Ever received feedback that simply said ‘Improve UX’? Frustrating, right? Here’s how to turn vague UX feedback into gold standard actionable insights for your products.
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Photo by Roger Starnes Sr on Unsplash
For five years in my previous product, I spent nearly half my workdays collaborating with customer support, diving deep into user problems. This was a deeply technical product, with a very niche user segment (SysAdmins), solving a very important problem for enterprises - securing corporate data on employee devices. So abstracting complex tech into usable UX and navigating generic feedback were everyday challenges.
Recently a CS evangelist manager in my circles had an UX Research question: ‘How do you collect quality insights from users who leave generic UX feedback?’ That got me thinking.
Here were my 5 rules of thumb to gather actionable insights.
1. Eat it while its hot
Users leave generic feedback because they could not articulate the pain they faced in the product better. No one will respond to follow-up emails asking for more details on a UX feedback they gave before a week. Even if they do, they will not be able to remember the specifics of their pain point.
2. Empathy is your best friend
Generic feedback often stems from user frustration or time constrains to explain the problem clearly. Try to start the response by empathising with any product keywords / clues they’ve given in the feedback.
“We understand navigating the “x module” of our product can be a bit challenging. Our design team is actively working on improving this area. We would like to understand your challenges to help our designers make this better.”
3. Good ol’ “know your audience”
Begin by identifying their user persona through background research from their website and past interactions. Start with a couple of open-ended questions to let them speak freely.
“I see you are from xyz business. How do you find our product useful?"
"Which features are most important for your workflow?”
Tailor questions to fit the context of your product.
4. Make them feel they are VIPs
Signal early that our product team—managers, designers, or engineers—is eager to gather insights directly from their experience. This shows we value their input.
“Our product team would love to get on a call with you to better understand your business and the challenges you face. This will greatly help us improve our product.”
5. Dig for the ‘Why’
When they do get back on email or on a call, build on their answers. Use methods like the 5 Whys to dive deeper into their problem, uncovering the real intention behind their actions. Sometimes you may need to complement their answers with educated guesses to fill the gaps.
As a customer-facing rep, using these to gather user insights will help your product team with high-quality actionable UX feedback.