You will not find a single successful startup that hasn’t paid extreme amount of attention to what users say.
Success of an app is always closely related to how well the founders can communicate with customers. Sometimes it’s not only about listening, but also speaking about your vision. But only the true maestros like Steve Jobs know how to communicate their own vision, while we ordinary people have to listen to our clients and learn to ask the right questions
1. Communicate with users directly!
You, as the creator of the service, must conduct surveys, conduct conversations with your users personally.
Don’t outsource the interviewing of your users and other organizations. You, as a leader or CEO of a company, should take feedback directly. This will not only increase user loyalty to you, but also naturally increase the efficiency of communication.
2. Be interested in users’ lives, not your application!
When you take feedback from your users, in any case, do not extol your own service yourself. They don’t need to sell what they have already bought. This approach can only push them away.
Ask them how your app helps them in life. Find out what they do, in what conditions they live and work, what interests they have. Knowing all this, it will become easier for you to understand which of all network users is your potential client.
Also, after a more in-depth analysis of who uses your service, it will be easier for you to understand what exactly needs to be improved in it and how to develop it.
3. Talk about specific things, not about what may happen someday!
You don’t need to ask your users how they would react if your application was somehow different. You have a specific ready-made service with an already existing interface and functionality. The user is familiar with him and he already has an established opinion on all this. Ask your users why they decided to use your application.
You, as an interviewer, need to find out from the user the whole path that led him to this very problem, because of which he is now using your application. Determine the user’s motivation to use your particular service.
Finally, ask the user how they solved their problem before they started using your service. This will help you understand the value of your application.
4. Talk less, listen more!
You do not need to describe all the advantages of your application in front of your users – they already use it!
You need to build the dialogue so that the user tells you as much as possible about himself. Be a subtle psychologist. Ask him questions that will lead him to effective communication. You can read them in the article “5 Effective User Survey Questions”
Be sure to take notes when polling your user, so that when further processing information, come from private to general.
The essence of an effective user interview is to get as much of the information you need as possible from the user you are interviewing. This data will further help you improve your service, your marketing strategy and further understand the positioning of your service.
The article is based on the video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MT4Ig2uqjTc. The speaker is Eric Mijikowski who is a partner at Y Combinator, founder of Pebble Technology.
