I tried 5 ways to collect early user feedback — only 1 actually worked
Hey PH 👋
I'm 6 months into building my first product (still pre-PMF, ~20 active users), and user feedback has been the hardest thing to crack. Here's what I've tried so far and what I learned from each:
In-app surveys — got 3 responses total. People just ignore them.
Email follow-ups — 15% reply rate, but most answers are "looks good!" with zero substance.
Twitter/X polls — lots of votes, zero actionable insight.
1:1 calls — best quality, but scheduling is a nightmare and people flake constantly.
Reading support tickets — surprisingly useful, but reactive not proactive.
I feel like I'm missing something obvious. For those of you who've been through this phase:
• What channel gave you your breakthrough insight — the one that actually changed how you built?
• Did you use any specific framework or question set that cut through the noise?
• At what point did feedback stop being scattered anecdotes and start feeling like a real pattern?
Would love to hear what worked (and what didn't) for you.
Replies
Driven
We have encountered the same problem as you before—it's difficult to obtain proactive feedback from users.
I have two suggestions:
1. Encourage your friends, colleagues, and acquaintances to use the product, and shamelessly ask for their feedback. This is the best way to get your first wave of product feedback.
2. If you can use large models to identify and flag negative feedback signals from users during product usage, that is the most effective way to gather feedback. Of course, you need to anonymize user identity information and protect user privacy.
That's all.
@zwaydot Thanks Wei 🙏 #1 works but I find friends skew too polite — did you do anything to get past that bias? #2 is interesting: flagging negative signals during usage instead of waiting for users to report them flips feedback from reactive to proactive. Are you running this in production? Curious how you handle the anonymization.
I found short follow up chats right after someone finished using the product worked better than scheduled interviews. People remembered the experience clearly and shared far more honest feedback.
@eriberto_puppypound This clicks. My scheduled calls had the same issue — a week later people gave me polished answers instead of what they actually felt. Timing beats channel. Makes me wonder if my in-app surveys failed because of when I asked, not the format. Thanks for sharing 🙌