Ask IH: My customers won't talk to me
Hello indiehacker community,
"talk to your customers" is probably the most frequent advice I hear in the indiehackers space to develop and grow a product. However it turns out to be quite difficult:
I launched a Shopify app (https://apps.shopify.com/custom-audience-sync) in January and had about 18 installs so far and currently 5 active customers. I am sending out personalised onboarding mails, asking for feedback, feature needs or the possibility for a small call, but never get any response.
How can I start a better dialog with my customers?
Make it worth their while. What are they going to get from providing you feedback? Any discount on your services maybe?
Yes, though about it, but at my price tag it’s maybe not much of an incentive.
I wouldn't assume that until you've tried it - taking your service from $120/y for no-contact customers to $60/y for monthly feedback or phone calls could be really interesting to your customers.
Are you following up 7 times?
Learn more about them via their email address. Look for their business website, look through their linkedin.
Sometimes you just need to know more about a person, their company, their business and you have natural connections you can discuss in an email followup.
Sometimes people are just busy. Perhaps you're asking too much in the email.
IF YOU really get no response at all.
Thank you for the advice, will definitely try what you suggest. Maybe you could expand on point 3?
Look at who your customers are. What is their profile? How big are they?
Find similar companies and offer your services.
Make case studies based on your current customers and share those.
20% is considered a high open rate for email (https://influencermarketinghub.com/email-open-rates)
If you're asking for your customer to dedicate time to providing unincentivized feedback, I wouldn't expect a response rate of higher than 0.5 - 2%.
Could you consider incentivizing feedback by offering a month free of your app?
Offer value to them.
You’re offering a service for Facebook ads. So ask them how their ads are doing and if they want a free review of their ads, and for you to give them some suggestions. They will guess you have some specialization in Facebook ads, so they’re probably happy to get that type of help, and to help you in return.
Right now your product is a utility product, the more utility you provide the more value and the more you can charge.
You can continue being a utility product but it will be hard for people to find you unless they have the exact problem you’re solving and are actively searching for a solution.
People like sharing their opinion, but they really like feeling like their thoughts are valued. Ask specific recommendation about your product, its features. Offer a reward for their feedback. This doesn't have to be a gift voucher but even an e-book will do.
There are services that allow you to carry out usability Tests. You can define a task that you want someone to complete, have a random person do it, and get a recording of the entire process.
Make mails short and precise.
Deliver value instead of consuming their time. (e.g. promo code, discount)
Maybe try out a cold-email SaaS and/or make sure your mails from your address are not considered to be spam. (maybe try a different one or connect your e-mail domain to a G-Workspace)
If you're asking for feedback during onboarding it's probably too early. I'd ask users once they have really used your app. Also, I think if you have 5 active customers - even if 1 of them would give you feedback it would mean that 20% of your users provide feedback which would be pretty high. What I mean is that you simply need to get more customers so the chance of receiving feedback also gets higher.
This is right, you need a bigger sample set, if you got feedback from 2 of them (40%) it wouldn't represent much of a consensus view of your offering anyway. There are 13 of your 18 who didn't go on to be one of the 5 active users - Direct personal emails to them asking for any feedback might be as informative as asking the 5 who did, just ask them why they DIDN'T keep using it or become active. You might have to really hunt them down, find their website, call them. If they are never going to become customers you arent going to damage anything by being a bit pushy and reaching out with a cold call.
Thanks, this makes sense - will give it a try.