Mistakes to avoid when talking to your customers

Common customer feedback mistakes

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15 Typical Mistakes Businesses Make Collecting Customer Feedback. A successful business takes note of customer feedback and acts on it to address any concerns and ensure client retention. However, because of user data concerns, it's becoming more challenging to obtain good customer feedback. To help you deal with those challenges, 15 members of Forbes Business Council delve into the typical mistakes they've seen businesses make when pitching customers for feedback and suggest alternatives to make this process more effective.

(via @Forbes)

Customer interviews: tips, do’s, and don’ts. One way to uncover whether your idea is worth pursuing is through customer interviews. You want to discover what your customers really need and whether your business idea meets that need. Conducting ineffective interviews and then launching a product or service that no one really wants or needs can create a lot of pain and wasted effort. The folks at Venturewell provided some simple tips, do’s, and don’ts for conducting customer interviews so that you can make sure you launch a product that people will buy.

(via @venturewell)

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A trip to the movies

Earlier this week -- I enjoyed a trip to the movies with my son. He had been begging me to see the movie Free Guy, a story about a Fortnite/GTA-like game character that seems to gain conscience of his own within the game. Before the movie aired, a Cinemark ad played -- starting with an action scene from Free Guy. However, the audio was muffled… and the action being shown was just about 1/10 of the total screen. 

A typical “movie trailer voice” started speaking over the action and said, “If you’re watching a larger than life video game character on a screen this small… it’s time for a restart.”

Then, the screen expanded to full size. The action sounds were more intense. Everything sort of… came to life. At that moment, you realized why you were at the theater and not opting to watch the movie from the comfort of your home. 

It got me thinking though…

One result of COVID has been the proliferation of new release movies brought straight to “the small screen” at home simultaneously with their theater releases. It makes total sense. During lockdowns, nobody could go to the theater. Even now -- there’s a good number of people that simply don’t want to. I’ve certainly shelled out $25 several times in order to watch feature films that I’ve been (maybe a little too) excited about. 

But when the majority of people get comfortable with indoor activities -- will that change? Will we see new releases be reserved only for the cinema once again? And should they, after all?

I started to wonder if Cinemark has a point with their ad. Does allowing us to experience the movie at home result in us getting an inferior product? And if it does, as the product person at, say, the film studio -- how would you feel about giving people a choice to experience your product in an inferior way?

Just some food (maybe popcorn?) for thought.

5 things that may ruin your customer satisfaction surveys. Whatever business you're in, it's crucial to keep your finger on the collective pulse of your customers. Are they growing more or less happy with you? Customer satisfaction surveys are a good way to gather these insights. Pascal van Opzeeland shares the 5 main things his team learned to avoid when running customer satisfaction surveys. He uses the example of a survey he ran this year and shows you why avoiding these pitfalls helped his team collect accurate and actionable feedback:

(via @hotjar)

3 Mistakes to avoid while responding to Customer Feedback. Receiving unsolicited feedback puts most of us on the spot. We’re in the spotlight of other people’s expectations, and often our first impulse is to be defensive. Handling feedback is a complex process that can be over in a matter of minutes if done right. Akanksha Ghildiyal describes three reactions to unsolicited feedback you want to avoid.

(via akanksha-ghildiyal)

9 mistakes to avoid RE: Feedback. Sometimes, you can get good ideas from a domain entirely different from your own. One domain that deals with feedback repeatedly and in a variety of formats is restaurants. The folks at Restaurant Black Ops shared these nine mistakes that he commonly sees restaurateurs make with regards to customer feedback. Avoiding these will help you plan for success with your feedback system in your own restaurant.

(via @Rblackops)

Product-led growth is the top trend of 2021, but there’s still a whole lot of product imposters out there. Are you one of them? We teamed up with OpenView and Pendo on the 2021 Product Benchmarks report to help you if you are.

Here are just a few takeaways:

-- How product-led approaches are changing how product is measured
-- The increased responsibilities of product managers and how PMs can stay ahead of the curve
-- Predictions for the product-led adoption in 2022 and onwards

In this webinar, we'll be discussing these takeaways -- and more! Join Mike Belsito, Co-Founder of Product Collective, as he moderates a discussion with Sam Richard (VP of Growth at OpenView) and Niti Shah (VP of Growth at Pendo) to dig in... and have your questions answered as well!

The Earth doesn’t revolve around you—unless you’re a customer. When it comes to scaling successful SaaS products, the real hands pulling the strings aren’t the engineers, CEOs, and sales executives involved, but those of the customer. As product-led growth continues to be a proven strategy for success, this talk will dive into how product designers and product marketers can better work together to prioritize the customer experience. Hear from four product pros as they share tips for positioning new products, developing partnerships, and keeping the customer top of mind through every stage of the process.

Join Product Collective co-founder Mike Belsito for this talk at SXSW 2021... but first, you must vote to get it on the agenda!