Sometimes we keep marketing, promoting, selling, and growing, yet we forget to speak to our actual users.
We send out newsletters, we create some polls or surveys, we offer some gift cards to fill in a questionnaire, yet we forget to see if they want to chat.
…and this is invaluable.
A questionnaire or a form will provide immense value by giving us ideas for new features or missing capabilities, hinting at our possible product-market fit, and can tell us a ton on usability, but that chat can give us so much more.
Unlike the accustomed means of automatically gathering feedback, a real-life chat will take them out of the set template to talk about their day, their habits, their problems, their pains, and the things that aren’t within your solution…and beyond.
Allowing a real user time to talk will let you connect with them and understand things that don’t come out over an automated format or email or bot (chat).
So how do we proceed?
Approach with a beginner’s mind and speak to them like the real person they are, have a real conversation to let them go over their day, their problems, their difficulties, their likes (and dislikes), and empathize with them.
The feedback will be different than a comment box found in your local bank yet may become more valuable than you’d ever imagined. It may spell out a new message, or a gain you never expected, or usability you never intended for.
…and it could be so much more.
It’s just crazy what we can find out if we just listen…crazy 🙂