How to Make Sure Customer Feedback is Informing Product Decisions

Some of your customers are very unhappy with your product!

(or at least some part of it)

Some part of their experience is consistently frustrating them, and as soon as they see another option that they like better, they are ready to leave.

You might say that this could never be true! Our customers are always posting rave reviews and referring their friends. They love the experience our software product provides them!

But wait... how sure are you?

It pays dividends to look squarely in the mirror to see warts and all. Just to be sure. And look again often.

A HubSpot research study showed that 42% of companies are lacking good systems of customer feedback. I think very few of us are doing this as well as we want to.

There are a few major reasons why MANY software products fail in the market. And they are directly related to the process of getting customer feedback and how that data is informing product decisions.

There are 2 major parts of this process that you want to look at.

Collection & Prioritization.

Collecting Customer Feedback

Key questions to ask when evaluating HOW we collect feedback:

• What are the methods we can use to elicit the best and most honest customer data possible?
• Where can we automate or streamline this flow of data?
• When do we want to have human engagement in this process?

Using the Data to Inform Product Priorities

Key questions to ask when evaluating how we use the feedback:

• Who are the customers that we need to focus on the most right now?
• How can we create a product feature prioritization system that puts the features our key customers care about the most?
• What are the pain points that are hurting customer experience the most?

In order to feel a high level of confidence in your methods of collecting feedback from customers, and your processes for prioritizing it, start with an evaluation.

In this article I will focus on the process of evaluating, identifying ways to improve, and optimizing your processes based on what you discover.

In 2 future articles, I will cover more specific ways to collect and prioritize.

1. Clarify What Is All of us know how fast time can speed by when we are deeply focused on building a product and a company. Months and quarters can slide by without much time spent zooming out to evaluate the state of our teams, processes, progress, plans. The most critical part of making sure product evolution is high-performing is taking out enough time to truly evaluate what currently is. What the product is so far. What the process is now. The composition of the team. The current systems for getting and prioritizing feedback from customers. And what plans are currently in place for improving all 4 of these pillars?
2. Identify Strengths and Areas for Improvement Once you have an honest and accurate picture of what is, it becomes easier to identify what is working well, as well as what is not working so well. The simple next step is to choose the improvements to your processes and team that require the least energy but provide you with the most immediate and valuable payoff.
3. Optimize Key Processes Now it's time to quickly go to work making the needed adjustments one at a time. This means assigning priority to process improvements. This is harder said than done because your day-to-day workload already fills the day, right? In this work, accountability and tracking are key. These changes will require some commitment and they may not be easy. But remember, you chose them because your customers want them and they are the lowest hanging fruit. It's worth doing the work.
4. Tune via Periodic Review We recommend every 2 months or at least once per quarter, block 2 to 3 hours for reviewing again to see what has been learned, what new perspectives have emerged, what has changed. To reach a far-off destination, we must make constant course corrections as we progress.
5. Periodically Seek Outside Perspective We can never see everything we need to see from our vantage point. If we want to feel highly confident that we are collecting and prioritizing customer feedback WELL, and that this is leading us toward building the right product for our market, we need to go outside our own knowledge and experience. At the very least, this means doing a lot of research into best practices, reading articles, and following experts on these topics. Another more time-efficient option would be to work with a partner that can provide a proven track to run on to get us from where are to where we want to be.

I Just Don't Have the Time or Bandwidth

I used to think that if I wanted to reach my entrepreneurial visions, I just needed to work more, work harder. The idea of long meetings to review, evaluate, strategize... I hated that idea. Because I did not believe it was the path to success.

Perhaps it would not have worked because all those years ago I also lacked the right partners and methodologies. So perhaps no amount of time reflecting would have made my businesses or products more successful back then.

But now that I have seen the difference so many times, I know that well-facilitated workshops or quarterly strategy meetings are absolutely bedrock vital to remaining on course. Without the time we invest in stepping away to clarify what is, identify what to improve, and implement that plan to optimize, we would be way off track. I now look forward to quarterly and annual strategy meetings that help us stay tuned. I love the product development workshops that we run internally to make sure we are building what our customers want. And I just love improving the way that we collect and prioritize honest feedback.

Products are just like businesses. If we don't step away periodically and get outside perspective, we run the big risk of ultimately failing to reach our vision.

Tomorrow we have an all-day quarterly strategy meeting. I feel like I can't afford the time because I have so much to DO. But then again, can I afford to risk that what I do every day is not even what matters in the end? What's the point in working so hard if we are not even building the right thing?

Don't Keep Building That Product

The point is, you can't afford to keep going in the direction you are going with your product if there is even a 10% chance that the next features your team works on are the ones your customers care about most.

Take the time to be sure. Once you have customer feedback flowing and great processes to prioritize, with a well-oiled team implementing said features... now you know you can put the pedal to the metal and go confidently in that direction!

Be Sure

We built a self-evaluation tool to help people start the self-evaluation process. I invite you to take this 5-minute self-assessment that will provide you with a free product development efficiency report, no strings attached.

A Message to Purpose-Driven Founders & Teams

I wish you continued success as you build your product with a purpose. Thank you for being one of the few who risk it all to solve meaningful human problems. I believe there is a tipping point, where enough of us are working to solve human problems, where our problems start falling like dominoes. Imagine the percentage needed for this tipping point is 5% of humans. Imagine we are at 2.5% and the gap is closing. Let's not only remain committed to being part of the gap, but let's become more effective, and let's keep enlisting more to join us. Let's close the gap.