Product Feedback: 4 steps to improve your products | Labyrinth (2023)

Conversations with your customers and feedback are key elements to the success of your product. However, research shows that 42% ofCompanies don't question their customersor collect feedback.

Great products don't happen in a vacuum - you need an ongoing process of getting customer feedback to guide your product plan, adjust messages, and monitor satisfaction levels.

To learn how to build a continuous feedback loop for your product and marketing strategy, we spoke toAna Šutko, head of product marketing at Supermetrics,Mark Piras, Head of Product Growth at FYI,Divyam Kaushik, head of digital products and programs at Deloitte, andCharles Hawk, product manager at Zest.

Read on for important tips on how product and marketing teams can gather product feedback and gain actionable user insights.

Product feedback is all the information your users share about their experience and satisfaction with the product. You can collect feedback about the product in several waysresearch methodssuch as customer interviews, customer surveys, customer support ticket evaluation, and more.

Product feedback ensures that we don't make products without understanding the potential impact of what we build on people. This ultimately helps us spend less time building things people don't need.

Mark Piras, Product Manager at FYI

At Maze, you collect feedback early onproduct development processit helps in quick decision making and iteration. Direct access to customers defines the product roadmap and allows the product team to quickly iterate ideas for features, design, messaging and more.

Our users are with us from the early stages of the design process and therefore feel involved in the development of the product.

Jolanta Gil, lead UX designer at Maze

Deloitte's Divyam agrees: “We ensure that customers are involvedProduct developmentfrom the beginning. It keeps them engaged and excited about the product.”

There are several product feedback methods you can use to post product feedback and allow your customers to contact you.

In general, product feedback can be solicited or unsolicited:

• Feedback requestedis when you ask users to provide it. This could be sending a survey to your customer base or conducting customer interviews.
• Unsolicited feedbackis any kind of feedback that users share without asking. For example, they can leave a review online or share a reaction on social media.

Unsolicited feedback usually occurs when users encounter issues with your product, request new features, or need help getting something done.

On the other hand, with solicited feedback, you need to provide users with context and ask the right research questions. Depending on what your team needs feedback on, here's a quick overview of the methods you can use to collect the requested product feedback:

• Questionnaire
• Conversations with customers
• Productanalyses
• Focus groups
• Chat with customer support
• Sales and customer success conversations

Let's look at the first three in more detail.

1. Investigations

Surveys are an effective research tool that gives you specific product feedback for different use cases: analyzing the performance of new launches,confirmation of ideas and new conceptsbefore starting the build process, testing product messages and more.

Mostproduct studiesuse a combination of open and closed questions. There are several best practices to keep in mind when creating and sending surveys, namely:

• Avoid leading questions,such as "How much do you enjoy using this product?" Instead, ask your users to provide details about their experience without prompting them to give a positive or negative answer.
• Keep them short:consider the time and willingness of the respondents to give you feedback. Include no more than five to seven questions in the survey to keep it relatively short and still get useful feedback.
• Use a combination of open and closed questions.Too many open-ended questions will result in long surveys as participants have to type answers to each question. On the other hand, a survey that consists only of closed questions, such as yes/no questions, will only provide you with quantitative data that does not reveal why participants gave you those answers. A combination of both types of questions ensures an effective investigation.

Get early product feedback from real users. Here are a few of uspre-made surveys with feedbackready to copy, modify and share with your users:

• Get fast product feedback: Gather qualitative and quantitative user insights to validate product decisions
• Get a first impression of the new features: find out how satisfied users are with your new version, understand their experience so far and see what could change in the future
• Get live website feedback: Collect user insights on live web pages to improve engagement and conversions
• Get fast NPS feedback: Gather insights to understand customer satisfaction and brand perception
• Feedback over bètatesten: Collect real-time feedback and discover user challenges during beta testing

2. Conversations with customers

Customer interviews are a versatile research method for obtaining insightful feedback during the product development process. From leading initialdesign Researchto acquirepost-launch feedback– talking to users can always provide new insights.

In Maze we come into contact with oursAdvisory board for users(CAB) members every time we need to validate a new concept, test new product features, and get strategic feedback.

Similarly, for product marketers, interviews are a convenient way to get message information about new products or features.

It's a marketer's job to make sure the product story is clearly communicated, and we take a lot of customer feedback before the product is even developed to make sure we're creating something that customers really need.

Ana Šutko, Head of Product Marketing at Supermetrics

Regardless of the goal, the key to conducting excellent customer interviews is to ask non-leading questions and let the conversation flow naturally.

3. Productanalyse

Product analytics are a great source of insight into how a product is performing and how it can be improved. Useful for product managers and marketers, product analytics can help you understand what users are doing versus what they are saying, which isn't always the same thing.

In addition, product analysis is a good source for identifying serious problems within the product. For example, by measuring analytics like retention, you can track over time or compare rates to industry standards. And when an anomaly occurs, the data is the starting point for additional research to understand what the problem is. “Those who deviate from the average think differently, and that helps us create new segments to reduce churn, increase retention or meet other goals,” says Karolis.

You can use many methods to collect product feedback, from the three we reviewed above to additional methods such as social media monitoring, customer support tickets, sales calls, customer success calls, and more. It is more important to create a process through which feedback consistently reaches your organization and is acted upon, prompting users for more feedback. This is also known as the product feedback loop.

A feedback loop is an iterative process of implementing insights from customer feedback into theproduct development processand used to make consistent product decisions. The process repeats indefinitely as new feedback influences new product strategies and changes require additional customer feedback.

This constant intake of customer feedback helps you monitor customer satisfaction and establish an open channel between you and your customers.

Productfeedback

Not all feedback is created equal or, for that matter, helpful. As with any research method, collecting good feedback requires understanding and following key best practices. Here's what you need to know.

Set clear goals

Before you even start collecting feedback, the first step is to define your goals and clear ways to measure them.
A good starting point is to look at the KPIs for which you are responsible. For product teams, this could mean activating or retaining users. For product marketers, it can also include qualified signups and usage statistics. "Your KPIs help you ask the questions you need to ask your customers," he explainsDivyam Kaushik, head of digital products and programs at Deloitte.

In addition, the goals you set will also help you choose the right method for collecting feedback. For example, customer interviews are great for getting qualitative feedback when conducting initial discovery research. On the other hand,prototype testingit is best for validating designs with users before development. Setting your goal is the first step to getting the feedback you need to make informed decisions.

Ask the right questions

Subsequently, asking the right research questions is an important step in obtaining effective, reliable feedback. Once you have defined your goal, the next step is to create a survey to send to users or prepare your own surveyresearch planfor conversations with customers.

There are some important guidelines to keep in mind when developing research questions. Some of them are:

• Do not ask the participant to answer
• Avoid closed questions, especially when talking to a customer
• Mention specific moments, such as the use of a function or a new product

Let the conversation flow organically

While following a list of pre-written questions is a good method of encouraging participants to share feedback; during the interview, pay attention to strong feelings and listen to the stories and experiences of the users. Marco from FYI shares more about it:

Listen to people's stories and pay close attention when they mention challenges they have with the product. Ask very broad questions to understand how they are using the product or competitor and let the conversation flow organically.

Mark Piras, Growth Product Manager en FYI

Be open and approachable

It's easier to collect feedback if you make it easy for customers to contact you. Whether it's live chat on your website or accessibility on social media, give customers different ways to share feedback.

Being open to unsolicited feedback also indicates to customers that you value their input, making them more willing to share more detailed feedback.

“At Zest, the feedback channels are open and any user who wants to talk to us can easily get in touch with us in real time. Zest goes a step further and ties in with the user base. Access to feedback or interaction with customers should be as personal as possible. The feedback is therefore much deeper, more thoughtful and relevant," adds Karolis.

Establishing a process that turns feedback into actionable insights is an important part of making product feedback effective for you and your team. Here's a step-by-step guide to doing this:

Step 1: Synthesize feedback into categories

First, start by analyzing the collected feedback and sort it into categories. Examples of categories can be bugs, feature requests, or general improvements. “Feedback is always synthesized to get the bigger picture. If we have hints to improve functionality, build or fix something, we use that feedback to convince colleagues to do more research and help decide if something is worth doing,” says Karolis.

Grouping similar types of feedback makes it easy to spot striking patterns. Many tools to collect feedback such ascunningofNoltautomatically measures and categorizes user feedback for you and provides metrics like upvotes so you know which ideas are the most popular.

“We categorize and analyze the data we have collected to find patterns. In those stories we look for elements that people have in common. We use those insights to come up with new assumptions for product testing,” said Marco Piras, head of product growth at FYI.

Categorizing feedback into different types is especially helpful when dealing with customer support requests or open answers in a survey field, such as "Do you have any other feedback for us?".

“Segmentation helps to make the connections and get the full context around the feedback. Use the insights from this process to inform your intuition and decide what changes to test next in the product,” explains Marco Piras, Product Growth Manager at FYI. Here's how they categorize the different types of feedback the FYI team collects:

How the FYI team categorizes product feedback

“I paste each piece of feedback into a Google spreadsheet and then label it as 'Feedback type' and 'Specific feedback'. The combination of the two is a complete label and that's what I look for when I check which feedback we get the most ,” says Mark.

How the FYI team labels product feedback

Step 2: Analyze the context

Once you start categorizing the feedback, clear patterns will emerge. This process helps you see which ideas users search for the most and prioritize them based on importance, relevance, and business sense.

For each idea, think about the context around it: things like who provided feedback, their use case or similarities to an existing product, etc.

Ideally, you should have background information on the participants and take enough notes to note the relevance of each feedback and why it would be important (or not) to act on it. If you choose to apply feedback, this context will help you frame the reason why you're doing it and formulate a problem statement. "We have raw insights into who and what we don't want to see in feedback, and from there it's about assessing whether there's a critical mass of feedback, based on where it's coming from, what the pain points are and the context behind it," he says. Karolis.

Let's say your tool is a to-do app that allows people to create simple to-do lists. You recently received feedback from your customers complaining about having to switch between task creation tools with a partner who uses Google Calendar.

At the same time, other users want the ability to see their full agenda for the day in the app, including events they've signed up for with their Google email. While the two requests come from different pain points, both can be solved by integrating with Google Calendar. The context surrounding the complaint is important in determining the solution.

Analyzing the context behind the feedback is essential for prioritizing ideas, which is the next stage of the process.

Step 3: Prioritize the ideas

While you might get excited about new product ideas that come from customer feedback, you don't have the time or resources to develop them all. Prioritizing is key: Identifying the ideas that matter most to your users and make business sense for your organization is an important step in responding to feedback. “We assess the complexity involved in implementing an idea and then calculate the return on investment of time and resources,” said Anna Shutko, head of product marketing at Supermetrics.

There are variousprioritization techniquesyou can use to determine what you want to work on. Divyam Kaushik, head of digital products and programs at Deloitte, recommends a few questions to help you prioritize ideas:

• "Is that in line with your strategy?"
• "How will it affect sales or profit?"
• "Will it attract new customers or increase the loyalty of existing customers?"
• "Have you planned any improvements to screw this up?"

At Deloitte, the team uses a value versus effort framework to determine which feature idea to move forward with. “This approach is based on a large number of estimates, but it helps you prioritize and ensure incremental product value,” says Divyam.

“For one of the products I managed, we received feedback from customers requesting the ability to read content offline so that executives could read it on the go. We've decided not to go through with it after going through the value vs. effort framework,” says Divyam. Here's a detailed breakdown of that analysis:

Sending feature requests through a value versus effort framework - an example from Deloitte

Likewise, the FYI team adopted the Worth-What-Why framework to identify ideas worth working on. The framework is based on three questions:

• "Is it worth it? Is there a trend to increase customer demand?"
• "What is it? What is the problem that people face and want to solve?"
• "Why? What motivates people to take action? What bothers them? What do they like?

Step 4: Test and validate the idea

Once you've chosen an idea to work on, it's time to research potential solutions and validate them with clients. Testing the idea at this stage is crucial because there are different ways to solve the problem, so you have to find the best solution in terms of user needs, design and development resources or internal criteria.

One way to quickly test your product ideas is to use a remote testing platform like Maze. Learn more aboutconfirming the idea with Maze.

While there are many benefits to actively collecting and analyzing product feedback, they can be summed up in three key benefits:

• Improving user experience and satisfaction
• Prioritize the product plan and validate new ideas
• Building a successful product

Let's look at them in more detail.

1. Improve user experience and satisfaction

In a world with so many products, user experience is everything. Product feedback helps us do that. There's a reason why people buy Apple year after year.

Divyam Kaushik, head of digital products and programs at Deloitte

Offering a great user experience to customers is no longer a unique benefit - it's expected. After a product launch, collecting product feedback helps you identify issues, gather information about new features that can be added or improved, and find ways to help users get the most out of their experience.

Before building a product, make assumptions about the value people will derive from it. After you submit, you want to know if you were right or wrong and understand why.

Mark Piras, Growth Product Manager en FYI

Support tickets are usually good at pinpointing recurring issues that need to be resolved as soon as possible. If the problem occurs more than once, you know that a large portion of your user base is affected. In addition, surveys such asNet result promoters (NPS)ofcustomer satisfaction score (CSAT)they are great sources of product feedback and can help you understand how to improve your customers' experience.

2. Product plan prioritization and idea validation

By collecting user feedback, product managers can prioritize the product roadmap and make informed decisions based on real user needs. Here's Divya from Deloitte about it:

Product managers can keep guessing at what customers want, but customer feedback gives us data to build on and shape future sprints. It is the only way we can adapt our products to the needs of our customers.

Divyam Kaushik, head of digital products and programs at Deloitte

You can collect feedback on feature ideas and quantify data to know which ones are most in demand. For example, with Maze, all feature requests are tracked internally by our support team, allowing the product team to assess the popularity of the feature and decide whether to include it in the next product build cycle.

3. Building a successful product

Today, the best products are built on the basis of continuous interaction and monitoring of the user experience of the people who use your product day in and day out: your customers. Rising customer expectations mean companies must continually gather and identify customer needs to build products that solve real, existing problems.

Each product solves a customer problem and business goal. If you can democratize the product development process, you can create profitable products.

Divyam Kaushik, head of digital products and programs at Deloitte

Product feedback is a great mechanism for capturing user insights and incorporating them into your decision making process. Whether it's solicited or unsolicited feedback (more on that later), listening to what your users are telling you ensures that you can consistently deliver value.

Product feedback guides you in the right direction by understanding the situations and how the user is using the product, and in some cases it may be different than what the team envisioned.

Ana Šutko, Head of Product Marketing at Supermetrics

Most product teams today have access to online platforms that allow them to interact with users. Surveys, feedback forms, social monitoring, live chat - you name it. In 2021, deciding not to listen to what your users tell you is a surefire way to lose fast.

Product feedback is a great source of insight into customer behavior and pain points and helps you make informed decisions throughout the product development process.

Anyone who works in product and marketing today benefits from talking to customers and listening to what they have to say. As products mature and customer needs change, these conversations shouldn't be a one-time event, but an important part of building great products.

This product feedback guide is designed to encourage and educate you to start talking to customers. Are you ready to start a conversation?

FAQ about product feedback