We have come to place so much emphasis on data and patterns. While data from a large number of folks can tell us a great deal, it cannot tell us everything. Large datasets lack individual context. The general assumption we make about product feedback is that we need to approach specific people and ask for specific information. Keeping our ears to the ground and getting a bird’s eye view of the landscape are both equally important.

When it comes to product feedback, we tend to focus on creating star ratings or a low barrier form. We prefer close-ended questions rather than open comments such as: how would you rate our service? What can we improve about our website? Would you recommend us to a friend?

The missing link I see with this approach is that it helps in confirming our existing assumptions, rather than giving us new insights. It can give us a general health check or a pulse of the consumer sentiment, but doesn’t usually add any other value. I almost always give a four- or five-star rating in every feedback form. This is not because I was wowed by the product or service, but because I don’t want to answer a follow-through comment box that pops up if I rated anything less than three. I really don’t have the inclination to comment.

So, even when, say, an e-commerce brand forces a feedback form on the segment like me (who belong to the largely indifferent/silent customer group) the responses they get may not be reflective of the underlying indifference. The indifferent consumer may not even report small lags in product experience. The broken product experience may add to the indifference, but it is not enough to push the indifferent consumer into even making a product complaint.

If the product service is really bad and may cost the consumer money, or a loss of data, or an infringement on privacy, then the indifferent/silent consumer will speak up. Unfortunately, that is exactly when businesses make it harder for us to reach their customer support. Support lines put you on hold, you have to replay your experience to seven different support assistants, and so on. Yet you receive no follow up calls and so on. The influential, but so far indifferent, consumer can then resort to an outrage on social media and cause damage to the brand image.

The threshold of tolerance for the broken product experience depends on existing alternatives and switching costs. I have often heard product teams come up with a diktat that we should always ask for minimal information from our consumers. It is harder for us to automatically process open comments. So, we choose close-ended questions and to-the-point, short feedback forms, that can give us data which can be sliced and diced. This is because we assume that consumers don’t have the time to write down feedback. We feel that consumers are doing us a favor by giving us feedback. We cannot infringe on their time. We have to ask for minimal information. We have to ask for it at the right moment, and, if needed, we have to offer them incentives to share information with us. So, is this always true?

In a B2C market offering a low-cost, fast-moving product, saturated with competing products, and with very low switching costs, the consumer is spoilt for choice. The tolerance for a broken product experience can be very low. Retail e-commerce apparel websites in India, for instance, are dime a dozen and switching costs are nonexistent. Pretty much every brand offers the same experience, so loyalty is also nearly nonexistent. Asking your consumers for even a small bit of information, or to take an extra step without demonstrating a value, or offering a cookie in return, will be futile.

However, this strategy isn’t necessarily true for a legal firm offering niche consulting services in corporate legal affairs. A B2B offering, like this, might require even potential leads to fill out detailed forms, and offer much more information and face-to-face meetings before they are even considered a qualified lead. The value offered by the legal consulting firm is very high. The chances of finding an alternative in that niche space could be much lower. Conversion cycles would be much longer and could run into months. Both parties, the firm and the corporate, would have to engage in a much higher level of information exchange before they close the deal.

The amount of effort put in by both parties itself makes it so much harder for the parties to break the deal. There is a lot at stake. Unless there is a significant breach of trust, switching costs would be too high, and would be a deterrent. In such cases, feedback cannot be a star rating form! There is no risk in asking for detailed information or having a personalized conversation about feedback and customizing the experience. This will be perceived as a value, rather than an intrusion. So, we need to understand the position of our product in the market, available alternatives, the perceived value of our product in the eyes of the consumer, switching costs, and so on.

Let’s not take a generic, run-of-the-mill approach, without business or market context. Some aspects to definitely consider when asking for any information from the customer are as follows:

Also, standard data analysis must be built into the product, and not left for the interpersonal feedback process to fill in. Demographic data (profile, region, and language), usage patterns (peaks, buying patterns, and frequent uses), drop off rates, retention rates, and so on, can easily be captured. They should serve as supplementary information that can help us to arrive at the root cause for an insight that we have gathered from a deeper consumer feedback.

The data can also potentially expose gaps. We may be able to find that we receive feedback from a certain segment of our customers. Other cohorts may not be sharing feedback with us. The same can be said for customer complaints. We need to look not just at the data we have but also take a step back and look at who is missing in our feedback data. This, once again, could present an opportunity for us to improve our product experience or product functionality, but only if we manage to discover and engage the silent customers: