Everyone wants to be a regular gym-goer (at least during non-pandemic times).
But, the best determiner of whether someone goes to the gym regularly has less to do with details like the equipment or facilities.
Instead, it’s the location of the gym itself and where you live in relation. The more convenient the gym’s location, the more likely you are to become a regular.
That same principle applies when trying to collect customer feedback with Canny, or any other user feedback tool. If it’s inconvenient for the people you want to hear from, you won’t be hearing from them. But if you make it easy to give feedback, they’ll be more likely to give it!
Let’s go over some of the main ways to make it easy for your audience to give you feedback.
Option 1: Add links to your user feedback tool within your product
A link within your product will likely drive the majority of your traffic, so there’s a reason it’s the first suggestion. It also has the advantage of being relatively easy to do.
So, even if you do nothing else, adding links within your product is the way to go.
You’ll want to place links strategically. Look for places where someone is outside of the regular workflow.
For instance, a user is in the settings menu or on a support page. They’re now thinking about the product itself and how they use it.
That’s where you’ll want to place links to leave feedback.
It’s also a good idea to add an extra link to areas where you really need more feedback, such as beta testing new features.
Ideally, you want the user to be able to leave feedback instead of contacting support. So anywhere they would go to reach out to customer support, that’s where you’ll want to give them the option of leaving feedback instead.
Your support team will also thank you for it. You’d be amazed at how many support tickets are really just feedback requests fielded by an agent.
A user feedback tool like Canny frees that support agent up to work on other things! ClickUp, a Canny customer, estimated that using Canny reduced incoming support volume by around 10%.
Option 2: Connect your integrations
People always get comfortable with what they know. After a while, it can be hard to introduce yet another tool or dashboard to keep up with.
This is where integrations save the day. Customers don’t need to learn an entirely new tool. An integration simply adds a layer of value to the tools they’re already using.
For instance, let’s say your users have a habit of sending feedback directly via support.
You can connect Canny to your CRM and easily add that feedback right from the support inbox. This will slowly train users to provide their feedback via Canny.
Most users eventually start cutting out the middle-man of your support team (thus freeing them up to handle other inquiries).
With a direct integration, you also get the benefit of seeing a link to the conversation in Canny. So you can reference the support thread when understanding feedback.
You can learn more about Canny’s integrations here. And, check out this article for more on how to use Canny for customer support.
Option 3: Manually vote on a user’s behalf within your user feedback tool
Not really the most convenient option for the user, but one that comes in handy!
Let’s say you want to keep your support team as that go-between. Or if you’re not using an integrated CRM.
Even without integrating a CRM or having users submit feedback themselves, you can still vote on a user’s behalf in Canny.
This is also great for sales interactions, or one-off situations where you just want to manually add a person’s vote and sign them up for updates.
You can also use this method to limit the visibility of a private board in Canny. But, be beware when adding a person’s vote to a private board. If they don’t have access, they don’t get email notifications on status updates.
Option 4: Invite users to participate via a simple URL
You’d be amazed at how much user feedback you get when you simply ask for it. Sending out a simple link in your newsletter can get people to your board and submitting feedback. A quick prompt is all it takes for some people.
A quick word of warning here: Don’t rely on a one-time invitation. Collecting feedback needs to be an ongoing process, so don’t just send out a link once and then never ask again.
Whenever appropriate, just add a Canny link if you want to hear from your users!
Or, all of the above
The best products are the ones that adapt to you. Take that same approach and adapt to your users’ preferences. Take into account the culture you’ve already established. Use your own blend of the strategies above to make it easy.
No two users are alike. Some folks are happy to click on an email link, others never even open the message. Some prefer to bypass human interaction if they can. Others will hold for hours and charge past every automated option to speak to a human. Thankfully, you have options for dealing with whatever comes your way!
Bottom line: Making it easier to give feedback leads to more feedback. So, make it easy for users to access your user feedback tool.
More feedback leads to better project management. Better project management leads to a better product. It’s why teams trust Canny to give their users a voice while filtering out the noise.
