By: Cooper McGoodwin, Vice President of Product at Thnks
Collecting feedback is an integral part of building a better user experience, and remembering to share gratitude for clients that take the time to share reflections is extremely important. Whether their feedback is positive or negative, both help to improve your product for that client and others. Being willing to give constructive feedback shows that your client would like to see your product meet their needs rather than try to find another option. But we all know it can be tough finding the time to participate in surveys even when we have the best intentions. Gratitude can help support the feedback loop by showing how much responses mean to your team when it comes to creating a better product.
The keys to improving your user experience are to understand the needs of your clients, empathize with their pain points, and integrate feedback from interviews and surveys into your product development process. Gratitude is an important undercurrent in all of these strategies, but also tends to be overlooked by many organizations. In the User Experience world, your customers are the ones helping you uncover opportunities for improvement as well as identifying issues, then your internal teams help to make those improvements a reality. Building the trust in those relationships creates a more open dialogue, and gratitude is a great way to jump-start your relationship-building skills.
Here are a few of our favorite ways to use Thnks in the process of improving your user experience. All support building better relationships with customers both for the short and long term - key to understanding and serving your customers better.
Listen for cues - The best way to use Thnks is content-dependent, showing that you’re listening and care about what’s going on in your customer’s lives. The quick small talk that usually happens before a meeting or interview is the perfect situation to pick up on some subtle cues to create the most personalized gestures of gratitude. A great option to start with is with Thnks a Latte — it's one of our most popular options for a reason! You might pick up on the fact that a client has back-to-back meetings tomorrow, so your message can mention their busy schedule and help them to power through.
Never miss out on novelty - The goal of sending a Thnks is to surprise and delight the recipient, so taking advantage of unique situations is a great way to differentiate your organization from the competition. For example, when you receive an automatic out of office reply, read carefully instead of just skimming through and sending to trash. You might notice that the person you’re trying to reach is taking maternity leave or will be out of town for a honeymoon. Think of how great it would feel for them to come back with a Thnks in their inbox congratulating them on the life change and helping to ease them back into their work routine! Leveraging the power of those unexpected moments is a great way to build relationships and continue to generate feedback,
Mention the milestones - Milestones are important both internally and externally in your organization. Externally, sharing gratitude can help build better relationships with customers and internally, strengthen your team and encourage more work that goes above and beyond. With Thnks in particular, we actually send a Thnks on behalf of our CEO, Brendan Kamm, when a new user sends their first Thnks. This is a milestone people don’t expect to be noticed for, so being able to surprise and delight them in that way is a great opportunity to strengthen that relationship.
Interested in learning more? Sign up for a demo, or click here to learn more about expressing gratitude in business!