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Ask HN: Do you find it challenging to talk to your users?

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Re: Ask HN: Do you find it challenging to talk to your users?

#41

Post by jason_zig »

As a solo founder I have a couple of startups[0] and I built Zigpoll[1] to help with this problem. It lets you embed a non-obtrusive micro-survey / contact us form directly into your website. You can use our javascript API to make it appear based on sign up, time on site, exit intent, etc... it's up to you. You could also email it out to your customers if you prefer.

Also I have to point out there are other competitors in this space you could also use like Drift, Intercom, or even an automated email flow with Calendly for example.

[0] https://www.jqbx.fm, https://www.roseandrex.com

[1] https://www.zigpoll.com

Re: Ask HN: Do you find it challenging to talk to your users?

#42

Post by jlund-molfese »

I've never worked with external stakeholders, but have worked on internal operations tooling for the past few years and found talking to end users very rewarding.

I try to focus on problems (the things they run into every day and it's easy for them to talk about to help you identify gaps in your understanding) more than my solutions (asking too many questions or presenting something complicated can be mentally exhausting). You can sometimes save weeks of work when you talk directly to end users and understand that something that was in your original requirements, isn't really necessary.

Re: Ask HN: Do you find it challenging to talk to your users?

#45

Post by cascom »

Slightly off topic, and talking to users is the first step, be careful what you wish for. As an example, I subscribe(d) to NYT Cooking, they solicited my feedback on the search functionality (which is broken - full on broken, search for omelette and only one of the first six results is for an omelette, filter for low carb, no omelettes come up, etc.) I got so pissed writing my review (realizing I was paying monthly for a broken service) and getting zero response after them soliciting my feedback I canceled my subscription…

Re: Ask HN: Do you find it challenging to talk to your users?

#46

Post by Shared404 »

brimble wrote: post #40
shalmanese wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People really don't have any passion for talking about your solution because they don't really care about you and you should take any discussion of solutions with a large grain of salt because customers are not PMs. But people are passionate about talking about their problems and that's where you should orient your discussions on. Don't ask about your product at all during PM interviews, simply try to understand the…

> The biggest mistake I see PMs make is coming in with an over optimism bias and assuming that your product must be top of mind for all users when the reality is that the most often scenario you discover from user interviews is that the problem you're trying to solve is of relatively minor importance to most people. You see this come through in products all. The. Damn. Time. Some PM, and probably one or more designer…

> Anything but expert and extremely tasteful efforts to improve on that, will just make it worse.

This is very important in my mind.

Frequently when people talk about mfing website or similar philosophies, you get response like "Well you can improve that in this very specific way". Yes. You can improve it. But think twice first, not everything is broken just because it hasn't been touched. And a lot is broken because it has.

Re: Ask HN: Do you find it challenging to talk to your users?

#47

Post by coder-3 »

scyzoryk_xyz wrote: post #14

From my experience working as a PM with a medical/educational/hardware/software product, I think everyone finds this process is extremely challenging. First surprising thing I learned is that users don't usually actually have the will to spend any amount of time giving feedback. But they will avoid admitting it. The second discouraging thing is that when you do get them to sit down and talk, you will find that they'r…

My experience has been very different. People have been quite happy to chat about their experience using the product and the pain-points uncovered were consistent across users.

In a nutshell, what we did was email users asking for a 30-45 minute remote interview in exchange for $50 gift card. We started the meetings letting the user know that there are no wrong answers, that it's quite informal and they can leave at any time. We then spent the first half of the interview finding out who the user is, what they do and how they use the product. The second half was spent uncovering pain-points and maybe even asking users to share their screen and show us.

We'd take notes during the interviews and then once we've done a few we'll collate the notes at which point the improvements to make to the product would become obvious.

Re: Ask HN: Do you find it challenging to talk to your users?

#48

Post by AmadsSalvage »

cascom wrote: post #45

Slightly off topic, and talking to users is the first step, be careful what you wish for. As an example, I subscribe(d) to NYT Cooking, they solicited my feedback on the search functionality (which is broken - full on broken, search for omelette and only one of the first six results is for an omelette, filter for low carb, no omelettes come up, etc.) I got so pissed writing my review (realizing I was paying monthly f…

This and some other comments definitely are reminiscent of the effect of the "Cahiers de doléances"[1][2], aka "Books of Grievances". Ahead of the outbreak of Revolution, King Louis XVI of France sent out a call for feedback from his people of all levels of society. He genuinely meant well, but largely it just got the people thinking about all the things that were wrong with society, which only fueled public anger in the face of the looming crisis and made thing worse! Eventually this anger would see the nation abandon the Ancien Regime in a similar manner - it was a "broken service" and they metaphorically "cancelled their subscription" to the system.

I think there's actually a lot of other lessons to be learned from this effort - anyone looking to try and gather feedback should look at how it went over in 1789 France.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cahiers_de_dol%C3%A9ances [2] https://alphahistory.com/frenchrevolution/cahier-peasants-me... An example Cahier

Re: Ask HN: Do you find it challenging to talk to your users?

#49

Post by Nathanba »

meristem wrote: post #28

You need to make it absurdly easy and in-flow. Otherwise you are stuck sending emails to users asking for feedback, and the return on those in my experience is below 4%. If what you want is to have a lengthier conversation please remember time is money--remunerate the user for their time helping you.

Ha, I've had two companies ask me for a 1h and even 2h(!) timeslot do discuss my feedback in depth. In return they'll give me a 20$ gift certificate. I actually worked for a competitor of them for a while, my feedback would have been insanely valuable.

Re: Ask HN: Do you find it challenging to talk to your users?

#50

Post by AussieWog93 »

I launched a crowdfunded product back in 2017 that has kept going for the past 5 years, and I've never had this problem at all.

Random people email me all the time (at least 3-5 times per week, even now) with information about bugs/feature requests, or just to say hi/thanks and show off their projects made with it.

Comparing my site (https://espotek.com) to yours, yours is much more "corporate" looking and doesn't explicitly invite contact.

I've seen other people advertising their CRMs and whatever in the comments, but perhaps it's just as simple as openly acknowledging that you're one guy, the business is your personal project and people shouldn't hesitate to contact you.

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