Adopting a customer feedback program is the perfect way to foster a greater understanding of your customers and their needs.
If you’re like us, you’re obsessed with your customers. You want to know what they love, what they find frustrating, and what product tweaks could take their experience from ho-hum to extraordinary.
So, you’ve adopted UserVoice to unlock customer demand and simplify feedback management (or you’re thinking about it).
Adopting a customer feedback program is the perfect way to foster a greater understanding of your customers and their needs. With UserVoice, your team will be empowered by the voice of your customers to ensure you’re developmental efforts are focused on the right product areas.
This guide will cover best practices for launching UserVoice successfully, including how to promote the UserVoice platform internally and externally and how to keep your customers engaged. While going live with UserVoice can be a very quick process, these are our suggestions for getting the most out of your UserVoice feedback program.
Without your team rallied behind you, your plans to launch a comprehensive customer feedback program will fall flat.
To get everyone on the same page, it helps to share a compelling narrative demonstrating why a customer feedback program is important. For example, you could highlight a few stats (ex. it is 6 to 7 times more expensive to attract a new customer than to retain an existing customer) that underscore how critical customer satisfaction is to the health and success of a business.
Once you’ve established that customer satisfaction is the cornerstone of any good business (and any product)—you can illustrate the role feedback plays in customer retention. Did you know, 77% of consumers view brands more favorably if they seek out and apply customer feedback?
Next, help your team understand how UserVoice will not only make gathering and organizing feedback easier but will be worth their while:
Relay these ideas to your team, and they’ll connect with your user feedback mission.
Once you’ve gotten buy-in from your team, it’s time to plan your launch. To create a rock-solid UserVoice launch campaign, you’ll need to build your launch plan. We’ve found a few critical steps to help you focus your efforts, promote effectively, and stay on track toward your goals.
Consider the outcomes you want your customer feedback to achieve. Along with streamlining feedback management, are you looking to boost customer satisfaction or retention? Promote new feature adoption? Or a combination of all three?
Once you settle on your goals, decide on the metrics you’ll need to keep track of your progress. Don’t try to measure everything under the sun—stick to what’s relevant to your goals. For instance, if you’re focused on customer retention, you might track customer lifetime value, customer retention rates, or repeat purchase rates.
Think about who will be involved in receiving, managing, and prioritizing the feedback. Make sure each team has the appropriate level of access:
Our overview of UserVoice Discovery is handy for bringing any team member up to speed—it’s perfect for product managers, engineers, execs, and operational managers. You can also share role-specific guides with your teams. We have guides available for:
When you build out your timeline, there are several questions to consider.
When would you like to go live with your team? Do you have a roll-out date in mind for your end users? How will you invite them to take part in the program?
We recommend going live after you’ve had sufficient time to train and prepare your team. Also, to get the ideas flowing, we suggest seeding your forum with ideas and importing any existing feedback (ahead of launch) as a great way to inspire end-users to provide feedback of their own. This template makes importing existing feedback simple.
After that, you’re ready to officially launch with your end-users, which means it’s time to think about how you’ll promote your program.
To keep your messaging streamlined and clear, we suggest including a few basics in every customer-facing communication.
Quickly explain what UserVoice is and how it will help your team deliver more value (Scroll down for templates you can use to get started).
Then, share what users can expect after they’ve provided feedback and the steps you will take to keep them informed as their feedback moves through the product lifecycle. A strict timeline isn’t always practical, but general information about your workflow is helpful.
From there, break down how users can locate and use UserVoice. For example, will you be using the in-app widget and web portal?
Your goal is to make sure everyone comes to the table understanding the program basics and how to use it.
Turn scattered user data into meaningful customer intelligence, guiding smarter decisions and creating a better product.
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