Conversation is built on questions.
What’s your name? What do you do? Why are you asking so many questions?
And the whole point of customer feedback is that you’re opening up a dialogue with your customers. You’re conversing with them in order to find out what they like, what they dislike, and what they want to see added to your product.
Questions are the cornerstone of customer feedback. Ask the wrong ones and you’ve wasted everyone’s time.
But get them right and you’ll have more information than Wikipedia. Almost.
Sometimes, the most obvious questions don’t cut the mustard.
Asking “What features would you like us to add?” might seem like an intelligent, insightful interrogation, but all that really leaves you with is a list of features. You don’t know which ones they prefer, and most importantly, you don’t know why they want them.
We look forward to our royalties Mr. Lucas…
You have to be like Indiana Jones. As in, dig deeper. Because he’s an archaeologist. Get it?
And much like Indy needs his whip and clever one-liners, SaaS companies need to arm themselves with a list of killer prospect and customer feedback questions.
There’s no better time to truly understand how you can serve your current, new, and potential customers than during the initial sales process.
So here are some of our own questions that you can use during sales or in the early days of someone becoming a customer.
Come on Short Round, there’s treasure to be found.
Q1: Why did you choose us over our competitors?
Let’s start off with a big one. Asking about your competitors can often seem a little strange. Some companies wince at the first mention of their arch-rivals. But this question can offer some vital insights.
Asking this question allows you to figure out what you’re doing well. This is essential learning as you can use this for marketing purposes, and also to ensure you capitalize on those features that are attracting customers away from competitors.
Play to your strengths, and all that jazz.
It’s also a deeper question than simply asking what they like about your product. By introducing a comparison, a higher level of thought is needed. This leads to your customer having to think more about the question. The answers you get will be more thought out and much more useful.
Q2: What do our competitors do better than us?
Oof! This one goes hand in hand with Q1 only we’ve flipped it on its head. With this question you’re going to learn a few hard truths. It’s very rare that you beat your competitors at every single thing.
In fact, if you do, then you’re probably not in need of any help.
For this question, you need to put on a thick skin and be *ahem* ‘receptive’ to your customers’ responses. It can sometimes be hard to hear, but their answers will give you an understanding of how you might improve your product to match that of your competitors.
We welcome our new magnetic overlords.
You can learn what might make a prospect choose your rivals’ products over you. And then you can use that valuable info to build new features that will attract those prospects over to you. Like a big, planet sized electro-magnet.
Q3: What is your biggest issue when it comes to ________?
The whole idea of a SaaS product, any product in fact, is to solve a problem. If you aren’t solving a problem, then you’re probably causing one, and no one likes a trouble causer.
For this question, you need to fill in the blank with your industry. At Receptive, for example, we might ask “What is your biggest issue when it comes to analyzing customer feedback?”.
The responses you get to this question reveal specific pain points that your customers face. Not only that but you get an idea of which pain points they prioritize. To answer your question, they’ve had to rank the different pain points in their head so they could tell you the biggest.
You can then use this information to tailor your product towards solving this pain point for them, effectively becoming a paracetamol tablet.
Q4: Name 2 things that almost stopped you from purchasing our product.
As far as customer feedback questions go, this is both a) an amazing source of info, and b) not actually a question.
What this question (read: statement) allows you to understand is where you can immediately improve what you offer. If your current customers have picked up on these weaknesses, then you can be sure that other potential customers walked away because of them.
If you want to improve conversions, then you’re going to have to nail down these weaknesses and tackle them head on. Asking the question in this way forces the customer to think back to when they weren’t quite a user, before they truly knew the product.
These nuggets are far more valuable than gold ones, right? [Photo Credit]
This leads to an unbiased response, with some great nuggets of info you can start to utilize right away.
Q5: In your own words, how would you describe us and our product to a friend or colleague?
This question may initially pose a challenge to your customer. They’ll likely dilly-dally and flip-flop and um and ah but eventually you should get a response.
And their answers to this question are extremely insightful for your marketing team, your sales team, and pretty much everyone in the company.
You can learn exactly what your customers think about you as a brand, and what they think about your product. You can get to the bottom of how they feel, how they perceive you. In the digital world especially, how you are perceived is tantamount to your success.
These responses can be used to ensure that your company is being seen in the right light, and that you’re a company that customer enjoy being associated with.
Q6: What would you Google to find a product like ours?
This final customer feedback question is less about your product, and more about how people find your product.
Here at Receptive, we’ve spent a lot of time conducting keyword research in an attempt to boost our organic search traffic. And even after spending hours on it, it’s hard to say for sure what people are searching for when they want to find you.
So why not come out and ask them straight? Your customers know more than anyone what to type into that search field. That’s exactly what they would’ve done when they began their hunt for the perfect product. It’s what we all do.
Then you can go away with a list of keywords that you know people are using, and you can make sure your site is optimized for those keywords. This feedback is invaluable.
Okay, so there are five customer feedback questions, and one almost question, which you can ask your customers. The information you get will be priceless and will allow you to really hone in on your company’s strengths and weaknesses.
If you want to grow and improve your product, customer feedback is essential. Hopefully these questions will make the whole process easier for you.
Oh, and Indy? Make sure to watch for the boulder on the way out.
Have a good one!
Related Reading:
Secrets of SaaS: How to make your customers love you even more
