3 Apps to Monitor Customer Feedback
Customer feedback is a crucial part of monitoring how your app is doing in the wild. However, unless you glue yourself to your computer, you will not be able to satisfy every feature request or fix every bug the day it’s found; you will have to work at it. The more streamlined the process is, the easier it will be for yourself (or your development team) to add more features and speed up debugging periods. Below, are three popular options that several big titles use.
1. Zendesk
Zendesk is inspiring the help desk 2.0 movement through a focus on enlightened customer support. By leveraging the benefits of Web-based communications and social media, Zendesk extends good help desk karma to any company looking to offer professional-grade support service with very little effort. For nearly two years, Zendesk has helped companies large and small move their help desk and customer support operations to the Web.
Notable Clients
Twitter, MSNBC, Yammer, Books-A-Million, Scribd, DeviantArt, Viddler, Slide Rocket, and Fuel Brand Network.
Since Fuel Brand Network uses Zendesk, I personally have had experience with it and I can tell you firsthand that the software is awesome. It organizes everything in an Inbox layout and sends you an e-mail when you are sent a request/bug/feature/contact. The best part of the app is that it allows you respond right from your original Inbox. This feature really comes in handy when you see a response that requires an immediate answer. Zendesk also recently integrated with Basecamp, which makes this program even more awesome.
Pricing
2. User Voice
Your customers have great ideas. Are you ready to listen?
Uservoice communities are the easiest way to turn customer feedback into action:1. Share ideas.
2. Vote up the best.
3. Respond, implement & repeat!
Notable Clients
Nike, Microsoft, Mint(financing), AMC Theatres, PostitScience, Zappos
Pricing
3. Get Satisfaction
Get Satisfaction is a direct connection between people and companies that fosters problem-solving, promotes sharing, and builds up relationships.
Get Satisfaction is open, transparent, and free. Tens of thousands of companies use this neutral space to support customers, exchange ideas, and get feedback about their products and services. Everyone is invited and encouraged to participate.
Notable Clients
12 Seconds, TechCrunch, MySpace, psdtuts, Sun Microsystems, Tweetdeck, Urban Dictionary, Zynga, Sony BMG Music Entertainment.
Pricing
What do you use?
This is just a slim selection of customer monitoring software. What do you use to track what your users are saying?
Chad Engle is the Editor of Fuel Your Apps. He is a fulltime designer, who lives, breathes, listens , eats, tweets , connects & consumes all that is creative & app related. He is a caffeine addict and likes long walks on the beach. Follow him on twitter at@chadengle and @fuelyourapps
Grab the Feed
Zendesk might be the best, but it’s expensive. I created my own feedback management system that is fairly simple and very useful. Uservoice and GetSatisfaction are the same product to me, and I don’t like the big buttons they provide, and it doesn’t fit my team’s customer relashionship policy : we don’t want all feedbacks to be publicly displayed. That’s a dealbreaker.
Thats a good point Ben. Not all feedback needs to be displayed publicly especially if you don’t want it this way. I think thats awesome that you came up with your own feedback system. These are just 3 common ones that I highlighted. Did you try any others out before you broke over and made your own?
Well I’ve been trying Uservoice.com for a small project, but didn’t get much satisfaction out of it. I just subscribed to Zendesk, I’ll see what they have to offer…
@Ben, actually on Uservoice you can just setup private forums there is no need for things to be publicly displayed. You could then give access to select people using our SSO system.
As for the big buttons you can just attach the widget to any link on your page, or if you don’t want to use the widget then simply add a link to the forum itself.
Awesome Scott!
Thanks for the inside tip on the fact that you can make it private. That’s a really great feature.
As a user, I am definite cheer leader of social feedback forums like Get Satisfaction, but I have checked out Zendesk as a one-on-one support/request tracking tool and it seems to cost an awful lot for really not very much at all (compared to other similar products).
It is not a serious business tool, but I can see the attraction of the cheaper “Solo” offer for the trendy webapps of today.
Peter I agree. I think both have a time and place. I do think the options for most of these resources are expensive for app companies that are just starting or if they are one to two person companies. I think it aids in the fact of collecting the information but its not a necessity.
Great comments so far. I’d be interested to know what other people use. Personally I love using Zendesk for the private features and the ability to assign emails to agents. It works for FUEL, however may not be the right fit for smaller outfits. We currently manage 15+ agents with so many emails a day I’m not sure I’d be able to live without it!
As for Get Satisfaction, that’s a great product as well, however currently we don’t have open forums. I’ve never used user voice.
When I was looking for a simple customer feedback app for my company I had the same problems as Ben and Peter – the more powerful apps, such as Zendesk, are incredibly expensive for small to medium sized startups and we were uncomfortable with the way Get Satisfaction felt like an unofficial forum (if you didn’t want to fork out $899/month!).
It was important to us that we our support forums featured our own branding, domain name and support for an FAQ or knowledge base section. Nothing on the market seemed to do all of this for a reasonable price. So, in response, we decided to build our own user feedback and support app. We’ve recently made this available for third-party companies to use at http://hydrogenapp.com.
Thanks for that link. So what I have gathered so far is that if one of these companies would make a good, affordable low-midrange product they would clean up. Its interesting that part is over looked.
Thanks for the link… is it the same as http://www.3apps.se ?
Your welcome. I don’t think its quite the same. I can’t really read it nor can google seem to translate it.
thankyou lots, I must comment that your website is amazing!