How to collect genuine user feedback on the experience process?

Talking to users/running user interviews is the gold standard for getting genuine user feedback. But, even doing that can result in findings that don't match a user's actual experience. What I've found is that whenever I ask for direct feedback from users they are socially conditioned to sugarcoat their experience because they don't want to hurt my feelings. To avoid this issue, I try to focus on having them describe how they actually use the product in their day-to-day life instead of asking things like, "what problems are you having with the experience?", "do you like the product?", "what can we do to make this better?", etc. In practice, this looks like asking, "tell me about the last time you used this product.", "tell me about how you were solving this problem before you had this product.", "tell me about the last time you were frustrated with this product.", etc. These type of questions help get them out of Q&A mode and into story telling mode, which tends to be more authentic, useful, and accurate. Once they're here, it's pretty easy to follow the conversation and ask them to elaborate on anything you think is worth digging into. One more hot tip, instead of asking people "why" try saying "how come" or "tell me more about that". Using "why" makes people defensive, which can really derail an interview session. Hope that helps!

Start by defining clear objectives and selecting suitable feedback methods such as surveys or user testing. Collect feedback at relevant touchpoints along the user journey and use open-ended questions to encourage detailed responses. Assure users of anonymity and confidentiality to foster honest feedback. Provide multiple channels for feedback submission, actively listen to users, and respond promptly. Analyze the feedback collected, identify patterns, and prioritize improvements. If you want to learn more about thus, I am hosting a webinar on 3rd of August, 2023, where this topic will be covered as well. The title of the webinar is "Startup - How to Build Your First MVP." Find my LinedIn details in my Product Hunt profile if you wish to sign up for the webinar and learn more! :)

Contextual and timely conversations are always best. Memories can be deceptive so the best time to understand what's working or not working about an experience is when they are using it or right after using it. That's why well-placed surveys or chatbots can provide such rich qualitative data that are grounded in the experience based on context. If neither of the two options is possible, and sometimes they're not for B2B enterprise customers, I used to provide my direct email so end users could always reach out and provide feedback to the PM and research teams. Dive in deeper to understand the WHY, not just the what or how something is happening. As Nick mentioned doing it thoughtfully becomes important for people to open up rather than feel judged. "Can you tell me more about the problem you're trying to solve?" Finally, ask for advice not just feedback. Advice gets people to look forward, whereas feedback is a look backward. A good way to do this is simply asking, "If you had a magic wand and could add or remove one thing, what would it be? Why?"

User interviews are a great place to start. Really do some work ahead of time to learn about asking the right questions and outline your goals ahead of time. Quant data is still important, but qualitative data from interviews will often give you a lot more context. In a past life, our team would come up with hypotheses around what is 'happening' based on the quant data we were getting. A lot of our interviews would be based on exploring or validating some of these hypotheses. We are building https://useorbit.io/ to make this a whole lot easier - so feel free to check us out.

User interview might be a good place to start or try to blend in your user groups

Marvelous!

Data may be affected by human factors and may not be true. We need to combine multiple variables to make a decision, which is a difficult task.

Collecting genuine user feedback, huh? Start with surveys - tools like SurveyMonkey or Google Forms are pretty handy. But also, don't underestimate the power of direct conversations.