The design of one-click feedback

Today I received helpful support from Kimberly Castleberry, who works at Yoast. At the bottom of her email was a mechanism to provide feedback:

I’m busy, but at the same time do want to “give back” in appreciation to Kimberly, because lord knows how shitty customer support has gotten these days.

So what’s my expectation—or rather hope—when clicking on this button? That it’s a one-click operation, just like unsubscribing from most email newsletters. But even then, those one-click email unsubscribes aren’t truly one click, because you still have to close the “You’ve successfully unsubscribed!” window.

That might seem insignificant, but that one little extra step actually registers a small amount of irritation in my mind. I’m not sure why, but perhaps it’s because I hate wasting time, and closing the window triggers an awareness of the cumulative amount of time I lose in a valueless component of the process of unsubscribing from the countless newsletters I somehow get signed up for.

But back to this feedback workflow: Yoast use HelpScout — and I love HelpScout! We use them too, so no knock on them—and after clicking the smiley face, I again registered that slight feeling of irritation having landed on a page where I have to take at minimum two further actions: (1) clicking the “Send” button and (2) closing the window.

The unfortunate consequence is that I’m unlikely to participate in those types of feedback opportunities again, so this is an area I feel could use some workflow design improvement, targeted towards making it a truly one-click, friction-free interaction.

Enjoy this article? — You can find similar content via the category and tag links below.

• Categories — Design
• Tags — User-Experience

Questions or comments? — Feel free to email me using the contact form below, or reach out on Twitter.