GAINING FEEDBACK

Incorporating corporate partner feedback from the beginning can transform your business. Let’s assume you’re launching a food delivery business in the country. During your launch, you’ll need to speak with customers and restaurants or cafés about the features they’d like to see in the app. Ask about what they think of your minimum viable product, what they would change and why.

The feedback you gather could range from a quick survey to more in-depth qualitative product development discussions. The research questions can include how they experienced the product, user interface and experience questions and what they’d want in future versions. In every discussion, encourage partners to be as honest as possible.

Evolve the product

If your app idea or product relies on partners — like food delivery apps rely on restaurants to supply diners — you should involve partners in the design and build.

The ideas can be a small iteration or more fundamental ideas.

For instance, if your idea is to make an alternative to the Uber ride-hailing app in Muscat, you’ll need input from taxi drivers as well as users. You may wish to tailor the app’s accounting system based on their needs, for example. You don’t want to put capital toward something your partners don’t need or believe in.

Scale relationships

If your startup is dependent on a partner-heavy app, you’ll need to become a platform where hundreds of thousands of vendors can sign up for a self-serve package that will let them offer a premium experience for your users. If your users are paying five times more for a premium taxi using your app, both you and your customer will want the customer service to be top class. Accordingly, your team can see a segmentation of their products across various customer segments. Being able to offer a high-quality experience as you grow is important.

To keep the feedback loop fast and effective, you can choose a smaller rotating selection of partners to ask to effectively test your idea.