[00:00:00] Amber Hinds: Welcome to WV Product Talk. I am Amber Hines, CEO of Equalize Digital.

[00:00:05] Zack Katz: And I am Zach Katz, founder of Gravity Kit and trusted login.

[00:00:09] Amber Hinds: And today we are going to be talking about gathering and learning from customer feedback.

[00:00:14] Matt Cromwell: This is WP Product Talk, a place where every week we bring you insights, product marketing, business management, and growth, customer experience, product development, and more. It's your go-to podcast for WordPress product owners by WordPress product owners, and now enjoy the.

[00:00:41] Zack Katz: So gathering and responding to customer feedback is quite possibly the single most important thing we can do for our businesses.

[00:00:51] It's the reason our businesses exist. It's the reason our products exist. Steve Jobs said you've gotta start with the customer experience and work backward to the technology. Bill Gates said, your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning. And if those two can agree, then you know it's something good.

[00:01:08] So, uh, we've invited Ben Gaber today, CEO, and founder of rocket.net to discuss customer feedback with us. Uh, Ben, welcome to the show. Please introduce yourself and what you do.

[00:01:19] Ben Gabler: For having me. Uh, my name's Ben Gaber. I'm the CEO and founder at Net. I going on year 22 in the hosting industry. Uh, so definitely a lot and been around the block.

[00:01:32] Dabbled my fair share in SaaS, uh, companies as well. So, you know, I am super excited and passionate about this topic. I absolutely love talking to customers every single day, and it's always fun when they get shocked to see me in chat, uh, or on our help desk. But, you know, super excited to be here and, and really appreciate the opportunity.

[00:01:54] Yeah,

[00:01:54] Amber Hinds: we're really excited to have you here, and I know for everyone who saw the preview, um, you, you might've noticed that originally Matt was supposed to be here. He wanted us to pass on his regrets. Unfortunately, he's sick today, but we're super excited that Zach jumped in, uh, along with me to chat with you.

[00:02:11] Zack Katz: Yeah. And if, if anybody listening, uh, is ever interested in discussing customer feedback loops and things like that, uh, ping Matt Cromwell, uh, he is always game to talk about this stuff. Uh, and pinging any of us, I think because, uh, it's, I think so it's a great topic. Um, and personally for why it's, uh, my experience with

[00:02:33] This is a Gravity View is my main product, and that was based on customer feedback. They said we wanted a way that to display entries in gravity forms and, uh, on the front end of a website. And I looked it around and there was no way to do it. I said I could do this, and I asked for feedback on it at every stage and just kept on adding features and finally got to a place where I had a product.

[00:02:57] So. Like, I don't know anybody in the WordPress space who doesn't kind of work this way too. It's, it's a really common framework for, uh, how we build our products is just hearing customer feedback. So I think this topic is huge, uh, and very important to, to talk about.

[00:03:15] Amber Hinds: Yeah. What do you think, Ben, why do you think, uh, this topic matters for product owners?

[00:03:22] Ben Gabler: So it's interesting, I, I always get it confused whether it's Henry Ford or Steve Jobs. I think Steve Jobs had some, uh, version of, of this quote, but, you know, uh, the old saying, people don't know what they want until you show them, right? I, I think that's half true. Um, like for example, at rocket.net, if, if you would've asked somebody if they.

[00:03:46] You know, wanted a edge first approach to WordPress with full page caching and a WAF and everything, all the, they, they wouldn't have said that. Um, but when you can kind of show them that and what it can do, then yes. Now you look around in the market kind of having an, an enterprise CDN, and it is sort of a, a.

[00:04:05] Fact standard on a lot of the managed providers out there, but that only goes so far. So what we did is we kind of created this foundation to break into the market with a unique set of features and a really, uh, unique selling prop. And then we started listening to customers and that's where our platform just really started to accelerate as well as our growth is when you, you know, don't just talk to customers, but you actually listen.

[00:04:33] Um, you know, since day one we've had a, a, uh, a customer feedback board inside of our portal accessible at any time for customers to tell us what they would like the platform. So I think, you know, there is.

[00:04:50] And innovative.

[00:04:59] um, how can I make this better for you? Mm-Hmm. .

[00:05:03] Amber Hinds: I'm curious, so you mentioned not just talking to customers, but listening to customers and I'm curious how you would differentiate or what are some examples of things that product owners can do that really. Is listening versus just collecting feedback.

[00:05:24] Ben Gabler: Sure.

[00:05:24] You know, I think it's the whole action speak louder than words. Right. You know, like one of the most requested features on our platform, especially as of lately, has been cloning sites. Uh, p you know, I always try to ask myself as a product owner what I cancel if I didn't have insert feature here. Um, so as a, as a smaller bootstrap company over the years.

[00:05:46] We couldn't build everything customers wanted. So we really had to try and pick and choose exactly what we could prioritize. But when it comes to the listening side of that, I think your actions beyond that conversation, uh, is what really implies and, and enforces the fact that you listen to the customer.

[00:06:05] So when we ship a feature that a customer has specifically brought up. And, and you, and you inform them like, you know, we, we appreciate your feedback and we listen, here's what we did. Right? And even if the initial, maybe you can't build it right away, but re reinforcing whether it's a day later or a week later and, and reminding the customer that you were paying attention and listening to them, and this is what your action plan still is.

[00:06:28] Zack Katz: So one of the things that is a constant struggle for, I think everybody, when you have a customer support inbox that has constant feature requests or bug rep bug issues or bug reports, is taking those items and converting them into actionable items and . There's, there's a, uh, term called the XY problem where customers describe an issue this way, but the actual issue is something else altogether.

[00:06:54] So, Benny, were talking about, you know, customers wanting a fast website that's easy to manage and, and powerful and has good security and whatnot. They would describe it that way. They wouldn't know exactly how it would be implemented. Um. I think the Henry Ford quote you're referring to is, uh, if I listen to my customers, uh, faster horse or they would have a faster horse

[00:07:13] Yep,

[00:07:14] Ben Gabler: exactly right. Yeah,

[00:07:15] Zack Katz: exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So how do you convert at rocket.net the what you hear from the customers and transform it into something that makes like that is an action item for the business?

[00:07:26] So

[00:07:26] I

[00:07:26] Ben Gabler: think, I think that's a lot of, you know, whether it's secret sauce or um. Engineering like mindset in our industry, for example, right?

[00:07:36] Like if you're at a restaurant that's more of a, a culinary expert type approach, right? But for our industry, you know, you really take the problem to your point and you figure out reverse engineer it, what would the solution be, right? So, so our customers want to click as possible. They want to just, you know, have a frictionless experience, but underneath it could just be this massive, complex code doing the why, right.

[00:08:04] So I think really just being able to take all of that and reverse engineer it into a solution, I think that's where the magic really is. And you know, 'cause if you look at even our feature request for, it's not going to be, Hey, go build site templates. This.

[00:08:24] Zack Katz: Right. And who does that in your organization? Who, who transforms the request into the action items?

[00:08:30] Ben Gabler: So it, it typically kind of. It could be anybody. We've had our support staff come up with ideas based on some of the things they're seeing very frequently. Um, but when it comes to a lot of the, um, actionable, uh, items that we come out with from this, it's, it's usually a combination of myself and our CTO, Dave Costan, uh, you know.

[00:08:53] My approach, I, I definitely have an engineering and architect trait inside of my blood, and I'm able to not go to Dave and say, we need site cloning. I'll go to Dave with a product requirement stock that's he, you know, technical and he'll have to rewrite it all the right way, but it, it still helps kind of bridge that gap of um, you know, that funny scene in office space.

[00:09:13] My job is to. From the engineer to the customer. Right. And, and it's funny because it's kind of a laugh at role, but, but it's a very much needed role. Um, Dave fortunately has very good people's skills and communication skills, so he has no problem going way down the technical rabbit hole or being able to talk to the customer as well.

[00:09:32] Um, but typically it's a, it's a combination, um, of us and then again, the team, like our team has come up some.

[00:09:43] Amber Hinds: So I think this is a good point to sort of transition into. We like to do story time and, and a question that I have for you, Ben, on this is what, um, what did it take to build that culture of listening to your customers and coming up with ideas? 'cause it sounds like you just said like a bunch of different people in your organization.

[00:10:04] Do this as part of their role, and I'm assuming maybe there were meetings or discussions about, we need to start thinking about that. And I'm curious what your process was from the beginning when maybe you weren't doing as much with customer feedback to now, and how you developed that culture in your team.

[00:10:22] Ben Gabler: I love it. Um, it, it might sound cliche or, or. What have you. But, you know, rocket is unlike any other business I've ever been involved in in my life. Um, you know, the entire team here has such a shared passion for the customer. We work with some amazing people. Um, in some of my career in hosting, you don't always have that same experience with especially support, right.

[00:10:55] Somebody's. Messaging for support. They're, they're not in a good state, you know, something broke or something is frustrating and it's, and it's the nature of it. And there's been so many times where we'll take it. It's not, it's not directed at us, it's just somebody venting a little bit and there's always a follow up apology.

[00:11:10] But, you know, really the, the genre of customer that we work with here has been such a, um, a difference from the past. You know, it's really helped. And I think me also kind of like being involved with, with just communicating with customers and, and kind of leading by example has really gone a long way.

[00:11:30] But it, but it's a very big thing that I talk about openly to everybody is everything we always do inside of our company will have to bubble up to customer success. So it's like, if I take this action, and it could even be implementing an HR system, right? What happens for the customer and, and you know, you always the customer.

[00:11:51] History and past, you know, and even dating back to when I was at GoDaddy in 2013, we did a thing where we were bringing people in literally off of the street and giving them an Amazon gift card to sit down and use our product and we would take notes. And that was one of the first times I've ever seen that.

[00:12:06] And I'm like, oh my gosh, this is gold. Right? So, you know, I think just taking some of that and, and helping, um, you know, lead by example with that throughout the organization.

[00:12:16] Amber Hinds: Yeah. I'm . I'm kind of curious, uh, along this line too. Um, what? No, and I totally lost my train of thought. . All good. Sorry. Uh, Dave,

[00:12:30] Zack Katz: I lost it.

[00:12:30] So I have a process. We have a process at Gravity Kit where, uh, we make, we try to make sure that every issue that is, uh, suggested in the customer's support. Ticket is broken out into a GitHub issue, and every time that issue is referenced in another ticket, or every time we encounter it ourselves, we add a comment to the GitHub issue.

[00:12:53] And we use that as a sorting mechanism for the what to prioritize. But what we have found is that that doesn't lead to things being done unless we have what we call a scoping call where we review those tickets and then we ask ourselves, is this an actionable ? GitHub issue where we can look at it and say, okay, we know what needs to be done.

[00:13:13] So we capture it, but then we take the time to rev, revisit it, reframe it in terms of breaking it down into parts. Sometimes that can spawn multiple, uh, other GitHub issues and uh, and we try to tackle them piecemeal and, you know, check them off the list. But it's capturing is one thing. And then kind of, um,

[00:13:35] Scoping them is another. And my friend, uh, Chris Badgett at Lifter LMS, they use the shape up technique for doing this. There are lots of different techniques, uh, and, and strategies for doing it. Do you, do you subscribe to any, uh, particular technique or, or do you just have the rocket uh, the rocket, uh, launch,

[00:13:55] Ben Gabler: wait.

[00:13:58] Um, you know, I would say it GoDaddy was also a, a good time for me that I learned a lot of different things, right? I learned a lot about, that's where I learned about Agile, right? Like that's where I learned with Scrum. Um, we had this incredible, uh, teacher, his name is Derek Neighbor. I'll never forget him.

[00:14:17] He was a great guy and just, you know, really did a, an amazing job at changing waterfall development that everybody's been used to their entire life, to this process that everybody hates for the first week or two. Right. . Um, so, you know, I think the, the biggest takeaway I had with Derek was yes, I learned a lot about

[00:14:39] As it's blogged about, right? But that never, you can't ever just take this template and make it work for your company. Every company in the world is different, and you not only have to really understand the processes and what you're doing, but you also have to understand the, the why. And again, like what is this gonna do to the team if we try to force, you know, implement this.

[00:14:59] So, so our approach has always just really been, you know. So anything that's a software based platform just like ours, you know, proper testing, you know, like our React portal was written by the guy that wrote Visa checkout. Um, when, when you take the time to do invest in the tooling and the, the, uh, structure and the best practices and building engineering guys.

[00:15:23] You know, that really helps save a lot of time down the road. So, when it comes to our process and, and how we iterate, you know, um, I recently just did a big review post where most of Dave's first six months at Rocket were just completely stabilizing and, and, and improving our existing footprint and platform and APIs for this, you know, expected growth and continued growth.

[00:15:48] So when we think about how do we take this idea and translate it into a, uh, action item, if it's a big enough feature, I'm a huge fan of the press release approach. I write a press release for this first, and to do that, it helps me find my, my ethics or aha moments, right? And, and, and different things that, that I want this to.

[00:16:12] Uh, be shown to the market, right? So instead of a big gibberish of technical jargon, like this is what the market will see when we build this, uh, if it's a big enough thing. Um, regardless of that, every feature, like everything will typically, I'll start with a product requirement stock. Uh, JIRA actually has an amazing default template that I've used for, uh, years.

[00:16:34] Uh, and that's where I go to do my brain dump of, of. Uh, processing of all of this data that our customers are giving us or the market's giving us, um, or even just ideas we come up with. So we kind of try to start with that approach. The, the press release is first if it's big enough. If not, the product requirement.

[00:16:55] Stock is typically where, and then we just pull from there and, and kind of. Start talking about it, and Dave and I will have a call. We'll go over it, uh, Ryan Flowers and I'll have a call, Chad and Jeff, like we all kind of just openly talk about these things and let them blossom into the, the final result.

[00:17:11] So I don't know what that process is called. I don't know if there's a blog post about it, but, um, you know, it, it works really well for us and I just find that in, in every company I've ever been involved with, communication between the team and the customer. You'll find your way. Um. And, and you know, we're not a big corporate company, so we don't have some crazy structure and, and, and cadence that we have to hold ourselves to, you know, so sometimes it's just been a natural, so it's

[00:17:38] Amber Hinds: being smaller because you have more flexibility and it's much easier to make pivots quickly.

[00:17:44] So I remembered what I was gonna ask, and I think this is, I'm curious for both of you the answer on this one. Um, you know. Both of you mentioned the process, right, of taking customer feedback from support tickets and translating that. But the interesting thing about customer feedback from support, I. As you mentioned, Ben, those are people that are typically experiencing a problem or unhappy

[00:18:11] Um, and, and if we only gather customer feedback from support, we're missing out on feedback from all of the people who have never contacted us, um, who may be . Really like the product, but might have a preference for it to do something else or who don't need anything else about from the product. But if we talk to them, we could learn things about maybe what brought them to the product that we could translate into our marketing to attract more people like them.

[00:18:42] Who will require no support . Right. Um, and maybe be very good customers for us. So I'm curious, do either of you have anything in place to gather customer feedback outside of support channels?

[00:18:56] Ben Gabler: So I have, I have a secret tactic I'm happy to share. Oh wow. Right. So in the very beginning of Rocket, you know, especially in the hosting industry, it's a, it's, it's hard to, um, you know, kind of get out there and, and get your brand seen and, and things like that.

[00:19:13] So I kind of took an approach where I looked at other people's feature request boards. . I'm like, what are customers in the market asking for? And what are they not getting from their provider? Right? So it's, you know, I did this back in the day when we were building customer service software. I went and looked at Zendesk's feature request for, I'm like, what are they not delivering on?

[00:19:34] And how many votes does it have? So, you know, I think there's ways that you can go out and seek some of these problems that exist in your market. Um, with just some creative digging. Um, you know, and then on the flip side of that, I, I love Matthew Prince's approach or ordain at CloudFlare where they'll post birthday weeks coming up, what would you like to see?

[00:19:57] And they kind of create an open forum where people can chime in or, you know, I like throwing a tweet out there that, um, we'll just say, you know, what do you, we, we have something.

[00:20:10] Totally, you know, um, unfiltered feedback from customers, other followers in WordPress. And, you know, I engage a lot of conversations, um, at Word Camp, you know, there's a great spot and not even customers, you know, half the time I won't even mention my company name. I mean, sometimes I have this on so people might know now.

[00:20:30] Um, but you know, it's just creating conversations in your, your ecosystem and opportunities. But then of course, you know, the feature request board, we use a software called canny. Um, it's been around for quite a long time. I absolutely love it. And it's just a, it's a spot where customers know they can go and, and, and mention these things.

[00:20:53] And, uh, you know, I think creating that open forum and not being sh and being transparent with it, like, here is all the requests. Do any of these resonate with you? Um, so, you know, I think, I think that's one way handle.

[00:21:08] Outreach can be tricky. Um, some customers don't want to be bothered. Um, some, some don't mind it. Uh, so we, we, I'm sure like every business we've built a close relationship with some customers where we, you know, like the internal term friendly. Um, that's somebody that you know, Hey, what do you think of this new idea we're working on?

[00:21:27] Or Hey, what do you think of that? And then start to gather some feedback that way. So I think proactive. Uh, research online is a great one that you can do without bothering anybody. Um, and then, you know, just, just selectively looking at, you know, maybe a poll or something like that. What

[00:21:44] Zack Katz: about you, Zach? We, uh, at Gravity Kit, um, when we receive a good feedback or somebody is excited about what they're able to do with our, our tools, and they let our support team know, uh, we tag that and then we ha we follow up with them asking if they're interested in having a case study done about what they're doing.

[00:22:03] Um, and I find. As a, as the product owner for, for Gravity View, uh, whenever I watch people use the product, it pains me. It pains me. 'cause no software is ever done. No website's, uh, perfect. And I, I hate to watch it and it's so valuable to see how our customers use our products. Um. So I, uh, well, I like to hop on calls and ask them to show me around how their system, and I love that.

[00:22:32] It's never how I want it to be. It's never the, the path that I say is the right path. No, it's the path of desire and we need to make that path better and more obvious, uh, so that whatever their, whatever hacks they've implemented to, to make things work the way that they think it should work outta the box.

[00:22:51] Um. We need to make them simpler. Make it, make it a setting, make it a button. Make the button bigger, make it so clear. Uh, that always comes out every time I do a call with anybody. Um, so I added a consultation call like a 20 minute, uh, zoom call link at the bottom of our onboarding emails. I. It says, Hey, if you want to talk to Zach, uh, here's a link.

[00:23:14] Schedule a call. And every time I do that, I learn something new about our customers. I learn something new about what they're trying to accomplish and how they're probably not doing it, uh, the way that we had thought they might. Uh, and it gives us great, uh, great feedback.

[00:23:29] Ben Gabler: Yeah, I love the fact. Sorry.

[00:23:31] Amber Hinds: Go ahead, Amber.

[00:23:32] Oh no, I was just gonna say, uh, I know I've talked about this in some of our other WP Product Talk episodes, but for our, not our lowest paid tier, but our higher paid tiers, they get a 30 minute call with me. I. Um, as an onboarding call. And it's interesting, very few of them show up being like, I don't understand how to install or activate the plugin, or whatever, right?

[00:23:54] Like, they've already done that and they wanna talk really specific about it. Or what's interesting is sometimes they talk about. So my, my product is an accessibility auditing plugin. Sometimes they don't even talk about something with the plugin, but they talk, they wanna spend 30 minutes talking about business and how they can use our product to grow their own business.

[00:24:18] So we talk about like selling accessibility and, and things like that, that are not literal technical, how to do this thing. And it's been really eye-opening to see like what people come to those calls and ask

[00:24:29] Zack Katz: for. And that's, that's gold because those are blog posts you should be writing or like a videos that you, you could.

[00:24:36] Sorry. The word should is, I, I, I regret saying that you could be writing. No,

[00:24:41] Amber Hinds: I think you were right. I should be .

[00:24:43] Zack Katz: If your customers are talking about it, you're learning about your customers and what they're thinking about when they're using your product, which is exactly the point. Mm-Hmm. .

[00:24:50] Ben Gabler: Well, you know, on top of that, you're also, I, I don't know.

[00:24:54] You know, I think I, I did a podcast the first week of January and the last question he asked me, what do you wanna be known for and really remember for, and it's really like I remembered for giving. Back to the community, like, yes, we're, we're all here to make a living, but I want the, the solutions that we build to really make an impact and really change things.

[00:25:17] Um, so I, you know, as much as you look at your plugin as your product, you're part of your product too, and you're able to really help a business succeed, not just because of the code in your product, but because Right. You, I, the.

[00:25:36] You know, I'll respond to tickets and people will be like, did the CEO really just reply? Right? And I'm like, yeah. Like, yeah, I did. You know, and I fixed it, you know, so, and they're like, that's so awesome. Like, thank you. Like, I appreciate it. And like we just had somebody sign up and they messaged me on my Facebook and we're not friends on Facebook, but really sorry to bother you.

[00:25:53] And, and had a concern about PHP, my admin. I said, no problem. I said, I, I can reassure you this is not an issue. This, that, and the thank me I inbox open. Um, you know, and I'm always talking to customers and I think that's such an important thing. Like you, you know, like you, the first thing we even do, like when we onboard somebody new is like, here's the product, login and music, right?

[00:26:15] And it's the same, you know, like just, just having that open channel of communication with your customers, no matter how big or small you are. Like, when I was at GoDaddy, I spent weeks in the call center taking calls and people were like, you're nuts doing in here. Senior product manager. Why would in here.

[00:26:31] So I can understand the problems, right? Within the first phone call I was on, I was like, we should not be saying that we should be doing this. You know, and it, and it's just a matter of like, you know, that that's what makes a good product manager, right, is understanding the customer, talking to the customer, and knowing the customer, and not being afraid of the customer.

[00:26:49] Zack Katz: Yeah. Yeah. And taking that, and that's all worthless if you don't write it down or if you don't make, uh, an action item somewhere. Like I've, I've fallen pre to this so many times where I record the video so that I can show it to the team with like, I record the video that I have with the customer and I, 'cause I know that it's just gold and then I fail to.

[00:27:09] Uh, share it with the team. I fail to break it down into items that we can work on. Uh, and I regret that every time.

[00:27:16] Amber Hinds: I mean, I think that's, when you're a CEO and you're running, you're probably wearing a lot of hats and doing a lot of things, but sometimes it's just, it's important to slow down a little bit and remember that.

[00:27:31] You know? Yeah. You saved it to like, if you recorded to your computer, you saved it. It's there. That is one hack I will tell you don't record to the cloud. It's extra steps to go download it, , and then upload it wherever it needs to go. . So,

[00:27:44] Zack Katz: and one thing that I, uh, wanna. This isn't related to the topic, but it is the topic for being a product owner is talking to the customer and listening to them is the best way I've found to, uh, cure burnout.

[00:28:00] Whenever I'm burned out, talking to a customer reminds me why I do what I do, why we do what we do, and it just reconnects me, re grounds me to, to our mission, uh, which is really nice. And Ben, what? What I want to be remembered for. I haven't thought about that enough. Uh, I know I love that our tools help people accomplish what they.

[00:28:21] You know, or trying to do on their website, um, that, that doesn't mean that's not a what I am remembered for item though. So thank you for that prompt.

[00:28:30] Amber Hinds: Yeah, I love that you've spent time thinking about that, Ben. It's, it's neat. It resonates with me. It's funny enough, me a lot funny,

[00:28:36] Ben Gabler: funny. I, I really didn't until he asked me and I was like, wow.

[00:28:39] I'm like, you know, like the, the mission here is. You know, we're not, we're not out here trying to upsell our customers all day every day. We're not, we never will sell them something they don't need. If we ever have to get somebody to like an enterprise node, we show them the graph from monitoring. Like, look, this is what's happening.

[00:28:58] Like, we're not making it up. Um, and you know, I, I just, I, it threw me out off guard a little bit. I was like, wow, what do remember for like, well in the sense of this call, like for business, I'm like really want. You know, we sent two of our, uh, team to Nepal. Oh my gosh, they killed it. They had never been to a conference before, never been to work camp.

[00:29:21] And they're on our support team and, and they both contribute to Core and, Hey, was it, we sent 'em to Nepal. We ended up sponsoring it, providing some, the shirts were gone, like four shirts or something in an hour. , and they had. There's pictures of 'em all over my truck. They had an amazing time. And I'm like, I'm like, you guys are freaking amazing.

[00:29:40] by the way. Start working on your visas now to get to work. Camp US because you've gotta be there. And, and now we're sponsoring Workcamp Asia because they're gonna go right. And it's, it's just amazing for me. And, and I want rocket.net to be remembered as the, the company that that came in. Changed the game with some innovative technology and continued to drive value for the WordPress, you know, ecosystem in the community.

[00:30:05] You know, there's so many times I see all this drama and stuff happening and I get it. It happens everywhere and everything, but I'm like tunnel vision. Like, you know, everything's good, nothing's ever perfect, but for me, you know, WordPress is not going anywhere. And I want to continue to make a positive impact, you know, for our customers.

[00:30:24] Zack Katz: Yeah. So Ben, I, I wanna bring, uh, I have a question about something you said like 20 minutes ago where you were talking about, uh, internal tooling and making things better that are invisible to the customer. And I constantly struggle with spending too much development resources on, uh, on building stuff that we use to facilitate our processes that aren't necessarily customer facing.

[00:30:51] Uh, do you distinguish from the, that, like how does that inter, how do you integrate, how do you resolve that conflict between, uh, it or is it all just improving things for the customer in your eyes?

[00:31:04] Ben Gabler: So, so, so I'll give you an example, right? One of our, uh, team members wrote, you know, we have a lot of internal tooling, and one of the things they wrote is, you can literally.

[00:31:13] Uh, I won't mention names, but any hosting company that comes to your mind in the managed WordPress space, we have a command to migrate off of their platform, right? So yes, that makes our support, you know, engineers life better, but at the same time, it also saved probably 30 to 45 minutes, if not longer for the customer as well.

[00:31:33] So even though that's an internal tool. We use and the customer never sees it. They actually do because we're able to just migrate sites faster than ever with, with sanity checking in there, right? Like we actually run some WP CLI commands after to make sure we don't get like a database error, make sure everything aligns, you know, and we automate a lot of that.

[00:31:53] Um. So, you know, something like that is a good example of you guys may be focusing on tooling that you only see, but the end result, improving a internal process will affect your customer.

[00:32:08] Amber Hinds: Yeah. Um, so one thing I've done, and I don't know if either of you do this, but this is something that we added after Cabo Press this fall, which is on our receipt page for after someone purchases, which for us is an EDD. Um, I just added a form at the top, so it's like a one question gravity form that says, what in your life brought you to Accessibility Checker?

[00:32:35] I. And it's interesting because I was like, I'm gonna put this here. It's, I don't know if it tricks people because it's above the receipt and depending on your fold, the field is big enough that you don't see much of the receipt. And so maybe people think that you don't get

[00:32:47] Zack Katz: your receipt unless you fill out the form.

[00:32:49] Amber Hinds: Didn't get the receipt, but they could just scroll down. But, um, but like everyone, pretty much, or like a huge percent of people fill it in. And that has been really interesting for me to like, hear the problems . Are bringing people to us, and I don't have either of you done any of that and, and I'm still trying to figure out what we can do with that.

[00:33:14] Um, . You know, how much of it is related to features versus marketing or other communications that we put out? You know, I'm not, I haven't figured out yet how to totally act on all of this information that I've been getting. Um, but I don't know if either of you have done something similar, and if so, how do you take that very first, like, feedback the second they make the purchase?

[00:33:37] And how much credence do you put on that when they haven't even opened the product yet?

[00:33:42] Ben Gabler: Typically we use Hotjar. Um, and when the order's completed, we will ask a little survey, you know? Mm-Hmm. , excuse me. What brought you Something similar? Yeah, very similar. And you know, I think we get a daily report from Hotjar.

[00:33:56] We also will ask if somebody meets certain criteria, you know? Was there something you didn't find on? There's several different, uh, points that we have that on the site to be, you know, non intrusive. We don't wanna be annoying and constantly blast a popup or anything, but, um, it's, it's completely anonymous so you end up finding out a lot of useful information.

[00:34:17] 'cause customers aren't afraid to tell you, you know, like, I've heard the support's. Amazing. It was a no brainer. I've been watching you forever. You know, like, we'll hear all these different things. And in this format it's a little bit different than yours, which I like what you're doing better because you're getting more of a, uh, more of an answer.

[00:34:35] Ours are usually a couple words or appraise or I didn't find the server specs on your website. Um, so more common stuff that you see from like a web design slash developer aspect of how do I make my website better? Um, but then that, that signup one that we have has been gold. Like, just to see why they chose rocket and, and, mm-Hmm.

[00:34:54] you know, it, it's been great. And, and for us, I, I wouldn't say there's a whole lot of actual items outside of us sharing it with the team and constantly reinforcing like, this is because of you and your support and how you're helping customers, right? Mm-Hmm. . So that, that's what we have in place at the moment.

[00:35:11] Amber Hinds: Yeah, I'll say it's, it's been interesting. There are some people who just put something like website accessibility, , right? Like two words. But there are also people who have written, I don't know, like two paragraphs with probably five sentences each. Right? Like they've given us really good information.

[00:35:26] That's awesome. Which I, I was shocked at some of the detail that we get in some of the responses.

[00:35:32] Zack Katz: And those, that feedback is ag, again, just marketing and SEO gold. That is, if you break down what people say when you ask them what brought you here, that is the search that they, you speak in their language, right?

[00:35:45] Mm-Hmm. , they're speaking their own language. If you quote them directly and not cite them, if they don't wanna be, uh, and write a blog article with that quote in it, you will rank better for that query. You'll show up better and . It's, that's part of one of the ways that we got started with gravity view and my other gravity forms add-ons was I typed into Google, uh, auto complete, you know, gravity forms and I just went down the top results.

[00:36:11] So I made the gravity forms Salesforce add-on. I made the gravity forms constant contact add-on I made That's a, that's

[00:36:17] Ben Gabler: brilliant. See, that's a great idea. Yeah. Almost

[00:36:19] Amber Hinds: like answer the public or something if y'all know that website.

[00:36:25] Zack Katz: Oh, go ahead. Um, so I, I wondered, one thing that is so easy to do when you're gathering and learning from customers is overreacting to negative feedback. How do Ben, how do you, and Amber as well, how do you not overreact to customer feedback? What do you do with the negative stuff that, uh, do you prioritize it or do you just add it to the same queue and priority?

[00:36:53] Ben Gabler: Uh. I hate it. So it's . I need, I have tried to do a lot better at my reaction to, you know, unfortunately a lot, like I remember a guy, it's almost like some people were just out to get. You know, attention to be the odd one. Outstanding that doesn't like your company, right? Like we had somebody literally blasting us on Twitter because you couldn't click a certain spot in our portal,

[00:37:23] And I'm like, okay, so like you literally were a customer for, I think it was six minutes. You couldn't click one thing you do say it was super fast and great, but you still like you. Why couldn't you just report it as a bug or something like that. And, you know, I tweeted about it and I let 'em get the best of me.

[00:37:43] And you know, it's like, because I'm sitting there, I'm like, man, I'm like, like so many people could just see this. And it's like, we look like some buggy and they knocked our support even like, because I. Super protective in the sense of I don't want our reps that, you know, our team that works so hard to go see some person is blasting them on Twitter and they're like, it's like, man, like that's not cool.

[00:38:03] Like they actually didn't do anything other than try to help and, and it's just one of these impossible people to please. And you look at their Trustpilot and they literally have 21 star reviews. They've left people and not one single, you know what I mean? So you know it difficult, right? I am the first person to tell you.

[00:38:20] You know, uh, there is no such thing as perfect software. Like my iPhone is full of bugs, but I still spend a thousand dollars on a new one when it comes out, right? And there's no such thing as the perfect product. There's no such thing as bug free. Um, and you know it's gonna happen and you can't please everybody.

[00:38:37] But sometimes whether it's a long day or you know, not a lot enough sleep, you know, it's, it's hard to not take those things to heart and wanna protect your team because you're all super passionate about what you do. And I just can't imagine being one of our rocket team members and seeing somebody say, support sucks.

[00:38:55] Right? It's like, what are you talking about? We. Over 45,000 chats this year and a 97% satisfaction rate. And it's just, it's one of those things, it's, it's very difficult. Um, I've wanted to blog about this several times. I've got like three novels I've written for the blog on this, and every time I'm like, no.

[00:39:14] You know, like, 'cause I, I've never, I've never left a Yelp review, right? Like, I don't, I know how damaging it can be to a business and everybody has a bad day. And nothing's perfect. So, you know, I've, uh, I've not published those posts, but they're there and it's how I vent and, and get it out into a Google doc and, and shell it and move on.

[00:39:35] Amber Hinds: Yeah. Uh, we've, we've had a lot of conversations about instances where, you know, we're a pretty young plugin. We're a really small team, so we don't, you know, some of the big plugins test every release on . 20 different themes before they release it. Right? They have all these different demo sites that we're just like, we literally, if we did that, it would take, I don't know how long it would take for releases to come out.

[00:40:03] Right. Um. And, and you know, so sometimes we we're just kind of like, okay, this is correct. You know, we released a bug, it sucks. They were mad, they were right. But you, we also have kind of said, we have to be realistic about where we are, you know, and let's talk about what we can try to do to avoid this in the future.

[00:40:23] But at the same time, like, like you said, Ben, you know, all software has bugs and sometimes it happens and you know, try to do your best not to. But also if somebody gets. Overwhelmingly angry, then that is more of a reflection on them than it is on you probably. Um, I do think we've been having a lot of conversations lately as we're talking about, um, feature requests or reports of specific bugs or things like that, and just trying to figure out who we wanna target because there are some very different audiences that we deal with with our plugin, like the enterprise.

[00:41:04] Massive government websites that have millions of pages and universities versus the individual small business owner who maybe doesn't even have a developer supporting them. And I don't even know if they, what they would do with the information our plugin gives them. And then like the, like there's a lot of audiences and so we've been having conversations with trying to figure out some of this

[00:41:29] The feedback from certain groups and just saying, maybe it's okay that we accept that this group is not in our demographic right now. Maybe they can be in the future if we grow, but, but we can't always, just because people are asking for it doesn't mean we can always build it. We, you know, limited resources, limited time, and so we have to sort of assess.

[00:41:53] Who is the most important audience to try and reach right now, and what do they need? And be okay with the fact that we aren't able to give what everyone else needs necessarily. What about you,

[00:42:06] Zack Katz: Zach? Yeah, it's so, it's so hard. Early on, I, I really wanted to make sure that everybody was taken care of. And as a business grows, it becomes more and more important to identify for whom you're building the software.

[00:42:22] And we still struggle with that at times, but saying no is, uh, is more important as you grow and. That sa saying no means you get to say yes to things that actually move the needle for your business. So as you gather this customer feedback, we have a great customer. I love talking with him about hi, his passion for what we do and, and what it enables him to do.

[00:42:45] And I really want to prioritize. He, he has very specific requirements and I just, we can't, we can't do it because it would take away from, uh, the core of our business. Um, and so saying no is, is. As Apple says, a thousand nos for every Yes. And uh, we're not quite there, but hopefully, uh, we say no more than we used to.

[00:43:08] Yeah.

[00:43:09] Amber Hinds: So I feel like we usually wrap up with best advice and this might be a good time to, um, transition to that. So, Ben, why don't you kick us off? What is your best advice? For product owners or product managers around customer feedback?

[00:43:28] Ben Gabler: Sure. You know, I think the, the best advice is, you know, know your customer.

[00:43:33] Don't be afraid of the customer. Talk to the customer and you know, don't ever lose sight of the customer. There's so many of our competitors that just have gone from being known for the best support in the world to just the exact opposite. And it doesn't matter. It's this huge snowball that's growing and they make millions and millions of dollars and it's fine.

[00:43:55] Um, but you know, our team still gets excited over every single signup. Right. Like it, it's, it's true. You know, we really do and. You could argue that, you know, we we're just under 5 million in ARR and you know, we're not so small anymore. Right. But we still get excited over every single signup. We get excited for every demo.

[00:44:20] We get excited for every engagement, and, and it's because we love what we do and we love talking to customers and we love, we just love what we do, you know?

[00:44:33] Yeah, I like building software, but I didn't really, wasn't really into rental property management software, right. So it wasn't, it didn't really hit home like, like this, you know, maybe it's a curse, maybe it's not. I've just always been in love with hosting. I, I've been doing it forever, you know, back when I was delivering pizza.

[00:44:49] I gotta do it. I just, I love it. So, you know, when you can take that passion for something and apply it to your, your customer and, and keep that channel of open in exactly what you guys just said is. Learn how to say no. Um, in the very beginning of any new product, you want as much business and adoption as you can to stay alive, right?

[00:45:08] Like you will discount, you'll give custom deals, um, and, and you pay the price later. Honestly, uh, I'm not saying don't ever discount, don't ever do deals. We, we've done our fair share of them, um, when it makes sense. But, you know, saying no is very difficult. But, you know, long term. Don't stop talking to the customer.

[00:45:27] Everything that every move you make will affect your customer one way or another. Um, even if it's something as simple as a p. Um, you know, we don't, you know, I, I don't, I'm not saying don't ever approve PTO I'm saying, you know, there's, there's a strategy of ensuring you have coverage and, and, you know, again, just back to the customer, you know, always keep that customer as your top priority.

[00:45:50] Try to try to, um, you know, organize and structure your efforts around the customer at all times. Um, that doesn't mean. The customer is always right. Uh, it, it just really means that what you do is always going to be right for your customers. Yeah. How about

[00:46:12] Amber Hinds: you, Amber? Uh, so I think my best advice is if you aren't asking for feedback, just start doing it.

[00:46:20] Either start small like I did with adding a question, um, as part of your checkout or maybe set up a form on your website and send an email to your email list and ask people to fill it out. You'll be surprised that some people will come and it doesn't have to be a lot, but maybe like four questions or one open-ended question and a couple of qualitative or quantitative questions where they just have to pick something.

[00:46:42] Um, and then I always think getting on calls, . Even though sometimes it feels like, like when one books and I look at my schedule, sometimes I'm like, oh man, I wish that didn't fill that time slot. I have a lot going on, but every time when I get off one of those calls, I think it is time well spent. So, yeah.

[00:47:00] How about you, Zach?

[00:47:02] Zack Katz: Well, uh, I used to not do calls with customers because I was a scaredy cat, and for anybody listening or watching who is a scaredy cat. Uh, my recommendation, my best advice is don't be afraid of the customer. Uh, they are, um, . They're, they want to talk to you in many cases. So, uh, be yourself.

[00:47:24] You don't have to be like, you know, I think many people go through the experience of starting a business and using the royal we when talking about the company, even if it's just you running the company. Uh, I found that being myself is the best way to do it. If I use exclamation points and emoji in my responses, the customer knows that.

[00:47:42] That's me communicating like it's, it's okay to be yourself as long as you're professional. Uh, and don't let the word professional get in the way of you just reaching out to your customer. They will appreciate the personal touch, I'm sure.

[00:47:56] Amber Hinds: Well, that's a wrap, Ben. Thank you so much for joining us. Where can people find you online?

[00:48:04] Ben Gabler: I. Oh,

[00:48:07] Amber Hinds: we might, oh, you are muted. Yep. We might've lost the monitor. Sorry. Sorry

[00:48:10] Ben Gabler: about that. I hit the wrong button. Nowhere. . No, thank, thank you so much for having me. It, it's been awesome. You know, I, I truly love this topic. Um, and you know, it's been great. Our, our website's rock.net. Email me anytime Ben at net.

[00:48:28] I'm on Twitter, LinkedIn, uh, LinkedIn usually gets pretty hectic, so I don't, I don't check everything on there, but, um, but yeah, feel free inbox is always open and I'm in post status, so I'm usually always around.

[00:48:41] Amber Hinds: Wonderful. So next week, Zach, we'll be on with our co-host, Katie Keith. They're going to be discussing PR for WordPress with special guest Adam Weeks.

[00:48:53] Zack Katz: And special thanks to post status for being our green room where we coordinate these calls. Uh, if you're enjoying these shows, please do us a favor. Hit like, subscribe, smash that button, uh, share it with your friends, subscribe to our podcast, reference this show in your newsletters. Uh, and most of all, we hope to see you next week.

[00:49:10] Thank you.

[00:49:11] Amber Hinds: Thanks. Bye. Thank

[00:49:13] Ben Gabler: you.