How a 1 minute action could transform your product

A year ago Apple allowed app developers to start replying to reviews. It was something many of us app developers had wanted for a long time.

Recently, I got the chance to experience an example of a text-book perfect interaction with a user through replying to a review.

In mid-March, I got a notification from Appbot that a user had reviewed my WordBoard app. I’m proud of the 4.9 star average WordBoard achieves in the US.

When I opened up the review, I saw it was a 4 star review and they had a feature request included as part of their feedback:

Keen to know more about their feature request, I decided to reach out to try and get more details. I tried to keep it concise as possible and take it offline.

“Thanks for the great review! We’d love to make it a 5 star review by getting a bit more info about the placeholder variables. Could you get in touch with us at support@bytesizeapps.net? Thanks!”

A few days later I was excited to get a response via email:

Although there are limits to being able to implement the feature they’ve requested for the time being, I’m glad I’ve now got an idea of how to grow my app when the tools are available.

It was great to hear the user expand on their idea, and talk out the possibilities.

And what do you know — they did exactly that!

Sure, the revised rating is awesome, but what makes me happiest is being to understand this user’s use case better now, and to know what can be done better in the product as time goes on.

As a big advocate of feedback driven growth, I will always value these kinds of interactions. Taking that one minute to reply and asking for more information might get you that insight to transform your app and make a user delighted.

About The Author

Stuart is co-founder and CEO @ Appbot. He is also an iOS developer who founded 7 Minute Workout (acquired by Wahoo Fitness), WordBoard and Discovr. You can connect with him on Twitter.