You're launching a community outreach project. What are the best tools to get feedback from your customers?

Most community outreach is about creating leverage to solve a challenge, or to connect people to resources that can help them. Everyone in a community is listening to "radio station WIFM" (what's in it for me), and so outreach has to begin with the points of view, needs, and interests of those you want to reach. This is a listening first strategy.

You'll want tools that are user-friendly, accessible, and capable of collecting diverse forms of feedback. Platforms like SurveyMonkey, Google Forms, or Typeform allow you to create customized surveys to gather feedback on specific aspects of your project. Utilize social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram to conduct polls or ask open-ended questions to solicit feedback from your audience. Google Analytics can be used to track user behavior and opportunities for improvement. It's not direct feedback tool, but it can provide valuable insights into user preferences. Use a combination of tools to provide comprehensive feedback that aligns best with your project.

The most important step is to understand "the why" and "the what" of your outreach initiative. Specifically, why are you going the route of community outreach and what is your ultimate desired outcome? These answers enable you to design the proper techniques, as well as the measure of success and key performance indicators of said success. Be mindful not to fall into the trap of distraction and poor planning.

Platforms like Google Forms can be helpful. You can embed feedback widgets on your website or app that allows customers to provide feedback directly. Monitoring social media platforms for mentions, comments, and messages related to your project enables you to track customer sentiment and gather feedback from social media channels. Email surveys using platforms like Mailchimp or SurveyMonkey help. Utilize customer feedback management software such as Medallia, Zendesk, or UserVoice. These platforms help you collect, organize, and analyze feedback from multiple channels, enabling you to take actionable insights to improve your project. Conduct one-on-one interviews or focus groups with select customers to gather in-depth feedback.

There are multiple ways to obtain feedback. I suggest having an advisory committee of community members, sharing the findings with program participants to ensure accuracy, and triangulating the findings with the literature. Always place accurate findings in a historical, cultural, and strength-based context to demonstrate respect, justice, and beneficence.

Pick the channels where the people you want to reach already live. Their favorite channels should become the focus of your outreach. Otherwise you'll probably reach people more like you, than like them.

Social media can be a great way to get feedback from a large audience in a real-time setting. You can create a poll, post a question, or start a discussion about your program. This is a good option if you want to get quick and informal feedback.

If we want to fish, we wouldn’t just cast our net just about anywhere. We would need to know a little about the fish that we would like to catch and the kinds of baits they are attracted to. The same is true for gaining traction in our efforts to reach our target audience.

A good CRM is a floor for managing communications. It should be simple to use, track everything and integrate with all of your other tools. We use HubSpot for those, and help nonprofits get a discount (start-ups, too).

Before you launch your community outreach project, you’ll need to learn about the outreach approach and mode of communication ‘preferred’ by the community you’re trying to reach. Having genuine interest in as well as knowledge and understanding of the community you want to reach, will help you identify the best tools. This will also help you establish an effective process and outreach approach before and after seeking feedback. Asking in advance, learning and applying what you learn may seem like an extra step but it will increase your chances of getting reliable, meaningful and useful feedback before during and beyond the project.

Feedback tools should match the communication styles of the people you want to reach. This can range from digital tools to actual in-person (yes in person) interviews. A clear distinction should be made between what you want to gather that is qualitative in nature, vs. what is quantitative and yields more nuanced insights.

Feedback forms for me personally should have a space for a written response beyond the tailored questions,give opportunity to learn new data and information that may add clarity to the entire process and needs that save time and money or add in a myriad of ways to the conversation. Opinions matter no viewpoint should be discounted.

A feedback form gives you the opportunity to assess different responses and analyse the data received. This gives you a clear perspective of all responses and where problems truly falls

Response analysis can take advantage of lots of good AI tools, and also employ human observation. If you are including interviews, then your best tool is actually the people who are conducting those interviews and their insights your best analysis.

Everything is about quantifiable results of course there are newfangled ways but the tried and true simplest way is with visual graphs pie charts qnd straightforwardly asking relevant questions for a community to respond to. Give the total picture pro and con to garner public trust. Find out the truth and don't hesitate to report if it is not what you hoped the outcome would be. INTERGRITY FIRST

Some of the best tools for collecting customer feedback include: 1. Creating Surveys using tools like Google Forms, SurveyMonkey, or Typeform to gather structured feedback from customers. Targeted email surveys could also be sent to customers on specific aspects of the project. Ensure to pre-inform them about the emails. 2. Feedback Forms: Place feedback forms on the venue, boards, website or app to make it easy for customers to provide their thoughts and suggestions. 3. Social Media: Maintain interactive social media platforms to see what customers are saying about your project. Customars can also be engaged with directly using this tool. 4. Conduct one-on-one interviews and focus groups to discuss their thoughts and feedback