How To Get Useful Customer Feedback Without Irritating Your Customers

Collect exactly what you need with the least amount of friction

Stop bugging your customers. Seriously, the less they hear from you, the happier they’re going to be.

Don’t get me wrong. In over 20 years of building, launching, and tweaking dozens of products, I’ve become a huge proponent of gearing my development to the needs of my customers and prospective customers. And I’m aware of the fact that they’re never going to tell me what they need if I don’t ask.

So you’ve got to ask. I’m just saying when you do ask, it should be at the right time, and you need to come prepared.

Once you’re out of MVP, you need to fade back into the shadows

When I’m in MVP mode or running a pilot, I’m constantly begging my customers for feedback because I’m still shaping the product. This is perfectly acceptable. I’m offering free or discounted service while the product is being defined, so it’s fair game for me to pepper my pilot customers with questions and polls and surveys.

But once I emerge from the pilot, I’ll still need to make the product better, keep the customers engaged, and add the kind of value that will bring more customers…