Getting customers to add suggestions

We’ve generally found that once your customers know about your feedback board, they tend to use it. They can easily add a suggestion or upvote one, and they can see what’s happening to their feedback as well (so it’s not simply going into the great email & messaging void).

However, there are a few actions you can take to improve the success of your board.

Some of these we’ve discovered ourselves. Others we’ve heard about from our customers.

Using your board privately to get feedback from your team or select clients? Some of the ideas below can still be helpful.

Link to your board in eye-catching places

Your customers are busy people and have to take in a lot of information. Place your links to your feedback board in eye-catching places.

We love these two examples from Untangle.

In this first example Untangle have a little green slider bottom right that says “Suggest idea” and links direct to their Feature Upvote board for that product.

In this second example Untangle use a lightbulb icon in the top menu to send people to their Feature Upvote board.

Untangle have very active Feature Upvote boards, with customers adding suggestions daily.

We also link to our own Feature Upvote board from our support page.

We’ve found that placing our feedback link to the left of our help centre (or before on smaller screens) reduces support tickets. Many customers who would have written to support with their suggestion now add the suggestion directly.

Use copy to invite the suggestions you need

We’ve generally found that most customers add helpful suggestions and descriptions without much prompting.

However, you can make sure customers give you the most helpful feedback possible with a few small copy tweaks.

In this example from Castos, they use the description field to specify what feedback they want: feature suggestions rather than support requests.

During their trial period, Castos were concerned that customers would add support requests. However, since launching their feedback board, they have had no support requests added to the board.

Untangle also use copy to encourage customers to say why they would like a specific feature as well as to make sure they are contributing to the right board (they have a few). They write: “Please be sure to add the reason why you need the feature, and if you can give an example of why you need it, all the better.”

Redirect suggestions from other support channels

You probably already receive suggestions from your customers through different support channels such as social media, email, and your help desk.

We recommend responding to these with a canned response. Here’s a snippet we’ve used with success:

Thanks for the suggestion. You should add this suggestion to https://yourfeedbackboard.featureupvote.com/. This allows other users the chance to comment on it and vote it up.

When you send your customers to your feedback board they discover that you are actively engaging with customer suggestions.

They may find that their suggestion has already been added so they can upvote it.

They’ll also notice that other customers’ suggestions have been marked as ‘done’ which makes them feel like you care about developing your product.

Much better than customers just sending an email to support and having no idea about whether you’ll act on their suggestion outside a polite ‘thanks for your feedback’ reply.

Ask your customers directly

Use your existing promotion channels:

• Post a request for feedback on your social media channels, such as Facebook, and Twitter and post it regularly
• In your email newsletter inform your customers that you’ve got an easy way for them to suggest and upvote improvements to your product
• If your product has a trial period, send an automated email at the end of the trial period. This email should inform would-be customers that you want feedback. Here is some text we’ve used: “If {product name} hasn’t met your expectations over the last 30 days, here is your chance to tell us why. We’d love to hear your feedback so that we can continue improving {product name}.”

General tips

Here are three important points to remember when seeking feedback:

• You need to frequently remind customers that you are open to suggestions for improvements. This will increase the likelihood of catching a customer at the time they want to give feedback.
• Asking via one channel is usually not enough. Different people consume content in different ways. Using a number of channels means you’ll capture the attention of more customers.
• Make it easy for customers to give feedback at the time it comes to their mind. Customers shouldn’t have to search for ways to offer feedback.