visit the Help Centre, watch all the support videos, and rage click like there’s no tomorrow. Defeated and enraged you close the screen and seethe silently for a grand total of 3 minutes. That is, until you hear the microwave ‘ping!’ and know that all of your worries will dissolve after one bite of your Margherita.
Now imagine, belly filled and content, you receive a remorseful email from the company founder. They tell you that they wanted to personally apologise for the abysmal user experience you just witnessed and that a shipment of free swag is already in the post. The corners of your mouth upturn in what can only be described as an impish grin.
As humans, we are prone to judging experiences based on the peak-end rule — that is, how we feel at the peak of the experience (the most intense moment) and at the very end (what is the last thing we remember). This means that experiences can be crafted, or manipulated, in order to leave users with a misleading reaction to a product. While that may seem an admirable strategy if you’re KPI’d solely on satisfaction scores, it’s actually quite the opposite if what you want to do is improve your product, grow your user base, and gather genuine feedback that’s going to help pave the way to get there.
Back to our Margherita-enthusiast, while he may feel extremely positive about his experience — unfortunately that doesn’t help fix the problem that caused the frustration in the first place. And it certainly doesn’t prevent other users from suffering the same rage-click-hysteria (that’s definitely a thing!), or the cash burn of constantly shipping free swag. On the other side of the screen, because there were no logged complaints or slanderous Facebook reviews, we assume that everything is peachy. Meanwhile, the situation repeats itself on loop and we all end up in a disturbing rage-clicking rendition of Groundhog Day.
As research and design professionals, we need to keep this front of mind when building our feedback loops. It’s true: not all insights are created equal and it’s important that we remember not only how we prompt for feedback, but also when. How might this story have differed if Mr. Margherita had been given the opportunity to vent his frustration during the point of friction? I’m no mystic meg but I imagine we would have solved the issue before you can say ‘pizza’s ready!’ and no other user would have had to endure our branded t-shirts. Phew!
Here at 90 Seconds we understand that the Silent User isn’t necessarily a reason to jump for joy and no feedback can sometimes be considered bad feedback. That’s why we try to make it as easy as possible for our users to let us know how they’re feeling, no matter which part of the product they’re interacting with, or which part of the journey they’re on. Sometimes this means creating multiple feedback channels (in-app ratings, live chat, support inbox, feedback form, triggered surveys etc.) so that the ability to be heard is always convenient, always accessible, and most importantly, always welcome.
