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As you prepare to develop the latest feature for your SaaS product, you’ve already passed through the idea stage, gained stakeholder approval, and even created a prototype. Now, it’s time to validate your product to ensure it aligns with your users’ needs. How can you do this effectively? By seeking user feedback.

Validating through customer feedback directly guides your team toward understanding what your users truly require. However, the specific questions you pose will influence the insights you receive. So, what are the “right” questions to ask?

The most effective user feedback questions prompt your customers to reveal their pain points and demonstrate how they intend to utilize your features. Gathering precise, detailed responses to your most vital inquiries helps you align with your users’ needs. This alignment is key to creating a more valuable product.

User feedback significantly impacts your product’s success. While gathering user feedback is a crucial step in product validation, merely soliciting user opinions may not suffice to guide your team. The manner in which you frame your questions matters. When you ask questions designed to elicit clear, actionable responses, feedback becomes a direct line to your customers—their problems and preferred solutions. Without sufficient knowledge of your customers’ needs, your new product feature won’t enhance their overall experience.

To obtain the most valuable insights, it’s essential to ask the right questions while adhering to best practices:

1. Encourage honesty: Avoid leading questions that may yield biased information. Instead, request candid responses, even if they’re negative.
2. Be clear and concise: Formulate concise questions, as extra details can confuse users and affect response quality.
3. Address one point at a time: Maintain focus on a single topic to ensure users can provide feedback without getting sidetracked.
4. Allow for diverse answers: Include an “other” option in multiple-choice survey questions.
5. Incorporate open-ended questions: Provide participants with an opportunity to express their thoughts in their own words.

By following this process, you’ll be able to create customer-centric products that foster customer loyalty and retention. Concentrate your questions on critical aspects you aim to validate, such as whether customers are using a feature in the intended manner. Design your feedback surveys and engage respondents in a way that centers on these pivotal questions, enabling you to gather the necessary metrics for advancing product development.

Exploring Your Target Market and Uncovering Pain Points

When you’re developing a feature that addresses new user challenges or venturing into a different market, conducting market research to understand your target audience’s pain points is crucial. The questions you ask can guide your development process. You can incorporate these questions into a survey, typically using multiple-choice format, or pose them as open-ended inquiries during interviews or focus groups.

1. Tell Us About Your Job Role, Industry, and Company Size.

Gathering demographic information enables you to compare different user segments when analyzing user feedback. For instance, someone in sales won’t utilize your product in the same way as someone in customer success. Ask about their job title, industry, and responsibilities.

2. How Do You Currently Accomplish Your Tasks?

Inquiring about users’ current habits provides insight into how they address challenges, helping you pinpoint their pain points. It validates your understanding of their current actions and reveals opportunities for your product to offer more efficient solutions.

For example, if you’re developing a new feature for a budgeting tool that allows users to directly upload receipts, understanding their current expense-tracking process can help streamline their steps. Do they manually input data and keep scanned receipts as backups? Can you simplify the process by automation?

3. What Challenges Do You Encounter During Task Completion?

This question provides valuable insights into user needs, as it directly highlights their pain points. When users express that their current receipt input process is “too time-consuming,” it signals an opportunity to develop a quicker solution.

4. What Aspects Do You Appreciate or Dislike About Your Current Process?

This inquiry helps identify specific areas where your product can deliver value to users. If a participant uses a competitor’s product, it’s also an excellent way to uncover weaknesses—what is lacking in the competition’s offering that users wish they had?

Effective Customer Feedback Questions for Actionable Insights

These questions delve into people’s opinions about your specific feature, providing valuable insights into customer sentiment. If feedback indicates that users don’t find the feature useful or valuable, you can use this information to drive improvements.

5. User Feedback Question: What Are Your Expectations for This Feature?

Inquire about your users’ expectations for the feature to ensure alignment with your description and marketing efforts. First, describe the product feature to your respondents, offering necessary context if surveying those outside your existing customer base. Then, pose an open-ended question about their expectations.

It’s vital that users have a clear understanding of how your feature addresses their needs. If clarity is lacking, consider revising your explanation. Aim for a description that is easily comprehensible, not overly technical, and informative without being vague.

Tip: If achieving this balance proves challenging, UserVoice Validation can assist.

6. User Feedback Question: What Do You Like Most About This Feature? What Do You Like Least?

Directly inquire about your users’ preferences, pinpointing which components or functions of the feature align with their needs. In surveys, format this as multiple choice, including an “other” option with an open-ended comment box. For interviews and focus groups, pose this as an open-ended question, with room for follow-up on why respondents favor one feature over another.

An alternative survey format is a rank-by-choice question, listing potential features and asking users to rank them by preference.

7. User Feedback Question: How Would You Feel if This Feature Were Discontinued?

Developed by Sean Ellis, author of “Hacking Growth,” this question assesses whether your feature has achieved product-market fit. If at least 40% of customers would be very disappointed if your product feature were discontinued, it signifies its true value.

When formatting this question, provide answer options such as:

• Very disappointed
• Somewhat disappointed
• Not disappointed
• I don’t use this feature

To gain the best insights, involve customers familiar with your product feature. Ellis also recommends segmenting responses based on usage frequency and recency.

8. User Feedback Question: How Do You Envision Using This Feature?

You can use another formulation like “How Would You Use This Feature?” Directly asking this question can unveil disparities between your intended use of the feature and how potential users perceive it. If your intended use lacks clarity, consider refining your description.

In User Feedback Questions to Validate Your New Feature Ideasurveys, format this as a multiple-choice question with options for:

• “Not applicable—I would not use this feature”
• “Other,” with an open-ended comment box

During interviews or focus groups, present it as a two-part question: “Would you use this feature? How?”

9. User Feedback Question: Would You Like to Receive Updates About This Feature’s Release?

Incorporating an opt-in into your feedback-collection process creates a contact list of prospects eagerly anticipating the feature’s release. These prospects are already acquainted with your feature and enthusiastic about it.

This question functions as a yes-or-no query in surveys, focus groups, or interviews. Include an opt-in checkbox in an online survey or a section in your questionnaire for respondents to share their email addresses.

Tip: If your respondents reside in the European Union, ensure compliance with GDPR data protection requirements.

If the feature you are testing is product-defining, the first of its kind for your product, and has a significant value proposition, I would recommend asking a different question: “Would you buy this product?” And if a person says yes, it would be beneficial to ask for them to confirm their choice with a financial commitment. This is indeed a valuable method for validating your product-market fit.

10. User Feedback Question: Do You Have Any Additional Comments or Suggestions?

Concluding with an open-ended question like, “Do you have additional comments?” offers users a final opportunity to address topics not covered in the survey or interview. You may uncover entirely unique insights, including suggestions for additional functionality your team hadn’t considered. Another interpretation of this question is, “Would you like to share anything else, or have we missed something?” In my experience, this has often been a crucial question because it’s where users would start talking about everything under the sun, often highlighting narrower issues, some of which I couldn’t have imagined. These sometimes led to further research and new ideas.

If you are conducting this feedback user research in a written format through a survey form, it’s advisable to make this question optional. Doing so will help prevent any impact on response rates, as some participants may choose not to provide comments.

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Continue Seeking Opportunities to Assess Customer Experience Even with the right validation questions, it’s essential to consistently gauge customer satisfaction levels and ensure a positive user experience. Look for chances to gather existing customer feedback alongside surveys, focus groups, and interviews. Continuously address your customers’ pain points to keep your product team aligned in delivering the best possible product.