The feedback problem; and first podcast appearance

Hello!

This week I have a podcast appearance to announce, a stellar Amazon review to share, and my thoughts on why it is so hard to get feedback for your product - and some creative ways that might work.

Kill the HiPPO arrives in Singapore

Kill the HiPPO is available in just about every Amazon regional site—except for Amazon Singapore, and I have no idea why. My co-writer, Siew Ann Tan, lives in Singapore, so she was unable to get author copies of her own book!

I ordered some additional author copies myself, and sent them to Singapore via old-fashioned post. They finally arrived, as Siew Ann announced on LinkedIn with this very Singaporean photo:

First Kill the HiPPO podcast appearance

I had the pleasure of being interviewed about Kill the HiPPO on the We Not Me podcast. The podcast is hosted by Dan Hammond and Pia Lee from Squadify, who feature in Kill the HiPPO chapter 9: A Tale of Two HiPPOs.

Dan and Pia ask excellent questions, and the production values are extremely high, making this a very listenable introduction to Kill the HiPPO.

From the show notes:

​Listen here.

Mission: 20 reviews

Speaking of ignoring requests for feedback, I’ve bought hundreds of books from Amazon, and I don’t think I’ve ever left a review. It turns out this is common behaviour. Amazon reviews are important for authors but hard to get.

In my last newsletter, I wrote that I’m contacting anyone I know personally who bought the book, asking them to leave a review. This approach is working; some new reviews appeared this week, including this effusive one from Michael:

The feedback problem...

...is this: Feedback is vitally important for honing and polishing your product, and for ensuring you are building something people actually want. And yet it so hard to get anybody to give you feedback.

You’ve almost certainly encountered this while building your software product. You prompt users over and over to give you feedback, via in-app popups, in your email onboarding sequence, and pleas in your “what’s new” newsletter - and they get ignored.

The problem is partly that we get asked too much for feedback. Every interaction with a business these days seems to result in a “we want your feedback” email. So we’ve learnt to ignore the requests; they are mere background noise. As a consequence when you and I ask our customers for feedback, our requests are also dismissed as noise.

Here are some things that help solve the feedback problem:

• Write directly as the founder when asking via email for feedback. In my experience, people are far more likely to respond to these emails if the founder asks. Is it because they feel flattered? Or they feel the feedback is more likely to be listened to? Or they simply like speaking to the “top”? I don’t know, but in my own business, we get a far better response this way.
• Write 1-on-1 to relevant customers, asking for feedback on a specific feature. The more personal your request for feedback, the better the response rate. The more specific your request, the better the response rate. Combine these two for an awesome response rate.
• Ask at the tail end of customer interviews. When I’m interviewing a customer on a video call, I end with a direct request for feedback about what we can improve. This approach always gets some good feedback, usually on the small pain points that stop my product from being as awesome as it can be.
• Seek out opportunities for in-real-life chats. Getting to events or meetups where your customers are is gold. Whenever this happens to me, I come away with pages of notes of customer feedback. There’s something qualitatively different about real-life chats in an informal setting to get people to tell you what they really think about your product.

What works for you for getting customers to give feedback? Let me know so I can try it out!

Until next time,

Steve McLeod
​​​killthehippo.com​​

PS: If you’ve bought Kill the HiPPO, have you written a review yet?