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5 Must-Have Customer Feedback Systems for Your Startup

Customer Feedback Systems

Startup Customer Feedback Systems:

Mark Cuban says, “Don’t listen to your customers.”

I say that’s silly.

If you close yourself off from a stream of information, you’re doing yourself and your business a disservice. All people have blind spots, and customers are great at pointing them out.

But if you quickly acknowledge and repair your blind spots, then you not only make those customers happier, but you also increase the overall value of your business. Besides, it’s a part of customer development and it will make your product better in the long run.

Here are five customer feedback systems — and some suggested tools for setting up each — for your startup:

Analyze Your Website Metrics

StatRaptorLook at what your users do on your site. If you’re bootstrapping a startup, you can’t go wrong with Google Analytics. Go ahead and install Google Webmaster Tools while you’re at it (it’s free!).

These tools are pretty robust and sometimes it can be easy to get lost in the data, so grab this free Google Analytics Guide from Relevance. If you can’t make the time to set up GA and find the data you’re looking for, check out a simpler tool for SAAS analytics — StatRaptor. Presto!

Monitor Social Media

Hopefully, there’s a whole conversation going on about your brand online. So, you’d better be a part of it.

At Verge, we use SEOmoz Pro tools (referral link) to monitor social media. It’s $99/month, but you get a whole lot of other functionality with their suite of social and SEO tools. If you’re just looking for social media monitoring, Trackur has a great reputation and at just 18 bucks a month for their basic package, the price is right for startups.

Engage with Customer Support

If you have a SAAS product, you’d better have a good customer support. Using tools like ZenDesk can help you manage requests and improve response times. That means happier customers.

Then, you can use bug tracking software like PivotalTracker or Jira to plan out work and track progress on your bug fixes. Pretty sweet, huh?

Ask Your Community and Customers for Ideas

FormStackWant actionable feedback? Well, have you tried asking?

Sending out a simple survey gives your community and user base a voice. And it’s from that voice that you’ll find some of your most valuable nuggets of information. Use an online form builder like Formstack to create a short, engaging survey that encourages your community to share their ideas and feedback.

Set Up a “Suggestion Box”

Let your community know you care by giving them a place to drop you a line.

Of course, you can use tools like User Voice and Get Satisfaction to create really cool website widgets that prompt your user. But, if you’re still nimble enough to do it, sometimes it’s better to just remind your community that you’re always interested in hearing from them. That can be by phone or by email (mine is matt [at] vergeindy [dot] com, and I always love herding from you).

What are some ways that you listen to your community of users? Have you received any good ideas or insight as a result?

 

Sales

13 Comments

  • Eric Barnard
    Posted February 14, 2012 at 7:55 pm

    Matt – one other great feedback point is to "Let your customers know where you're at!" If they submitted a bug or a feature request, they would like to know what's being done.

    Trello (https://trello.com/) is great for managing projects, but the way they've used their tool to ALSO show their customers where they are at is awesome (https://trello.com/board/trello-development/4d5ea62fd76aa1136000000c).

    • Matt Hunckler
      Posted February 15, 2012 at 2:21 pm

      I love it! Sometimes, people just want to know that they've been heard and that you're working on their problem. Good resource, Eric!

  • Rodger Johnson
    Posted February 15, 2012 at 3:47 pm

    This are all great tools. I've used Get Satisfaction and have great results with that.

    • Matt Hunckler
      Posted February 15, 2012 at 7:42 pm

      Awesome! I feel like there are a million ways to use Get Satisfaction. How did you implement it?

    • Rodger Johnson
      Posted February 15, 2012 at 8:48 pm

      Matt Hunckler I was using a software solution that used Get Satisfaction for customer service, so I saw it from that end. I've also had a few discussions with a former community member who worked with Typepad about GS.

  • Jon Corwin
    Posted February 15, 2012 at 5:10 pm

    Pragmatic and actionable advice. Great feedback tools for those in the lean startup camp too.

  • Evan Hamilton
    Posted February 18, 2012 at 1:09 am

    Thanks for the UserVoice shout-out, Matt!

    • Matt Hunckler
      Posted February 20, 2012 at 9:09 pm

      Absolutely, Evan! Always love coming across sites with UserVoice installed front and center 🙂

  • Danielle
    Posted April 22, 2012 at 9:42 am

    Oh how wonderful it would have been to see WalkMe – http://www.walkme.com – on this list – a unique interactive guidance system that allows online publishers to walk their users step-by-step through any online process. What a useful way to refrain from massive customer support desk costs. FABULOUS list, I have to say!

  • DIjana
    Posted January 22, 2013 at 7:26 am

    All suggestions above are good and that’s just the point: a company needs to use a myriad of tools to get feedback from the customers. And even though many businesses rely on things like focus groups and customer satisfaction surveys, I find that (1) few of them actually turn the feedback customers give into actionable insight, let alone tangible changes, and (2) extremely few realize how much of an impact, not to mention an edge, a simple service/product experience phone call or an email can have on their performance. We all know acquiring a customer costs much more than retaining one, so if companies would focus as much on these “hey-how-you-doing-with-our-product/service” calls as on sales pitch calls, they’d achieve much more optimal results. It really only takes a minute or so to show a customer you care about their experience and what they have to say about it. I’m surprised more businesses don’t do it.

  • CRT ViewPoint
    Posted May 17, 2014 at 10:15 am

    Good article. When asking your customers directly for their feedback try using multi channels such as those via: http://www.crtviewpoint.com. We all have different preferences for sharing our experience.

  • i'm apps
    Posted October 11, 2014 at 1:06 am

    Thanks for the good summary. I tested this new tool: polljoy (https://polljoy.com). Any comment as it compare to polldaddy, surveymoney .. etc?

  • Michel Vermeulen
    Posted October 29, 2014 at 9:11 am

    I’ve been using UserVoice for quite a while and it works well (although spammed a lot after some time). I also like to use user-answers.com to get usability feedback from “fresh” users.

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