Using a feedback board can help the company promote brand loyalty, create new customers and maintain a customer centric product. Feedback boards act as a form of open communication between the company and customers. Customers currently using the product can discuss problems they have experienced, suggestions to improve the product and possible updates to make the product more accessible. In this article we’ll discuss feedback boards and how UserVitals can simplify the process of collecting, organizing and responding to feedback from customers. 

Why a Feedback board?

Businesses traditionally generate customer feedback in a number of ways. However, in today’s society, most of these styles are either ineffective or require large amounts of time and energy to retrieve minimal information. 

Email marketing, for example, would require the company to reach out to current customers, and request they fill out a survey or quiz. Unfortunately, without any incentive customers are unlikely to take the time to do the survey, restricting the flow of information. 

On a similar note, monitoring social media channels can effectively track conversations about the product. However, this process can be very time consuming and labour intensive, and can be ineffective if customers don’t speak about the product on social media.

Calling customers is effective when ensuring the product or brand is memorable; however, there are certain drawbacks. The use of customer service calls is both labour intensive and distracting; shifting focus from the product to the customer service provided. 

The option to use a combination of styles to gather feedback, though more beneficial than using just one, can still be a drain on the system as companies dedicate hours of work and energy to collecting information to get far less information than expected.

How to Use Feedback Boards in User Vitals

UserVitals acts as the perfect tool for collecting, organizing and presenting feedback to the customer. When a user creates a UserVitals account, their portal automatically creates access to their roadmap and the feedback provided by customers. 

Other applications like Slack, Gmail, Intercom and HelpScout can be integrated with UserVitals to help streamline the feedback collection process using your team’s existing tools. UserVitals allows businesses to effectively collect and manage the feedback they have received from various customer channels. On the other hand, it allows customers to comment on products to assist the company in making a better, more customer oriented product with the feedback they receive. 

What are the pros and cons of using a feedback board?

When using a feedback board there are three main benefits that help boost a company’s relationship with their customers. The first is a sense of customer loyalty, created by the response the company has to comments and suggestions made by customers. A quick and effective response will increase loyalty and can help create more conversation about the company’s product, possibly generating more interested clients. 

The second benefit is the environment a feedback board creates. It encourages clients to openly communicate with the business about what they enjoyed, disliked and any possible suggestions to help make the product more accessible or more effective. 

Using a feedback board also effectively streamlines the way a company receives feedback. This puts the company in a position to grow faster since a feedback board ensures instantaneous communication with customers and the ability to immediately address problems as they arise. 

There are also a few downsides to using feedback boards that cause some businesses to view them as unprofitable. The first concern most businesses have is whether or not they will receive quality feedback that will benefit their company. Businesses are concerned about having quantity over quality, proving the feedback board’s abundance of incoming feedback to be more work than help. This is especially true if an outpouring of feedback on the board causes delays in responses. 

Another concern businesses have is that their competitors will be able to see what customers are unhappy with and can adjust their product to fit what your customers need. Businesses worry a feedback board will benefit their competitors more than themselves. 

Finally, businesses tend to worry about disagreeing with customers or negative feedback. Since feedback boards are public, businesses are concerned about having a disagreement with customers on the boards since it may reflect poorly on the brand. In addition if repeated comments are made on a specific feature, it enforces the idea that the person who complains the most will receive the most help from the business. 

‍

On the positive side, these concerns can be dealt with if a business remains vigilant when responding to feedback. Utilizing UserVitals provides businesses with the tools to reduce the impact of unhelpful feedback, competitors capitalizing on product flaws and disagreements with customers. UserVitals would ensure customers receive responses, quickly allowing them to feel like they are being put first and that their concerns are taken seriously.Also, UserVitals promotes brand loyalty as the business moves forward to acting on customer feedback.

In addition, UserVitals would completely eliminate the first concern most businesses have; quality over quantity feedback. Feedback that is positive or not considered useful to the company can be responded to quickly and dispelled, thanks to the organization provided by the UserVitals platform. Furthermore, UserVitals grants your team access to adding the customer feedback, so you can choose which pieces of feedback are valuable to your product, and only add those. 

Creating your own Feedback Board

When businesses are creating their own feedback boards they must first determine what they are trying to measure. A few generic questions or forms of measurement to keep in mind when starting could be:

• What are common problems being reported on the feedback board?
• Is there a specific group (age, type of customer, etc.) that are having similar issues?
• Has there been minimal overall response from customers and why?
• What do people hope to get out of this product?

Next, a business must brainstorm ideas on how to manage said boards since feedback boards must be operated in both a systematic and effective way. A few basic ideas would be to allow customers to openly provide criticism on public feedback boards, using a moderated feedback board or ensuring limited voting on feedback boards. 

Allowing customers to comment on public feedback boards validates customer’s frustration or struggle if they are dealing with a common issue, creating a sense of community. In addition, users can suggest updates or request features via the feedback board to help better the product. 

Having a moderated feedback board allows the business to mediate the conversation and direct questions about the product. This ensures the company receives feedback about upcoming products and features as well as any aspect of the product they are concerned about via responses from customers.

Finally, ensuring feedback boards get individual pieces of feedback from the original sources. This not only provides more information about the kind of people from different parts of the world utilizing the product but also isolates the different ways people may be using said product. 

UserVitals makes creating and using feedback boards easier providing a more efficient way to both manage and respond to feedback. User Vitals also substantially reduces the number of possible issues that may arise from typical feedback boards. Using a platform like UserVitals causes less hassle for the business and less stress for the customers seeking help, creating a win-win situation for the company.