How to Use Customer Feedback to Shape Your Product

When you’re designing a digital product, customer feedback is essential. After all, these are the people who will make or break your success once the product is launched. Getting their input ahead of time and understanding what your audience wants will make a big difference in the shape and scope of your final product.

You’ve undoubtedly been putting all of your time and energy into product development. However, the beauty of creating a digital product or service is that it’s easier to collect data and make changes based on the information you gather compared to creating a physical product.

With that in mind, let’s look at some ways that you can effectively and efficiently collect customer feedback to shape your product before it launches.

Develop a Data-Collection Strategy

When you’re designing a digital product, research and planning should be your top priorities. If you fail to collect feedback, data, and information early, you’re only going with your best guess when it comes to how your product will be perceived. First, consider who your audience is, and develop a strategy that will allow you to directly reach them. Once you’ve identified your target audience, you can put your strategy in place. It should include things like:

• Defining your learning goals
• Deciding who should be involved in data collection and analysis
• Time constraints/ limitations
• How you will collect data
• What questions to ask your target audience

When you lay these things on the table, you’ll be able to choose a decision methodology that best fits your situation. Sometimes, a team approach is the best way to make a decision. Other times, it’s best to designate a leader to take charge of collecting feedback and implementing it. Whatever the case, a strong strategy for data collection and what you’ll do with it needs to be in place before you start sharing your product with others.

Build Trust with Your Customers

If you want to establish trust with your audience, ensuring them that their data will be both personal and private is key. According to a survey by Verizon, 48% of consumers are comfortable sharing personal information with brands. Your goal should be to build upon that trust so customers are comfortable with your data collection methods.

Trust can improve the overall customer experience. It will not only give your product and brand more recognition but will encourage your audience to share more detailed information you can use in the future to reshape and refresh your current digital designs.

If you want to build trust and foster a more positive experience for your audience, try some of the following strategies:

• Think like your audience and learn what makes them “tick”
• Share security measures you have in place for data safety
• Provide valuable, reliable content
• Partner with trustworthy influencers
• Build your reputation

Eventually, as you collect feedback and put customer suggestions into your products, trustworthy relationships will occur more organically. Your audience will see that you take their suggestions seriously, and that’s often enough for them to keep purchasing your products.

Customer feedback is voluntarily given and often contains a lot of personal information. Make sure you can assure your customers that their data is safe and secure not only by making their suggested changes but by prioritizing digital security and backing up all collected information.

Feedback is Vital Throughout the Entire Product Life Cycle

So, your product has officially launched. Give yourself a pat on the back, throw some high-fives around the office, and enjoy the fruits of your labor – at least, for a while.

We don’t have to tell you how quickly technology advances (hey ChatGPT). Web-enabled services can become obsolete in a matter of months. So, no matter how successful your product launch was and no matter how many people are on board now, it’s never a good idea to rest on your initial success.

Rather, you should build upon it and make a commitment to constantly improve.

Once your digital product is launched to the masses, you’ll have the opportunity to collect even more feedback. Gauge your product market fit by asking how users would feel if they could no longer use your product. You can offer the following options to make data collection easy:

1. Very disappointed
2. Somewhat disappointed
3. Not disappointed
4. I no longer use [PRODUCT]

If more than 40% of respondents say they would be very disappointed, chances are you only have to make minor tweaks to keep your product up-to-date. If it’s less than 40%, it’s time to make some big changes. Part of a digital product lifestyle requires upgrades and streamlining. Users will develop high expectations, and they need to be met consistently for your product to stay relevant.

Make data collection a key component of your team’s product lifecycle. By collecting feedback to shape (and reshape) your products, you’ll deliver a solution that is informed by your audiences’ needs, something your audience wants, and more likely to establish loyal customers.