Taking feedback as an entrepreneur
Tackling an entrepreneur’s greatest tool
Your vision as an entrepreneur is meaningless without the people you are selling to — your customers. One of the most challenging tasks for any company is to ensure that it satisfies its customers and is living up to their expectations by following new trends and rectifying its flaws. Feedback can be a powerful tool in this exercise and can help you understand your priorities for both acquiring and retaining customers.
Is positive feedback, good feedback?
Valuable feedback can be both positive and negative. While positive feedback is encouraging and reaffirms your existing ideas, considerations, and practices, negative feedback should not deter you either.
If provided alongside a proper explanation, negative feedback is far more constructive as it can reveal the true situation from a user’s perspective, and can ensure that you do not lose touch with your audience. On the other hand, if positive feedback is provided without an explanation, it is probably not constructive as it can create a false image that may deviate you from your actual vision.
Make sure that you understand why exactly a customer liked or disliked your service. The process of feedback revolves around discussion and discourse, not merely voting.
When and where should one collect feedback?
All the time, and everywhere. Feedback collection is essentially a continuous process and you should try collecting some kind of feedback from every customer that uses (or stops using!) your service. This can be done, for example, through a popup on your website or app whenever someone subscribes to you (or cancels a subscription).
At times, you may also need to gather feedback on specific subjects — like a new feature, your pricing model, your customer support, or a branding update. You can either ask customers about these when they perform a related action (like ending a live support session, etc.) or you can send out periodic emails or texts requesting feedback.
These methods can vary for different kinds of products and services, but no matter what technique you use, avoid asking for feedback too frequently — or you might just end up annoying your customers.
How does one ask questions?
Collecting feedback is all about asking questions — both the medium of asking and the questions themselves are equally crucial.
Communicate over a medium that holds the customer accountable
As much as possible, avoid anonymous surveys. When people know that they are anonymous, they can lose the moral motivation to be truthful — when they know that they aren’t being watched, most people answer much less thoughtfully. Surveys are in general a bad way to collect feedback — unless they are short and narrow. Long surveys that span across broad topics often become too boring to fill much before they are completed, and most respondents end up answering simply for the sake of completion.
Talking to customers personally is by far the best way to accumulate honest and comprehensive feedback. Depending on what is convenient, you may choose to talk over a voice or video call, or even catch up in person — such an interaction is much more valuable than other techniques as it brings your customer right in front of your eyes. You can communicate in-depth, and understand their exact feelings and emotions regarding your service — while the respondent understands that they are accountable for what they say. Yes, this will be slow and will take much more time — but it’ll be worth it!
Of course, you do not have to talk personally to customers about every little thing. You can always rely on short, purpose-driven surveys (like 1-question surveys about your website’s user experience, or your onboarding process, etc.) for specific topics where you need immediate large-scale feedback.
Ask the right questions
Asking is an art that you will master with time — but there are a few basic suggestions that can help you ask the right questions for receiving valuable feedback.
First of all, ask unbiased questions. Bias can be introduced to your questions in subtle ways and can result in forcefully directing your respondents to particular answers. Your questions shouldn’t sound like you expect a specific response.
Secondly, ask open-ended questions. Let your customer do the talking (while you take notes!). Ask questions that invite elaborate explanations — understand what problems your customers face, what they have tried, and what they expect. Questions that can be answered with a “yes” or a “no” must be avoided! For example, instead of asking “Do you think it is hard to find eco-friendly products in your locality?”, you can ask, “How often do you buy eco-friendly products?” and “What keeps you from buying them more often?”
The more content you extract from your customer, the higher your chances of discovering something valuable or interesting!
Final words
Feedback is an indispensable tool for any entrepreneur who wishes to grow. By maintaining a close relationship with customers, you can develop a loyal audience that you can count on.
“Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.”
— Bill Gates
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