Overview
It's no secret: Gathering and managing product feedback is, well, challenging. That's true for a few reasons:
- Feedback can come from a variety of sources, such as NPS surveys, CSAT scores, support tickets, and user testing. This can result in a large amount of data that needs to be sorted, analyzed, and acted upon.
- Feedback can be subjective and difficult to interpret. Customers may have different opinions and priorities, which can make it challenging to identify trends and prioritize feature requests.
- Feedback can be time-sensitive. Customers expect a response or resolution within a certain timeframe, which can add pressure to the product and customer success teams.
Without a proper system in place to manage feedback, itâs nearly impossible to track the status of feature requests and ensure that they are being addressed in a timely manner.
For instance, if you're a product manager at an organization that provides cloud-based collaboration software, your team may receive a lot of feedback from customers. But if they don't have a proper system in place to analyze the feedback, itâs difficult for them to prioritize feature requests and make data-driven decisions.
So, how can you harness this data and manage it effectively? The first step is to capture the right data fields. Below is an example of some customer fields that you should have in place to implement an effective product feedback system:
| Customer Field Name | Field Description |
|---|---|
| Customer ID | Unique identifier for the customer |
| Feedback Type | The type of feedback (feature request, bug report, etc.) |
| Feedback Category | The category of feedback (user interface, performance, etc.) |
| Feedback Description | A description of the feedback provided by the customer |
| Feedback Score | The score provided by the customer on a scale of 1 to 10 |
| Feedback Source | NPS, CSAT, Other |
| Timestamp | The date and time when the feedback was submitted |
| Product Version | The version of the product the customer is using |
| Status | The status of the feedback (open, closed, in progress, etc.) |
Use Case
Implementing these fields will enable you to capture relevant information about the customer, the feedback provided, and the status of that feedback as it relates to the product. This data can then be used to identify trends and make data-driven decisions.
Plus, once this feedback is properly managed, you can use it to benefit both the product and customer success teams to:
- Prioritize feature requests: By analyzing feedback categories and scores, you can identify the most requested features and prioritize them in your product roadmap. This can help you improve customer satisfaction and retention, which aligns with the goals of the customer success team.
- Improve product performance: By analyzing feedback related to performance, you can identify areas of the product that need improvement. Addressing these issues can lead to a better product experience, which aligns with the goals of the product team.
- Reduce churn: By analyzing feedback scores and CSAT scores, you can identify customers who are at risk of churning. You can then take action to address their concerns and improve their satisfaction, which aligns with the goals of the customer success team.
- Communicate product updates: By analyzing feedback types and timestamps, you can identify customers who are interested in product updates. You can then communicate relevant updates to these customers, which can lead to increased adoption and satisfaction.
Here's a step-by-step process for managing product feedback in Census:
- Connect your data source. This can be a data warehouse like Snowflake, BigQuery, Redshift, or Databricks or a database like Postgres, SQL Server, or MySQL
- Collect customer feedback. For NPS surveys and CSAT scores, there are specialized software platforms that can be used to create and manage these types of surveys. Some common tools used for this purpose are SurveyMonkey, Qualtrics, and Customer.guru. Support tickets can be collected and managed through a helpdesk software such as Zendesk, Freshdesk, or Help Scout. User testing can be conducted in a variety of ways, such as through in-person sessions, remote sessions, or A/B testing.
- Connect your destination application. We have integrations with over 130+ SaaS tools.
- Map the feedback to the customer fields listed above to ensure you capture all relevant information.
- Use Census to activate your data and push these fields to the tools Product and Customer Success teams use to help them make more data-driven decisions.
