An Introduction to Behavior-Driven Questions w/ Ramen

The term “behavior-driven” has found it’s way into the nomenclature of SaaS product creators in recent years thanks to companies like Intercom — driving the idea of behavior-driven messaging — and Customer.io — driving the idea of behavior-driven emails.

It is a simple, yet powerful concept:

• Someone downgrades their plan? Send them a behavior-driven email asking what’s wrong.
• Someone clicks through 10 pages in your documentation and then remains idle for over a minute on the 11th? Pop up a behavior-driven message asking if they would like to talk to a developer.

As evidenced time and again, these strategies increase user happiness, reduce churn, and can contribute to an overall increase in product quality over time.

The Power of Behavior-Driven

Behavior-driven is powerful because it cuts through the noise. It creates the opportunity to engage with customers in a highly contextual way. In the product world, behavior-driven actions are to random ones as SEM ads are to display ads in the advertising world.

You’re getting access to someone at their moment of intention. You don’t need to guess what they want. You don’t need to profile them. You don’t need to blast out messaging based on demographics. You can see exactly what they are doing and act automatically.

Behavior-Driven Questions: The 3rd leg of the stool

If behavior-driven emails and behavior-driven messaging are two of the legs of the Good Product Stool™, behavior-driven questions are the third.

Behavior-driven emails are great for re-engaging customers and helping shepherd them through workflows.

Behavior-driven messaging is great for showing your users that there are people at your company that care, and that help is always only a click away.

Behavior-driven questions give you the ability to gather high quality, contextual feedback in ways that are simply not possible by other methods. When someone takes an action of note while using your product, don’t send them a survey via email, don’t popup a modal asking if they have a few minutes to answer a few questions. Just ask them a quick, contextual, one-time question.

They just downgraded their account? Ask them a question:

They just finish watching one of your onboarding tutorial videos? Ask them a question:

They’ve been using your product for 6 months and you want to know if there’s anything that could be improved? Ask them a question.

The Data Don’t Lie: Users love behavior-driven questions

Behavior-driven questions are the key to unlocking a level of efficiency in how you build your product that was never before possible. At Ramen, we ask behavior-driven questions all the time. But more importantly, our users answer these questions a lot:

• We ask people if our homepage makes sense. Response rate: 70%
• We ask people how they found out about us. Response rate: 46%
• We ask people about the quality of our documentation. Response rate: 52%

There’s something about these questions that make people respond to them. They’re short. They’re contextual. There’s no fear of being roped into a chat with someone or having 15 more questions hidden behind the 1st one.

Try out Ramen

If this idea of behavior-driven questions intrigues you, I invite you to head over to https://ramen.is and given Ramen a shot. Behavior-driven questions will fill the void you might have been feeling lately, and help you solve problems in ways you never dreamed possible.

Credits

Cover image: https://www.flickr.com/photos/joshsjackson/318798170/