Kelly Mason

In researching techniques for gathering user feedback on marketing software tools, people seem to agree on many things.  They agree on the importance of gathering the feedback.  They agree on the importance of implementing changes based on the feedback that is received, and they agree that the feedback should be widely distributed throughout the company. 

One thing that people don't agree on is how to go about gathering that user feedback.   Companies have different goals, and different customers with different needs.  Therefore their methods for gathering that feedback can vary widely.

Our initiative right now is to figure out which methods of gathering user feedback on our ad builder software work best for us and I'm going to use a blog series to track our efforts.  In my first blog on the subject, I showed you UserTesting.com. 

While there is something to be said for hitting the pavement and seeking out the feedback, it may not be necessary in every case.  People want to provide feedback, and if you make it easy for them, you may be surprised and how much feedback comes right to you.  Insert Kampyle.

This program provides us with a ready-made, customizable feedback tool which we were able to put right on our ad builder software.  With one click, users have the ability to provide us any level of feedback, from clicking on a smiley face or scowl face to represent their general mood while on our site, to typing up detailed questions/frustrations/compliments.

Another big question that follows this effort is what to do with that feedback once we have it...but that is a whole separate blog.  However, Kampyle helps us move towards that by not only providing the specific feedback, but by bucketing and summarizing that feedback for us in a meaningful way.  We can track our 'grade' as a site and then move towards improving that grade. 

We're realistic, and we know that not everyone will provide feedback.  The down side is that this is likely still a fairly small subset of the entire user base. And from what we've found so far, similar to the user base who call the support line, that small subset is typically the most frustrated with our ad builder software.  But you know what?  That's a good thing!  This tool is for those people that may have something to offer and feel invested in their local marketing software tool, but aren't inclined to pick up the phone - this is the easy to use, non-committal way to provide valuable feedback.  So while it's still a limited customer base, it just got a little wider and we'll take it.  In fact, from February 4, when we launched the new tool, to today, we have 25 pieces of feedback.  It doesn't seem like much until you think about the 25 phone calls that we didn't have to make.