Once we have sentiment scores for a representative sample of our user base, we want to understand how those users are actually, well, using our product.
Question: if I asked you who you should observe using your product based on the information we gathered in step one, what would your answer be?
If your answer is “My highest affinity users,” you are, unfortunately, wrong.
Understanding and leveraging product usage data in combination with sentiment analysis needs contrast. In other words, we need to know how the people who love you the most are using your product and how people who don’t love you very much at all are using your product.
To accomplish this, we’ll start by recruiting 3-5 people from both your power user segment and your on-the-fence user segment.
You may be wondering just how you’ll observe your customers and what you’ll actually do with this information. Good questions, so lets start with the how.
For this, we’re going to rely on a time-tested product tactic, the discovery interview. Although we’ll modify it for our own needs.
Product Observation Interviews
Now that you have sentiment analysis and product usage data in hand, it’s time to compare these two data sets and identify high leverage opportunities for revenue expansion, new customer acquisition, and more.
To do this, you’ll want to focus on a couple of things:
Part and parcel of this entire process is highlighting opportunities where you and your team can experiment and drive growth for your company and product.
Opportunities can be expressed in two main forms:
Ideally, we will find opportunities where the available data reinforces the customer problem. That’s what our process is designed to help you uncover.
As you analyze the results of your survey, segment your users, and compare that to usage and behavior data, you should keep track of the opportunities you identify in a simple spreadsheet or document. Below is a template that can help you get started, but feel free to use whichever tool you’re most comfortable with.