Stop asking the wrong questions at the wrong time and get better user feedback.

If you go to Google right now and plug in “customer feedback tools” you’ll get a laundry list of products promising high-quality feedback. However, unless you use those products in a way that works best for your users, you’re going to get poor results. My tips may seem like common sense, but it’s still worth a few minutes to refresh on good practices.

1.) When and Where

First, ask for feedback when a user is most likely to provide it. If you want to know how smooth your checkout process is, ask just after the customer completes the process. Want to know if a user had a hard time adding contacts in your CRM? Ask just after he has added his tenth contact.

How you ask for feedback is as important as when. Make it simple. When asking users for feedback while on your website, use a tool such as Intercom. After a user has performed an action, use a popup notification to solicit feedback. The action is fresh in the user’s mind, so obtaining helpful feedback will be simple.

Email is also a simple but effective way to gather feedback. Take a look at this email I received from the Bernie Sanders 2016 presidential campaign.

Simple looking enough, but what’s happening is great. They are using a survey to put me in a bucket of donors or non-donors. If this was an email asking me to reply with a response, I doubt I would. But because I only have to click, I’m much more likely to engage. A notable tool for a similar method of sending surveys is Ping Surveys. With Ping, you have the ability to send interactive surveys to your users’ email addresses.

The takeaway is to remember that it’s important to ask for feedback at the right moment. Pay attention to the when and where when asking, and you’ll be rewarded with useful feedback.

2.) Keep It Simple

Don’t ask too many questions. Keep surveys and feedback forms short and to the point. Although you may feel the need to send a mega-survey filled with 30 questions, you’ll get better results if you limit the number of questions. Saving those questions until the appropriate point in a user’s lifecycle will result in more meaningful responses. You receive better feedback when you allow users to focus on a single question.

Both Intercom and Ping Surveys let you ask one question at the right time and analyze the results.

Although a single question is preferable, there will come a time when you need to ask more than one question. Keeping your survey simple is still important. Typeform is a tool that drives users through a long survey one question at a time. Try to limit yourself to surveys that take under 10 minutes to complete. If you have trouble with getting users to complete a long survey, give PopSurvey a try. PopSurvey saves data even if the survey is not complete, so you’ll still have data to analyze even if users fail to complete the entire survey.

3.) Make Them an Offer They Can’t Refuse

Users will need a reason for providing feedback. Give them an incentive. Incentives don’t need to cost you anything. There are many ways to get what you are looking for without paying a dime.

Start small and make a user feel socially obligated to answer. If you are a company founder, send a personal plea to users asking for help. People like to help others. More people will respond when they are personally asked for their opinions.

Make it fun. After looking at hundreds of non-interactive emails, clicking a button in an email is appealing. Integrate polls and surveys within your website that are easy to answer and offer little interruption.

Add transparency. Simply being transparent with the results of your survey is enough to incentivize a user to take it. The user will be satisfied at seeing how his or her answer compares to other responses.

If all else fails, give something away. Everyone likes something for free. Give coupons and contest entries as a reward for filling out your survey. This will increase participation and incentivize users to fill out longer surveys than they normally would on their own.

If you gather better customer feedback, you build better products.