Conversation with first customers

Today we want to share an article from Belle Beth Cooper, Belle Beth Cooper, chief content specialist at Buffer, co-founder of Exist analytics platform. These tips were very useful to us , we hope that they will be useful to you.

Creating a valuable product requires a valuable feedback. The one with whom you speak from the very beginning influences the outcome of the whole party.

A few weeks ago, the co-founder started a private beta test of our second product. Exist's
first product has been in public beta for almost a year. We made a lot of mistakes, thanks to which we learned a lot. This time, we know what we will do differently, this time to make fresh mistakes :) Here are a few lessons that I would like to share. Choose your users carefully


Our biggest mistake was choosing the wrong users. We tried to protect our fragile ego and invited only our friends to test the product. We hoped to get an honest (but polite) feedback that will help us improve the product, avoiding falling into the abyss of disappointment even before the start.
Reality hit us hard: we heard only useless rustling.

We could not get the necessary feedback because we did not speak with interested users. Our “users” were people who had five extra minutes to get to know the service and no real motivation to tell us how they would use our product.

Why? Because they were not potential customers. We did not solve their pain. They did not see the value and could not hold out for long. Most of them logged in only once and disappeared or returned once a month if we were lucky.

Do not waste your and other people's time, you will never get a good feedback from people who do not need you.

How to: Choose users from your target market.

For a new product, you should look for users who have pain, they see the need and are ready to invest in order to get the result.

If you build a business over time, it becomes easier. With our second product, we focused on similar types of customers who have already used Exist.

When you build relationships with people who use your products, they are often more interested in your other projects.

We can see similar examples in other businesses. When Basecamp was known as 37 Signals , they had several products with a similar target market. It's much easier to look for beta testers and potentially paying customers among people who already know you and trust you.

If you started with the first product, it’s obvious that you don’t have a user base, but you can build an audience in other ways. More than 6 months ago, we presented Exist in public, I began to regularly blog in which I talked about the news and new products in the field of self-service. Considering that I continued to post posts every week, we had an archive of content for our target market and an audience of people who were interested in the topic of the blog was selected.

We have created an Exist email waiting list to always have an updated database of potential customers. By regularly sending out and creating interesting content, we were able to connect with many of our customers before they even tried our product.
In the late beta rounds, we interviewed customers from our waiting list to find people who were interested in our product.

Ask for feedback
The sooner you get feedback, the better. Good ideas should be voiced, and unsuccessful ones should die out.
Not understanding customers is dangerous. You won’t know which part of your product is the best and don’t know why customers left or stayed. Feedback will fix it.

As in ordinary life, you will not know anything until you ask, and often people are much more willing to help than you think.

Don’t think that customers themselves will unexpectedly send you feedback. You should start the conversation.

How to: ask frequently and in many ways.

Talking with customers on Skype is one of the best ways that I discovered for myself to get a useful feedback. When you talk face to face, you can dig deeper down to the smallest detail. This is the best way to get a complete picture of who this user is and how your product fits into his life.

But sometimes you need a different kind of feedback. When we wanted to know which features of our product are the most popular, we sent a survey to all our users by e-mail. It was not personal, but we were able to collect information from many users in a short period of time. We could ask exactly what we wanted to know. Sometimes you just want to understand the clear, overall rating of your product or service. In these cases, use a simple question: “Would you recommend our product to a friend?” Or you can ask customers to evaluate the quality of service after you solve their problem.

The feedback method depends on what kind of feedback you are looking for.

Take one big approach to feedback in the early days. In the same month when you conduct problematic interviews, do not send a mass survey with the same information. A focus on one type of feedback provides the most meaningful insight.

Attention to the minority
Ah, the minority. When you are struggling for feedback, any grain of it for you is worth its weight in pure gold.
But here is a trap. You hear that several users ask for a feature and think that each user should want the same. It’s clear that they just didn’t bother to tell us! Let's do it already!
Worse, you haven't started making a feature, as 6 or 7 users require it on the same day. It is easy to get ahead of events from a sense of urgency and necessity, which in reality does not exist. Sounds stupid, but we are all subject to this.

Before making the feature that customers want, first check that they really want it.

Correct: test hypotheses.

Feedback is best used to create a hypothesis: what most users might want. As De Trainor said : “Treat each feedback result as a hypothesis, test it before you implement it.”

You can continue to research clients if your hypothesis is confirmed. When it’s confirmed that most users think alike, start deepening. Find out why they need this feature and how you can solve their problem.

Feedback is a multifaceted part of the process of building a company. If you get too much confusing or conflicting feedback, you are not alone. Choose clients carefully, request feedback more often, and always test the hypothesis before implementation. Easier said than done, but every feedback-based improvement has helped me create the best product for my users. Usedesk

team and Iwe add that between Skype and the newsletter there is still a "golden mean" - a phone call. They may not find time on Skype, but may not respond to the newsletter. But if you call, nowhere to go. Even if it is “let's call you tomorrow” - the hook is thrown, the contact is established. Perhaps this will be your most "dear customer."