How do you collect user feedback?

[hollysnyder]

My Knowledge Management team is looking for best practices on how to collect user feedback on articles. Currently, we use the "Was This Helpful" with a yes/no response. When the user selects no, a text box opens, asking for the user to submit a suggested content edit. The user does not have to submit anything in that box if they do not want to. We are working to have that changed to submit a comment or suggestion in hopes that will increase the amount of typed feedback we received. Currently, I don't think the average user understands that a "submit a suggested content edit" is the same as submitting comments or suggestions. Receiving a "no" response doesn't tell us why the article wasn't helpful. Currently, I don't think the average user understands that a "submit a suggested content edit" is the same as asking for comments or suggestions. What do you do to collect user feedback? Any suggestions on improvement? We've thought about implementing a dropdown for the user to select why the article wasn't helpful or using the decision tree to ask questions. Your thoughts? Thank you in advance!

[Uncle Rob]

Whatever interface you put in front of the customer has to be lowest friction possible.   A drop down forces me to click, probably scroll, think, click, then submit.   Decision trees would, in my opinion, be punishing the user for finding something that wasn't helpful.

I'd let the passive numbers tell you a story.

- When was the last time it was read?
- How many times was it read?

- What's its rating?

- When's the last time it was edited?

- Has it been flagged or commented?

In cases where it has been flagged or commented, use Mk1 Humans to understand the commentary.

[Uncle Rob]

Another thing you could do is periodically leverage Surveys / Assessments to understand how people feel about KB in general.

Ask them questions like:
Do you use it?
If you use it, do you usually find what you're looking for?
How can we make it better?
What types of KB are you most interested in (general categories listed)?

For some ideas, here's a blog I wrote on my experience using Survey/Assessment for stakeholder engagement during a rollout.   Not KM related, but it will give you an idea of how it can work.

[hollysnyder]

Thank you so much! Greatly appreciated!

[Uncle Rob]

My pleasure.   Pound that HelpFull Answer button if the answer is of any value.

Also, if you decide to go the Survey / Assessment route, defining them and extracting the data in a meaningful way can be a bit tricky.   Feel free to reach out to me if you have any difficulty there.

rfedoruk@wolfpackcs.com