This absolutely works, if you've developed an app you should definitely have a support/feedback form somewhere.
Just launched our second app and we decided to include this, and I think it's had a hugely positive impact on our ratings and reviews. Where people would have left a bad review before, now they're submitting feedback straight to us. It's also helped us prioritize some things after getting the same question repeatedly.
It's a little more work (we've been following up on all feedback), but it seems to go a long way.
Kudos to you for following up on all the feedback! We keep hearing that while it might feel like a hassle at first, it ends up being pretty motivating to have conversations with your customers. Have you found this to be the case for your team?
This is absolutely critical to your success on an ongoing basis as an app developer. With over a million apps available in the iOS, Android and Mac marketplaces, the best chance you have of being successful, over the long haul, is to have a loyal audience. Every download represents an opportunity to win a fan and an evangelist.
We've been helping developers solve this feedback problem for the past year on all three platforms and the data is very compelling: your ratings and reviews improve, the number of people recommending you to their friends increases and your business grows. The math is stunning and we'd encourage everyone to invest time in communicating with their customers if they really believe in the app they're building.
Regardless of if you build it yourself or use our simple to integrate SDKs (http://apptentive.com) - take the time to listen to your customers. It'll go a very long way.
Testflight does not help you capture the user emotion. It is very important to find out how the user views a certain feedback. Does he view it as a suggestion, question or a problem, it helps to know how big a pain point it is.
Just launched our second app and we decided to include this, and I think it's had a hugely positive impact on our ratings and reviews. Where people would have left a bad review before, now they're submitting feedback straight to us. It's also helped us prioritize some things after getting the same question repeatedly.
It's a little more work (we've been following up on all feedback), but it seems to go a long way.