How To Launch and Promote UserVoice With Your Customers to Get the Most Out of Your Feedback Program
If you’re like us, you’re obsessed with your customers. You want to know what they love, what they find frustrating, and what product tweaks could take their experience from ho-hum to extraordinary.
So, you’ve adopted UserVoice to unlock customer demand and simplify feedback management (or you’re thinking about it).
Adopting a customer feedback program is the perfect way to foster a greater understanding of your customers and their needs. With UserVoice, your team will be empowered by the voice of your customers to ensure you’re developmental efforts are focused on the right product areas.
This guide will cover best practices for launching UserVoice successfully, including how to promote the UserVoice platform internally and externally and how to keep your customers engaged. While going live with UserVoice can be a very quick process, these are our suggestions for getting the most out of your UserVoice feedback program.
Before You Do Anything, Align Your Teams
Without your team rallied behind you, your plans to launch a comprehensive customer feedback program will fall flat.
To get everyone on the same page, it helps to share a compelling narrative demonstrating why a customer feedback program is important. For example, you could highlight a few stats (ex. it is 6 to 7 times more expensive to attract a new customer than to retain an existing customer) that underscore how critical customer satisfaction is to the health and success of a business.
Once you’ve established that customer satisfaction is the cornerstone of any good business (and any product)—you can illustrate the role feedback plays in customer retention. Did you know, 77% of consumers view brands more favorably if they seek out and apply customer feedback?
Next, help your team understand how UserVoice will not only make gathering and organizing feedback easier but will be worth their while:
- Adopting UserVoice means the days of living in spreadsheets and pulling feedback from multiple sources are gone.
- UserVoice organizes feedback and helps your team work toward product goals with less hassle and more vision.
- User feedback improves the experience of virtually every department. Product Managers will be able to hone in on which features to prioritize and spot emerging trends. Developers will have a clearer picture of what they should work on next and why. Marketing will understand how to brand feature requests for increased acquisition. Customer-facing teams will be able to better empathize with users and share projects underway that will meet their needs.
Relay these ideas to your team, and they’ll connect with your user feedback mission.
Plan Your Launch Campaign
Once you’ve gotten buy-in from your team, it’s time to plan your launch. To create a rock-solid UserVoice launch campaign, you’ll need to build your launch plan. We’ve found a few critical steps to help you focus your efforts, promote effectively, and stay on track toward your goals.
Align Goals With Trackable Metrics
Consider the outcomes you want your customer feedback to achieve. Along with streamlining feedback management, are you looking to boost customer satisfaction or retention? Promote new feature adoption? Or a combination of all three?
Once you settle on your goals, decide on the metrics you’ll need to keep track of your progress. Don’t try to measure everything under the sun—stick to what’s relevant to your goals. For instance, if you’re focused on customer retention, you might track customer lifetime value, customer retention rates, or repeat purchase rates.
Set Your Processes and Designate Roles
Think about who will be involved in receiving, managing, and prioritizing the feedback. Make sure each team has the appropriate level of access:
- For example, with *Admin access, operational managers can access the admin console (including the Idea Grid and analytics dashboards), public and private forums, capture feedback with the Contributor Sidebar or via the Idea Grid, set status updates, automate customer communications, and much more.
- Whereas contributors (Customer success, sales, etc.) can capture feedback on behalf of users with the Contributor Sidebar but cannot access the admin console.
Our overview of UserVoice Discovery is handy for bringing any team member up to speed—it’s perfect for product managers, engineers, execs, and operational managers. You can also share role-specific guides with your teams. We have guides available for:
Create a Big-Picture Timeline
When you build out your timeline, there are several questions to consider.
When would you like to go live with your team? Do you have a roll-out date in mind for your end users? How will you invite them to take part in the program?
We recommend going live after you’ve had sufficient time to train and prepare your team. Also, to get the ideas flowing, we suggest seeding your forum with ideas and importing any existing feedback (ahead of launch) as a great way to inspire end-users to provide feedback of their own. This template makes importing existing feedback simple.
After that, you’re ready to officially launch with your end-users, which means it’s time to think about how you’ll promote your program.
Include Specific Messaging in Customer-facing Communications
To keep your messaging streamlined and clear, we suggest including a few basics in every customer-facing communication.
An Overview of UserVoice
Quickly explain what UserVoice is and how it will help your team deliver more value (Scroll down for templates you can use to get started).
Then, share what users can expect after they’ve provided feedback and the steps you will take to keep them informed as their feedback moves through the product lifecycle. A strict timeline isn’t always practical, but general information about your workflow is helpful.
From there, break down how users can locate and use UserVoice. For example, will you be using the in-app widget and web portal?
Your goal is to make sure everyone comes to the table understanding the program basics and how to use it.
Decide Which Customer-Facing Channels To Use for Promotion
Once your launch plan is in place, the next step is to determine how you’ll promote your feedback program to your customers and which channels you’ll use (like email, social media, or webinars).
Remember, proactively promoting your new feedback initiative will help drive adoption.
Cast a wide net by using a variety of formats—written, video, or blended announcements are all great options. The goal is to reach as many people as possible—ideally, you’ll collect feedback from people in different roles with varying usage.
A word of caution: if you’re using videos to promote UserVoice, we recommend keeping them bite-sized. While we understand the urge to do a deep dive into UserVoice’s coolest features, keep updates short and sweet to respect busy schedules (and perhaps limited attention spans).
Customer Emails
Let existing customers know you’ve launched UserVoice (and can’t wait to hear from them) with an announcement email.
Explain that their feedback helps shape feature enhancements. We’ve got you covered if you're unsure what to say. Our copy-and-paste customer email template is a great starting point.
In your message, we suggest including:
- An announcement about your launch
- What the feedback program means for your users
- How they can get in touch
- How you’ll use feedback
Social Media
When customers have strong feelings about a company (good or bad), they often turn to social media to share what’s on their minds. Try leveraging your social channels to promote your new feedback program. Invite your customers to share their feedback in UserVoice for the fastest resolution.
You can also repurpose existing content (like information from emails, newsletters, and videos) to create these short and shareable social media suggestions.
Company Newsletters
An easy place to generate buzz (and announce your new feedback program) is your company newsletter. You already have the support of your subscribers, and ending your updates with a well-framed call to action can leverage that support.
Try something like this:
<<COMPANY NAME>> has paired up with UserVoice, a feedback platform that helps you:
- Share your new feature ideas
- Vote on other users’ feature ideas
- Stay up-to-date on our latest features and product roadmaps
We value you as our customer, and we’re always open to your feedback. Submit your thoughts and ideas <<here>>.
Your ideas go a long way in helping to shape our products. Once we receive your feedback, we’ll review it and take the appropriate action.
Webinars
Webinars offer a unique opportunity to do a live show-and-tell with your customers and prospects. Because they’re interactive by design, webinars allow you to have engaging conversations with your customers as you demo UserVoice. Try sharing your screen and walking your customers through how to share feedback through different channels in real-time.
Community Forums
If you’ve got a community forum, it’s an ideal place to share what you’re up to (and ask for help). You can also take advantage of forums by setting up a community team for user feedback. An announcement like this one should do the trick:
Hi, everyone! We've released a new feature: ______________, and would love to hear your thoughts.
We've teamed up with UserVoice, to collect your feedback and give you a dedicated place to:
- Share your ideas for new features
- Vote on ideas other users have shared
- Stay in the loop on our latest features and product roadmaps
Check out our idea forum to post your ideas or learn what others are saying. Your feedback helps shape the future of <<PRODUCT>>!
Try asking a group of power users to weigh in on new features and product updates to get good ideas rolling.
In-app Notifications
Another good place to announce your feedback program is in-app if you use a tool like Appcues for in-app communications. In-app announcements meet customers where they already are without disrupting their work.
Prospective Customer Communications
Lastly, don’t overlook prospective customers. Their feedback can give you clues about what leads to lost sales. Maybe your pricing was outside of their budget, or your competitors have a feature they need—either way, prospects have a unique perspective you won’t want to miss out on.
Reaching out to prospective customers to ask for feedback and share the news about your new feedback program shows that you’re a customer-centric company. Given that 90% of companies don’t actually respond to feedback, your customer-centric approach could be the reason customers choose you over a competitor.
Manage Your Feedback As It Comes In
By now, the feedback should be rolling in. We suggest keeping an eye on your program as you experiment with feedback methods. When you periodically check your progress, you can make adjustments and identify the promotion methods and channels that are the most effective.
Slack Notifications
These days, your team probably lives in Slack. UserVoice integrates into Slack workspaces, so your product and customer-facing teams can easily monitor incoming customer feedback and respond as needed.
If you prefer working on Microsoft teams, we've got you covered. UserVoice integrates with MS teams to offer the same user feedback features as our Slack integration.
Check In With Your Customers
Companies are constantly evolving—promotions and new jobs might mean information about your feedback program gets siloed over time.
Avoid this by sending the occasional reminder to your customers about where to leave feedback. (Pro-tip: including your UserVoice instance link in your email signature.)
Close the Feedback Loop
Regularly keeping in touch with your customers about their feedback is critical to keeping lines of communication open.
Yes, you’ll want to cover the basics, like acknowledging and thanking customers for leaving feedback—but you can use detailed follow-ups to make a lasting impression.
UserVoice allows you to update the status of ideas and suggestions so customers can see how they’re moving along. When customers can see the impact of their feedback, they’ll see value in sharing their thoughts in the future.
Introduce New Team Members to UserVoice
Just like you check in with your customers, you’ll need to check in with your team periodically. To prevent information silos and keep your team aligned on how you collect customer feedback, add UserVoice onboarding to your new employee training. Covering UserVoice in onboarding will ensure that all of your team members take a uniform approach to managing feedback.
To familiarize new team members with UserVoice, you can share a couple of basic overviews, like the UserVoice Discovery overview and the training curriculum for new admins. We also suggest live training sessions to cement team knowledge and get everyone comfortable with the platform. Depending on your company, this might look like a Zoom demo or a lunch-and-learn session.
At a minimum, we recommend touching on important concepts like the idea insights dashboard, how to prioritize feature requests, and how to connect with users and other internal team members.
Keep Your Momentum Going Post-launch
Once you’ve launched and your promotions are underway, you can breathe a sigh of relief—but the excitement isn’t over just yet. The next step is keeping your momentum going with active user engagement.
With UserVoice, you can build engagement by sending your users status updates. Let them know when something they’ve requested is in progress, in beta testing, or has officially launched. You can also connect with the customers who requested a specific feature to recruit beta testers, ask them for additional feedback, and to confirm your solutions work.
Managing feedback for continued user engagement boils down to communication. By keeping your users in the loop and letting them know their concerns are a top priority, you’ll foster a relationship based on continued feedback.
