In today’s fast-paced business world, product development and launches move quickly. Managers and team leaders, therefore, have to be strategic about using customer feedback to validate new products at every step of the way. It is vital to get customer feedback once new products are launched. But how do you collect useful information that can be utilized to provide your marketing and sales teams with valuable insights about your latest products? Read on to find out.
Conducting Surveys
One of the most tried and tested ways of gaining feedback on a new product is to use surveys. Once you have launched your product, you can better understand what is and is not working by running product satisfaction surveys. These can be used to find out how satisfied customers are with a product and its specific features, and discover how consumers think the product could be improved.
Net Promoter Score surveys can be even more useful to find out how customers are reacting to your new product. An NPS survey serves as an excellent alternative to a standard customer satisfaction survey, as it aims to measure loyalty between customers and the provider. Fortune 100 companies widely use NPS surveys, and their use is claimed to correlate with revenue growth.
Finding customers to participate in surveys can be challenging. For example, if you repeatedly use the same channels and methods to gain feedback on new products, you will soon burn out participants. It can also be difficult to find eligible participants who meet the criteria for more niche surveys. The best way of finding the right customers to target is to have clear definitions for the quality and suitability of those taking part. Take into consideration elements such as:
- Demographics like age, gender, and income.
- Geographic locations, like country, city, and region.
- Psychographics like hobbies, interests, and opinions.
Check out this post: how to recruit participants for a study to learn more.
Setting Up an Online Forum
One of the best and simplest methods of gaining feedback on new products is to set up an online forum. By having a forum as a key component of your website or app, you allow customers to ask questions, share ideas, and leave product feedback. A forum is useful not just for gaining insights on your new products, but also for obtaining consumer data that you can use in future product development and launches, and for gaining useful customer demographics for marketing analysis.
Recruitment Channels
There are a number of recruitment channels you can use to conduct a customer study of your new product. They include:
- Live Intercepts: This allows you to deliver messages in real-time via your website or app to suitable customers.
- Social Media: If your business has a strong social media presence, you can recruit participants directly via your social media platforms.
- Specialist Market Research Companies: These may be an extra expense, but by hiring a market research company to conduct research on your behalf, you can get accurate results and save time.
Using a Multichannel Approach
The more platforms and methods you use to conduct surveys and get feedback, the better. By collecting product feedback from a multitude of channels, you will gain a richer and more multi-dimensional understanding of your customers’ opinions. You can then identify market requirements, customer needs and problems, and proactive solutions. Using a multichannel approach to collecting feedback enables you to have a better understanding of your customers throughout their entire product journey. It is important you collect as many opinions as possible from both inside and outside your company.