🎁 Incentives for reviews/feedback: yes or no?

Darya Antonyuk
48 replies
+ It gives people motivation to leave a feedback - It feels like such reviews are not genuine and people start reviewing not your product but the amount of the incentive What do you think?

Replies

Andrey Bozhjev
If the gift, is related to a product we make, then - it can have an impact on retaining a loyal audience. I think that's awesome!
Darya Antonyuk
@andrey_bozhjev sounds cool, haven't thought from this perspective! thanks
Debajit Sarkar
It depends on the metrics and outcomes that the founders' want to derive from the target market. Incentive induced biased reviews will reduce the credibility and usefulness of the reviews for potential customers. Non-financial incentives like free product etc may be more appealing to customers who are intrinsically motivated to write reviews, rather than those who are driven by extrinsic rewards.
Darya Antonyuk
@dsarkar thank you! then how do you understand which one of them will be suitable for your clients?
Ankur Toshniwal
There's some grey area but I'd say overall no. The con you listed is extremely relevant, and a well researched area of behavioral study: https://www.alfiekohn.org/punish... It really depends on what you're going for. If you want to build a long-lasting product or company that attracts users who care about the mission and product then any kind of reward system, monetary or not will undermine that. If you want to give your company a quick exit it might be reasonable, but I'd ask why are you doing this in the first place? On the side of building doing something great for people, if you get all negative reviews then it's tough to hear, but it's possible that it reflects the state of your product. Luckily, there's something you can do about it. If people "hate" your product, at least it means they care about the problem you're solving enough to want something better. You can absorb it, learn from it, grit it out, and get to work making your product better. If you get no reviews, then it can be concerning as well, and it could mean many things amongst which the worst case would be people don't care about your product. The best case is that users didn't know you wanted feedback or it was too difficult to give it. Great products do get great reviews, but it's hard work to get there. And that's a tough pill to swallow. No reviews is tough as well, but even then it's a problem you can work through to fix.
Neel Patel
@darya_antonyuk There's always a good and a bad side of anything. In my experience, with all the potential options we get in almost everything, it becomes very hard to get someone to leave a positive feedback since positive experience is very much expected from all the products. Unless your users are left awestruck or you have something for them that they can signal, it is hard to get their positive feedback. So, combining some sort of perks with it would work well, IMHO.
Darya Antonyuk
@neelptl2602 thank you! sounds quite reasonable
Relja Denic
Always, you will then get 0 reviews :D It's very simple I'm giving time to give you a review, I could be doing something else essentially, so it's normal to reward the user for the efforts of leaving a review.
Darya Antonyuk
@relja_denic thank you so much! sounds really useful!
Tarun Asnani
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I think the gap with this is it's optimizing for being the number 1 on the Product hunt and that I don't feel would be the right approach. But I think for a start-up early on getting reviews is crucial for building the momentum.
Sometimes feedbacks with incentives work as well as the ones without and it may not necessarily be a non-relevant feedback:) but ofc I agree with the dangers that you expressed
Darya Antonyuk
@sandradjajic thank you! we'll have to weigh all pros and cons
Jake Harrison
Definitely, I used this tactic so many times
Darya Antonyuk
@jakeharr thanks! don't you feel like customers become a bit biased in this case?
Ayşegül Çorok
Yes, of course, we need more.
Darya Antonyuk
@aysegulcorok thanks! don't you feel like customers become a bit biased in this case?
Evgeny Kotelevskiy
It really depends on your goals, I think:)
Ghost Kitty
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Darya Antonyuk
@olenabomko what to do if I want both... :D I'll have to learn how to differentiate, I guess
Darya Antonyuk
@olenabomko thanks! don't you feel like customers become a bit biased in this case?
Ghost Kitty
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Boudewijn Bos
it depends a bit I think - you definitely don't want to reward a good a answer - as long as you can steer impartial feedback you could always surprise somebody with a nice incentive!
Salar Davari
Absolutely yes.
Darya Antonyuk
@salar__davari don't you think that in this case people start measuring the amount of the incentive, and not your product?
Ankur Toshniwal
Yes, people will start measuring the amount of incentive. You're absolutely right and it's nothing new. This is an extremely well researched area of behavioral study. @salar__davari @darya_antonyuk
Nitheesh Seshadri
Yes, why not. Each feedback and review will help in improving.
Cedric Mathias
Absolutely incentives for reviews/feedback would motivate employees to work more efficiently and build a positive work culture
Sagar Patel
Hmm, that’s a good question. I don’t know much about whether or not it’s a good idea. So hard to say. Other than that, what type of incentive would you suggest?
Hemalatha Rajendran
Yes, it has both positive and negative aspects. However, for startups without much feedback, it's difficult to gain the trust of new customers. Therefore, it's best to offer incentives only to existing users to encourage them to leave their reviews. This way, we can ensure genuine reviews for our product.
Matthew
Yes, it works well for an ECommerce business but will work for any industry