Are you building a product your user needs?
You encountered a problem. On talking with some of your friends, you realized they did too. Being the problem solver you are, you set out to solve it. After some initial struggle, others who were faced with the same problem loved the solution you came up with and you lived happily ever after.
But…
Unfortunately, this does not end here, the user needs to continuously evolve and products become quickly outdated if they can’t keep up with the changes. Users are quick to look for alternatives that provide better solutions for their needs if they believe that the existing product isn’t for them anymore.
Sometimes, what the team behind the product think their users need and what they actually need might be two different things. So what do you do to retain customers and build a product they love? Ask them.
This is where the power of community comes in.
There are several examples where products were replaced once the users had a better option at hand, like how Netflix grew to become a better alternatives for users than blockbuster over the years or how the windows phone failed because it couldn’t keep up with the user needs while Android and iOS provided better offerings that met their user needs.
Their problem? They didn’t listen to their user needs.
Users today aren’t shy to share their experiences and pain points with applications in return for a better experience with the app or the product. On the other hand, research stats that over 50% of users refuse to do business with a company after a single negative experience with them. Both of these facts just reinforce how important it is to concentrate on customer experience and their needs.
Deciding whether a new feature is a hit or a miss is all in the users’ hands. So, it is best left to them to collectively decide what they want in the next release (at least the ideas).
But we have another problem here, we live in a world of five hundred social media apps that also double as an outlet for reviews and discussion and users often take it to these platforms to express their views and needs. There is Twitter, Facebook, Mouthshut, email support, etc.
It’s going to take ages to keep track of the grievances, the reviews, the bug reports, the new feature request on all these separate platforms. Not to mention the number of times the same bug or feature is you are going to be told again and again.
Are we there yet?
So let’s get on with the solution!
Maintaining and keeping track of feedback in multiple channels is like trying to get puppies to pose for a photo, It’s going to get out of control after the third second. It would be smarter and easier to understand user needs if they are all on one platform.
It could be as simple as incorporating a small widget within the product that can capture all their needs and grievances as and when they happen.
The advantages of incorporating widget don’t stop there. A wise man called Ebbinghaus once researched the loss of memory over time and discovered an exponential loss in the memory over passing time. With a widget, users can submit their queries as soon as possible when they remember the maximum amount of details to help the developer understand and handle the problem more effectively.
Getting all the feedback in one platform is just a start. But a person knows cleaning and transforming the data into an easy and consumable form is the most important part of understanding the feedback. A common problem, in this case, would be repetitive queries or bug reports or feature requests.
A simple method to tackle this will be to make the submission process for users as friendly and easy as possible.
And how to go about it?
Pretty simple! Smart suggestions that notify users of similar feature requests that already exist when they request them or a feature with which the team can reach out to the users to converse and solve issues that the users are facing, and understand the user needs completely.
A simple tool like an upvote to rank the importance and the need for a certain feature request or criticality of the issue in case of bug reports will go a long way while learning user needs.
The power of community doesn’t end there, It provides the kind of hyper-relevance today’s customers are looking for and this is sufficiently backed by the fact that over 33% of the customers have abandoned their business relationship with a product they lack the personalization and features the users were looking for.
Everyone benefits from this, the user with fitting the features with the business needs and the team, from distinguishing needed features and understanding the value their product is actually providing.
Reconsider benefits
Over two-thirds of consumers are more than willing to share their personal information with companies in return for a better experience and a better fit with the product. It is important to make use of this opportunity to develop a product that suits their needs.
Customers share their personal information when they trust your brand. Build trust with every interaction you make with your customers. Deep understanding of a company from the customer’s point of view is necessary to evaluate one’s performance and this is only possible when you collect customer data.
Use customer data in a smart way and leverage customer experience, which will lead to higher retention rates and customer satisfaction.
One more reason customers share their personal data is because they need a solution for their problem or for some perceived value or else they walk away so you have to accomplish their needs provided their information is safe and secured.
Wayfair, a multi-billion dollar company, sells home goods online uses customer data to provide them the best match for their requirement. Wayfair app allows people to take pictures of any furniture or home goods they come across when they are at a hotel, mall or friend’s house so that it compares it with their website data and provide them with a similar product.
Encourage your customers to give more feedback:
Responding to feedback promptly and taking steps on the actionable insights could be one of the first steps towards encouraging customers to give more feedback. This shows that you really consider and care for the voice of your customers. Only when there is a proper response from the organization side, customers keep coming back, for purchase or for giving feedback.
“Quality attracts quantity.”
Training your employees on providing a quality customer service and being a customer-centric organization could be another solution as well. For building a customer-centric organization you need to engage and interact more with your customers. Make sure that it is a two-way conversation as nobody has the patience to wait for replies and thereby avoiding a one-sided conversation, which ultimately creates frustration.
Another important thing to consider is the platform you use for communicating with your customers:
1. See which feedback tool is simple to use, as well as provide you with the highest benefits.
2. Make sure that your customers are comfortable using it.
3. Check if you have left loopholes and fix them if there are any.
4. Make sure that you have done everything right from your side.
All these will inspire customers to be actively engaged and give more feedback, which you can work on, to have sustained success.
User engagement loop:
Anything can give you the desired result or success only when it is done regularly with persistence and perseverance. Working out for 10 hours a day cannot make you fit instead it makes you exhausted. Whereas exercising daily just for 20 minutes will make you fit, healthy and look good.
Similarly, when you regularly engage with your customers, your relationship with them will be nurtured and made strong which will last for a long period of time. Every time you interact with your customers, you get to know and understand their new requirements.
When you put in more effort and work on it to improve customer experience, your business will excel. It is found from a Walker research that by 2020 customer experience is going to be the key differentiator between the brands instead of product or price. So it is crucial to concentrate and scale customer experience on regular bases and redesign and reshape your business according to customer needs.
Scaling customer experience means providing a good standard of customer experience irrespective to the type of the customer or any size of the customer group. This can only be done when interacting with the customers, receiving feedback and acting on it goes in a loop.
The end goal is to spotlight customer requirements, feedback, and demands. Take time to analyze customer needs and provide them with personalized customer experience. This will drive your business to success no matter what roadblocks come.
So are you ready to build a product your user needs?
