A few days ago I decided to check up some tools for improving my project management efficiency and I stumbled upon a cool application called SharedPlan. After installing the free, lite version, and playing with it a bit, I found it great. However, from time to time I noticed a bug so I decided to drop it.

I then checked my emails and found the usual “thank you for trying our software, we’ll be happy if you can provide us with feedback” email from SharedPlan. So I decided to be a “good samaritan” and answered them back, describing the bug that I found. One hour later they answered, thanking me for providing them with feedback, and a proposal: tell us how you found the bug, and if we squash it, you’ll get a free license to our full product (worth $200).

So I did, and 4 hours later they answered: thanks to you we managed to find the bug and fix it! here’s your code for the free subscription.

Cool right?

Well, I’ll review the SharedPlan software when I get to know all of its features better, but here are some tips to take from this story into your feedback process:

1. Schedule your first “give us feedback” email to the time the user got your software/service + the time you estimate that she needs to get the first impression of it. You can even place links in the email for “I like it”, “I hate it”, and “I found a bug” for immediate response.
2. Response time. This is critical. Make sure to get back to the (potential) customer within 6 hours (or 12 hours max if her email was received during your off-working hours). Even if you’re still working on the bug, just keep in touch with her to let her know that you are taking care of it.
3. Take it personally. For example, if your customer wrote that she likes your service but since she lives in Canada she always needs to convert currencies, don’t just say “we currently don’t support it” but let her know how/if your next version will support it.
4. Reward. If your answer requires the customer to do something, make sure that you are giving her something in return. In my case it was a $200 worth of value license, but you can also reward by giving iTunes gift certificates, Pro Flickr accounts, etc. If you are in a critical phase in your product (like Beta), and you want to get as much feedback as you can, rewards is something that you should consider to be official (like “send a bug get a T-Shirt” competition).
5. Integrate the “report a bug / ask a feature / send us feedback” within your product. This little feedback box can make the difference.
6. Leverage from feedback to community. This requires a separate post but if you want to understand the power of it, remember what I wrote about how Skype got translated from English to most of the languages it has today, by the users, in 3 months!