MBA1884 How to Collect Customer Feedback
2 Feb 2026 · 11 min
Podcast episode by Omar Zenhom ('MBA1884 How to Collect Customer Feedback') giving actionable guidance for entrepreneurs on when and how to collect customer feedback. Recommends two optimal moments to solicit feedback: while users are active/engaged and at cancellation/exit. Describes using NPS (0–10) plus comment prompts to gather qualitative reasons, examples of tooling (Survikit), sampling strategy (target highly active users—e.g., >5 uses/week—and wait ~3 weeks), and how to interpret promoter/passive/detractor feedback to prioritize product changes. Also emphasizes learning from cancellations to detect wrong-fit customers and to preserve and double down on features customers love.
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Hey O welcome to the dollar RBA Show Business Made simple every single day with our daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of Webinar Ninja, an independent software company I started with my co founder back in 2014 and in today's episode you'll learn how to collect customer feedback. Understanding what your customers like, don't like, need, want is incredibly important for you to improve your business, your product, your service and to be highly competitive in your space. But what I learned is that you can't just ask for feedback randomly. You can't ask customers hey, what do you think of my product at any given time or any given way. So in today's lesson I'm going to break down when is the best time to ask for customer feedback? How to ask it, like what tools to use and how these two things combined can help you know how much weight to give the feedback the customer gives you and therefore you can know what to implement first, second, third, what's the priority and also what are some things you just don't need to work on? So let's get into it. Let's get down to business.
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Comes to collecting customer feedback, many entrepreneurs live on different points on the spectrum. Some people believe that it's a waste of time. Customers don't know what they want. It's a waste for you to even entertain the exercises of collecting feedback. And then there's other entrepreneurs that feel like, hey, customer, feedback is gold and anything a customer says, we must implement because it's what's best for our company. I'm here to tell you that both of these arguments are flawed and the right answer falls somewhere in the middle. As you may already know, much of business lives in the gray area. You need to know what feedback to implement, what feedback to take seriously, and to actually try to get more information about that feedback from the customer, and which are comments that you can address but not really take action on. But in order to do any of this, you need to know when and how to collect customer feedback. Now, I've been doing this for over 20 years and I've done it the wrong way, but I have finally boiled it down to a couple techniques to allow me to do it the right way. In my opinion, the when is actually more important than the how, because the how is quite easy. I'll show you how you can use some simple tools to collect feedback. So in my opinion, you actually get solid feedback when people are actually thinking about your product, thinking about your service. They've recently experienced it. They are active users, so to speak. This is a opportune time for you to ask for feedback because you know that the customer is actually interested in what you have to offer. Whether they love it or hate it or something in between, their opinion actually matters more than somebody who doesn't use your product or service. This is somebody who actually can give you feedback based on experience. And in my book, this is incredibly valuable feedback. And the most important feedback to collect. One of the ways we survey our customers is with NPS. And if you Google NPS, you'll learn that it's a scale from 0 to 10 to figure out how likely would this customer, this user of yours, recommend you to other people. Those who give you a score of 9 or 10 are considered promoters. Seven or eight are called passives, which means they don't love it or hate it. And zero to six are detractors, meaning if they give you a zero or six, that means they're actually not going to help recommend your company to somebody else. So the first step is that they actually give us a score 0 to 10. And the second step is they just leave us a comment on why they gave us that score. Now, I know I said I was going to talk about when, but that's really quickly the how. And we used a product called survikit, which is an app that you can install on your website, to send out surveys. But we only send this NPS score to highly active users. People that are in our app or visit our website frequently. And frequently means something different for your business versus ours. For us. As somebody who is using our app five times or more a week, this is somebody who is really active and their impressions or their opinions about the product are based on actual experience. So I actually want to hear from them. Now, we don't just send it after they've used the app five times. We actually send it out after them being with us for at least three weeks and have been really active. Now remember, don't just take the comments or the feedback you get from customers that are negative and say, okay, I got to fix these things. It's just as important. In fact, some might argue it's more important to look at the things that people like about your business, about your product, about your service. Whether it's positive reviews on Google or Capterra or TripAdvisor or your 9 and 10, your promoters on your NPS score. Why? Because you want to double and triple down on what works for your business. This becomes your calling card. This becomes what you're known for. This is why people love you. So continue to do more of that. Don't put your foot off the gas in these areas. So important, because most people, if you look at the products and services that you buy or you subscribe to, you're only doing it for a couple of reasons. You probably just pay for the service because you like one or two things. Imagine they didn't do these one or two things anymore. So make sure you give your attention and time to the positive comments as well as the ones that kind of need to work, the negative ones or the constructive criticism type ones. Now, the reason why I love these comments in NPS is because I'm catching People, while they're active on my site, on my app, they're working, they're doing. And they'll see this little pop up and be like, oh, yep, I'm going to give my score. And this is why I put my score. And they're not thinking about it that much. And I kind of like it. Just fresh in their mind. Their instinct says, I like this app because it's easy to use. I like this app because I like the customer service. Whatever it is, it's their gut feeling. And sometimes I want to know what they feel more than what they know. Okay, Feelings matter and business, it's what causes people to take action. A lot of us make decisions, most of us make decisions based on how we feel about something. So this is really, really effective, in my opinion, in terms of collecting customer feedback the other time or the other method. Like I mentioned, there's two methods. We collect feedback is during cancellation. When somebody cancels their subscription with Webinar Ninja or Webinar software, there's a cancellation process where we ask them, why did you cancel? We give them a few options, and within those options they leave us some comments. And once a month we read every single comment. We understand the reasons why people cancel and we categorize it so we know, okay, this month, the number one reason why people canceled is because of this. And we try to look for trends as we're growing. This is more of a long term exercise and this is really important because there are some things that you can change and you can implement and work towards to improve your customer's experience. And some things not okay. Like for example, when somebody says to you, I canceled because it was too expensive. You can't be the cheapest product out there all the time. You're always going to be too expensive to somebody. So I'm okay for that being the top reason. Okay, I'm okay with that. Because I'd rather have that be the top reason for cancellation than usability or customer service. Those are things I can change and improve. And I'm happy to. If you have five categories of reasons why people cancel, you have to have a number one category. And you want to make sure that number one category is something that you're okay with being number one that people are complaining about or people are canceling for. What I'm saying is, is choose your reason why people cancel. If you had to choose a reason why people cancel, what would it be? And that's really what I'm saying here. Now, why is the timing great for cancellation because when people are canceling, they're constant making the decision, I don't want to use this anymore. I don't want to pay for this anymore. And sometimes people will cancel and give you the feedback where it's like, I like the product, but I'm just not using it. That's good feedback. Somebody says, I'm not using the product, I want to find out why. I'll email them, I'll message them, I'll send them a gift card for free coffee just to spend a few minutes to understand why are they not using it. Why is this product so easily cut off their list of products they pay for or use every single day? I want to be a product where they're just like, I can't cancel it. It's just integral to my business or integral to my life. And I want to get closer to that. And the only way to get closer to find out why it's something they're not using, why they haven't used it. And you're going to find out so many things you didn't know about your product, about your service, and you might even just find out you're attracting the wrong customer. This customer is just not ready to use your product. And you need to attract less people like this and more people that are actually ready to go and implement using your service or product. But again, the point here is that when people are canceling, they're in a certain situation, they're in a certain emotional state where they're going to give you how they feel about your product. And I really want to know that.
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To wrap up today's lesson, two times I highly recommend you ask for feedback when people are active and using your product or service. And there's a lot of ways to do this. You know, you have Google Analytics, you know, web sessions on your website or on your app or in your course or whatever it is, or if they're active in terms of email marketing, maybe they open your emails, Their open rate is very high. They read all your emails. These are people that are engaged. Ask these people what they think of your product or service. Their opinion matters, has a lot of value, has a lot of weight. The second time is when they're deciding not to use you anymore. You may not be able to stop them from canceling, but you can learn from them so you can prevent further cancellations in the future. Great timing to get feedback. Now, remember I told you that some feedback means more than others. Sometimes you're going to get people saying things about your product and they're just disgruntled. That's one option. They're just upset. Maybe it didn't work out for them, maybe it was a bad fit. And that's something you have to learn from. It's okay to get this feed. It doesn't mean you have to change anything in your business, but it means, hey, I attracted the wrong customer. I actually brought somebody on to use my product or service that really is not a good fit and therefore they are disappointed. That's on me. I need to attract the right person. What do I need to do that? Do I need to change a copy of my website? Do I need to change my ads? Do I need to change my partnerships, who I partner with and who I expose my product or service to? Maybe I need to have a bit of an onboarding system or a longer trial or some sort of money back guarantee to ensure I only have perfect fit customers. You know, not every negative comment is a hater, but sometimes you're going to get people that are just angry that day and they're going to let it out on your business. But I'm here to tell you that that's few and far. If you have a great product or service, you're more likely to get somebody who is just disgruntled or upset because the product or service they received did not meet their expectations, because they expected something else. They just thought this was something else and they got something else instead. But all in all, customer feedback is important. Personally, I think it's super important because if you're able to fine tune your product or service to meet the needs of your ideal customers, you have an incredible competitive advantage. You're able to really compete with the marketplace. I've learned that when I do this, when I really concentrate on this practice as we have done in the last few years, it really allows you to jump a few levels in your space. And all the feedback and all the comments you get online are all about, I love this company because they listen to their customers, they implement the things I've been thinking about. They think we can read their minds, but really we listen to our customers and people are not that different for attracting the same types of customers. Then you're going to have the same needs as somebody else that has given us feedback. Thanks so much for listening to the $100 BA Show. Hope today's episode helped. If it did, let us know in an Apple Podcast rating or review or leave us a review on your favorite podcast app. We'd love to hear what you think of the podcast. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. At the end of the day, our customers are incredibly important to our businesses. They allow us to pay the bills, they allow us to pay our employees and pay ourselves right, and allow our business to grow and thrive and improve the product. So regardless of the feedback, whether it's harsh, whether it's well worded, whether it's positive or negative, these are people that have at least given you a chance. So I try to give them as much time and attention and respect as I can because I respect the commitment or the attention they've given me by trying my product or service. Thanks so much for listening to the 100 LMBA show and I'll check you in tomorrow's episode Q and A Wednesday. Till then, take care.
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