Common Mistakes in Designing Feedback Forms for SaaS

Customer Feedback fuels growth, innovation, and customer satisfaction for any SaaS business. And to collect valuable customer data, you need to design error-free Feedback Forms for SaaS. 

With the increase in the competition in the market, companies have realized the importance of collecting SaaS Feedback. However, designing effective feedback forms is an art that many SaaS companies struggle with. From cumbersome questionnaires to vague prompts, common mistakes in designing feedback forms can hinder valuable insights. 

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The success of a survey depends on the survey form that you design to collect surveys. The survey must be effective enough to motivate the users to share what they have in their minds. In this article, we will discuss some common mistakes that companies make while designing Feedback forms for SaaS and then suffer the consequences in the form of low responses and inaccurate feedback. We will explore the mistakes and also learn the steps you need to follow to avoid such mistakes. Let’s get started!

Let’s learn more about these mistakes and how you can avoid them.

1. Creating Long Surveys

Creating surveys that are lengthy and consume much of your respondents’ time is one of the biggest mistakes you can make while designing your feedback forms for SaaS. Without no one having the time to sit and fill out field after field, a lengthy survey for SaaS users is bound to be left incomplete.

Remember that your users aren't obliged to respond to your surveys. So, make the few minutes that they are willing to spare count. Sending long surveys will only reduce your survey response rate as the users will either not take the survey or will get frustrated and leave it in between.

How to Avoid this Mistake?

Instead of creating long survey forms, a better way is to create and share microsurveys to collect Customer Feedback.

Microsurveys are short and context-specific surveys that don't consume much of the respondents' time. These surveys ask specific questions about the particular touchpoint where your customers are in their product journey. The users can easily fill up these survey forms within seconds, and thus you can avoid the problem of survey abandonment or half-filled data collection forms.

2. Using Technical or branded Language

Using highly technical or branded language or office jargon is another common mistake that affects the survey results. Some words may be common for you as per your industry, but when you are dealing with customers, especially B2C customers, it is highly advisable not to use technical terms or jargon that are hard to understand for your users. Even if you are dealing with B2B customers, it is not necessary that the terms you use in your organization are used in the client company.

Using such language will either lower your response rate or will make your survey results inaccurate, as users would be responding as per their own understanding, which may or may not be the same as you think.

How to Avoid this Mistake?

When designing survey questions, it's important to keep in mind that not everyone is familiar with technical language, office jargon, or brand-specific terminology. To ensure accurate responses from a diverse audience, strive for simplicity and clarity in your questions. Ask in a way that anyone can easily understand and respond to.

3. Not Using Logics in the Feedback Form for SaaS

Imagine somebody asking you whether you like ice creams or not. You respond that you don’t like them. Then he asks which flavor of ice cream you like. How would you feel? Will that make any sense? Of course not!

The same is with your surveys when you make the mistake of not using logic in them. Not using proper logic makes your surveys sound illogical, forcing the users to leave midway. Even if they answer them, it will surely not be an accurate answer if the question itself is wrong as per the logic.

How to Avoid this Mistake?

To avoid this, you must add logic to your surveys and make your survey design dynamic. By following the best practices for survey logic, you change the questions, add skip questions, and more features to make your surveys mold as per the user responses. The solution is to use effective Survey Software that helps you design dynamic surveys for the users. The survey tool you use should have the features like Skip Logic, Hide Logic, and Redirection so that it presents the right questions before the users.

4. Being Impersonal

Studies suggest that around 99% of the marketers agree that personalization has a strong positive impact on customer relationships.

Being impersonal is another common mistake that companies make while designing feedback forms. When it comes to feedback forms, personalization makes your surveys conversational and helps to engage the users more. 

How to Avoid this Mistake?

Always include personalization when designing your feedback forms. Add the users’ first names in the message that invites them to take the survey. using Custom Variables or Contact Variables. Moreover, when you are asking about users’ experiences of using your product and its features, try including names of the particular features and plans that they are using. This gives a personal touch to your surveys and helps drive more User Engagement and, thus, a better survey response.

5. Asking Leading Questions

Asking leading questions is one of the biggest mistakes you can make while designing your surveys. Leading questions are those that lead to a certain answer, like ‘ How good was your experience with our product?”. This question leads to an answer that the user’s experience was good. However, what if their experience wasn't as good? What if they faced an issue that they want to highlight?

The right question should be, “How was your experience with our product?”.

How to Avoid this Mistake?

Always ask simple and crystal clear questions from users, and never include leading questions in your feedback forms to avoid survey bias.

6. Asking Double-barreled Questions

Asking double-barreled questions is another significant mistake that needs to be avoided while designing your surveys. Double-barreled questions are those that ask two questions in one question, where the answer can be different for both.

For instance, a question like ‘ How did you find the speed and design of your product?” The users’ experience with the speed of the product can be different from the design of the product, so it is wrong to ask about both of them in one question. Rather, there should be two different questions asking about the experience with speed and the experience with the design of the product.

Double-barreled questions will only create confusion for the users, and it can even irritate them, thus leading to an inaccurate survey response or a lower response rate on the surveys.

How to Avoid this Mistake?

Design your questions in a way that no question focuses on collecting feedback about one particular aspect rather than covering multiple aspects in a single question. Use Survey Software that provides effective, ready-to-use survey templates containing questions that are unbiased and clear to understand for the users.

7. Using One Language for All

If you have users from various origins and backgrounds with different languages, using one language for all can prove to be a significant mistake in designing your surveys. After all, how will the users respond to the surveys if they don’t understand the language you are using in the survey? And when they will know a little bit about the language, this can make them misunderstand the questions and select the wrong answer, which will again affect the accuracy of the survey results.

How to Avoid this Mistake?

The right solution is to use such a Feedback tool that allows you to create multilingual surveys i.e., surveys that are visible to the users in their own language.

8. Not Using CX Metrics

Customer Experience Metrics are a great way to collect Customer Feedback and measure User Satisfaction and loyalty in a simple and quick way through short surveys. Most feedback surveys are based on measuring the experience and satisfaction level of the users. In such surveys, not using CX metrics can be called a mistake.

CX metrics like NPS, CSAT, and CES are super effective in measuring loyalty, satisfaction, and users’ perceived efforts to get a job done. These metrics also help you track the actual position of your company in the market. Ignoring these important metrics is not a wise decision when you are designing feedback forms.

How to Avoid this Mistake?

You should use a good survey tool that helps you easily measure these metrics and provides you with ready-to-use metric surveys to collect feedback.

9. Not Giving Open-ended Space

Collecting Customer Feedback is a way to give your users an opportunity to vent out their feelings and share what they have in their minds about their experiences with your products and services. Although, it is always advisable to include closed-ended questions to make your surveys easy and short. However, the users may need an open space to share their real insights. When you don’t give them an open space to share their feelings, they will vent out their feelings, especially about the bad experiences, either on social media or through word of mouth.

Studies suggest that around 30% of the customers share their negative experiences on social media platforms.

This can prove to be a big mistake for you as negative reviews on social media and bad word of mouth can ruin the reputation of your brand and will affect the decision of the new users to invest in your product.

How to Avoid this Mistake?

Always give some open space for the users to share their feelings about their experiences with your business. You don’t have to add many questions, just one open-ended question asking the reason for their previous responses or suggestions or comments will do the needful.

10. Asking for Personal Information

Another mistake that you should avoid is asking for personal information from your SaaS users. Users already on your product must have registered with their personal information. They shouldn't be forced to add their personal information, like name, email address, etc., again and again. Asking for this information in your feedback surveys elongates your survey and irritates the users. This can lead to survey fatigue and lower response rates.

How to Avoid this Mistake?

Since the users are already logged into the app, use Survey Software that allows you to pull personal information like name, email address, phone number, and customer ID automatically rather than asking the respondents during the survey.

11. Adding Extra Steps to Start the Form

The process of presenting surveys to the users and collecting their feedback must be easy and fast-paced so that users don't have to spend much time on it. Especially when they are already using your product. Adding extra steps like showing a welcome screen, asking users for confirmation to start the survey, and then finally presenting questions in the survey makes the survey process longer, which only leads to the users not opting to take the survey. This affects the response rate of your surveys.

How to Avoid this Mistake?

Use a simple Feedback Button on the side or at the bottom and show the questions directly on the first screen instead of having a welcome screen to start the survey. Remove the welcome screen from your surveys and directly ask survey questions from the users.

12. Not Adding Forms in the Right Places

No matter how well you design a survey, if they are not shared or presented in the right place, it will lose its effectiveness. Not adding feedback forms at the right places makes your surveys irrelevant and ineffective in fetching valuable and accurate feedback data.

For instance, if you want to collect Onboarding Feedback, you should ask the Onboarding survey questions right after the process of Onboarding rather than asking about Onboarding Experience in regular periodic quarterly surveys after three months of onboarding.

How to Avoid This Mistake?

Present Surveys using different ways or channels just after every event, transaction, interaction, or touchpoint as the users continue their journey. Here are some touchpoints at which you can present your surveys accordingly.

• Within the Product Interface - Consider adding a Feedback Button or widget throughout your product interface in a visible and accessible location, such as a sidebar or as a floating button, to provide an opportunity for the users to share feedback at any point whenever they want to do so.
• Post-Interaction or Completion of Tasks - Present survey forms or popups surveys right after a user interaction or completion of specific tasks to gauge users' experience with the interaction or the task done.
• Onboarding  - Share Onboarding Surveys to collect users' feedback about the onboarding process and measure their initial experiences with your product.
• Help or Support Center - Share Feedback Surveys when the users use self-help resources or seek support from your Customer Service Team. In these Customer Effort Score or CES surveys, you can ask for feedback about the content of your resources or the interaction with the support agents or work done by them.
• Exit or Cancellation - Present Cancellation or Exit-Intent Surveys to collect feedback and know the reasons for cancellation. These surveys are aimed at reducing user churn, so follow up on the survey responses and try taking instant action on User Feedback to improve their experience and prevent churn.
• Micro-interactions - Share surveys based on micro-interactions of your SaaS product with the product users. These surveys can be triggered based on user behavior, such as after a certain number of logins, feature usage, or time spent within the product.
• Beta Testing - If you are doing Beta Testing, share the beta testing survey with your user groups involved in the testing, asking about any bugs or issues they faced while using your SaaS product. Ask for suggestions from these users to make your product more effective using bug report form questions or feature-request feedback forms. 

13. Not Showcasing Popups when the Event Occurs

Feedback Surveys can be shared through feedback buttons and popups within the SaaS product. Popup Surveys are a great way to proactively ask for in-moment feedback. If you are not using this method after a significant event, transaction, or interaction, you are missing valuable in-moment feedback.

How to Avoid this Mistake?

Create and display Popup Surveys after every important event or transaction. Triggering popup surveys post significant events will help you capture in-moment feedback, which is more accurate and valuable as compared to other feedback data.

Let’s explore some cool tips to boost the response rate on your feedback surveys.

Some Tips to Ensure a Great Response Rate to Your Surveys for SaaS

1. Send Surveys at the Right Time

Timing of the surveys is an impotence factor that affects the response rate of your surveys. So always send surveys at the right time. You can trigger Transactional Surveys based on the events and transactions done by the users. You can also send Relationship surveys, which are regular surveys to track the ongoing relationship with your users, like monthly surveys, quarterly surveys, and annual surveys.

Avoid sharing feedback forms on Weekends, Mondays, and Fridays. Prefer to send surveys in the mid of the week as most users are in a better position to respond to surveys in the mid of the week rather than on weekends when they are in a fun mode or on a Monday when they have more work to do.

2. Always Close the Feedback Loop

Always respond to every feedback and close the Feedback Loop. When you do this, the users feel listened to, and they understand that you value their feedback. This automatically increases their tendency to respond to your surveys and share feedback the next time, as they know that their feedback matters.

3. Use the Multichannel Approach

Relying on one channel for sending surveys can be another mistake you make, not while designing feedback forms but while sharing them with your users. Different users may prefer different channels. So we recommend you use multiple survey collection channels like website feedback form, mobile forms, emails, SMS, in-product etc., so that the users can respond to your surveys from the channel they prefer. This can surely help you get a better response rate.

4. Use an Effective Feedback Tool

Always use an effective Feedback Tool for creating and sharing feedback forms and collecting feedback. An effective tool helps you with ready-to-use survey question types, designs, templates, and more so that you can create powerful feedback forms and share them with the users. A good tool helps you create multilingual surveys and send them to the users through multiple channels. Choose a tool that also lets you work on feedback and close the feedback loop effectively.

Zonka Feedback is one of the best Customer Feedback Software for SaaS that has all the above-mentioned capabilities and more to help you create and send powerful feedback forms. Features like Skip and Hide Logic in this tool help you create dynamic surveys which sound logical and conversational to users. Features like real-time notifications and feedback alerts help you get notified in real-time about any feedback as per the criteria set by you. This helps you take action on feedback at the right time and improve User Experience to prevent churn and let your product users know that their feedback matters to you.

It also provides a free trial. You can try Zonka Feedback for Free for 7 days and see how it helps you design simple, yet effective feedback forms.