Feedback is one of the most important tools available to companies today and helps them to grow and improve their offerings for customers. When you’ve spent the time and effort having a new software system developed for your company, it can be tempting to relax and forget about it after the launch. However, without collecting feedback from customers or staff, you’ll never know how easy it is to use and whether it’s solving their issues. While there are many ways to gather feedback, many of the traditional methods today don’t provide you with valuable feedback. To help you continuously improve your system, follow these top methods to generate software feedback that will make a difference to your company.
1. A quick survey
While surveys can sometimes be a huge nuisance to consumers, a quick in-app survey or one that pops up when using the software is a great option for gathering feedback. Targeting your customers when they are in the middle of using your software offers immediate feedback, allowing them to share their thoughts and concerns at the current time. While many companies still opt to email surveys to customers, the feedback you receive from this method often ends up being unusable as it’s not completed in a timely manner. Surveys can help you to understand customer and staff interaction with your software and which features are most effective and user-friendly.
2. Use a screener
There’s nothing worse than sending out an email survey, only to find that none of the replies you receive are relevant. When gathering feedback on your software, you could ask your developer to add a short three to five-question screener at the start of the process. This can help to ensure you are getting valid data that will be of great use to your company. You can filter users out by age, user type, the regularity they use your software, and anything else you may find to be relevant. This will stop wasting both you, your staff, and customer’s time from the very start of the process and ensure the feedback will be of use to you.
3. Immediate customer service feedback
You may think that customers will continue using your service purely because they find your system easy to use. However, customer service is an area that’s often overlooked and is one that quickly drives customers away. After customer service interactions, whether that’s on the phone, by email, or with a messaging solution, your software could offer customers the chance to share their immediate feedback on the service they received. This can help you understand if their issues were fully resolved or whether your customer is still frustrated by your products and/or service.
4. Use your software thoroughly before asking for feedback
While companies can be tempted to start asking for feedback from the minute their system launches, we recommend you use the software thoroughly first. This can be done in-house by your own staff and will help you eliminate any bugs in the software, so you don’t have to read the same feedback repeatedly about a simple issue you could have asked your developer to resolve. You want to focus on getting their opinion on the software’s features, instead of just receiving bug reports.
5. Harness the power of social media
As well as in-app feedback, another quick tool for receiving feedback for your new software is social media. Companies today still neglect to use social media to its full capability, and it’s a great tool for receiving timely and free feedback. To begin with, you could simply ask for feedback through your account, whether that’s asking for comments on a post with a simple question or by linking to a customer feedback survey. You’ll find you receive many passionate and useful responses through social media, as individuals have to take the time and effort to reply out of choice.
Alternatively, you can use social media to read feedback while staying undercover. If you aren’t willing to put yourself out there and directly ask for feedback you can still scroll through images and stories in which your company is tagged, and look for anyone using your hashtag on Instagram. This will allow you to secretly read their honest opinions on your software system without having to ask for them. You’ll want to put a good amount of time aside for this project, and remember, you might not just see positive feedback when searching online. However, this feedback really does matter, and the more your service is shared on social media, the more success you’ll find you have in the upcoming months and years.
Feedback features
When you have your own custom software system created, you can request feedback features to be built within the software as part of the development process. These can be for gathering information on the software system and how your users interact with it or alternatively, for gathering feedback about your products and services.
