Your Complete Guide to Product Management Customer Feedback

Ever wonder what’s packed into those ‘software updates’ on your phone? 

Insights from product management customer feedback.

Updates include bug fixes, new features and usability enhancements. Companies roll out software updates to continually improve their products and services. Improvements don’t come out of thin air, nor are they based on someone’s intuition or gut feeling. 

The best products come from product teams that are actively listening to their customers. The problem? They need a way to handle the various types of feedback, before incorporating changes. 

Here’s our comprehensive guide on product feedback management. Learn about the importance of collecting feedback, its various types and channels, and ways to optimize the feedback process. 

Keep your eyes and ears peeled. And update your software regularly.

Turn your feedback into insights with Marvin—let’s make your updates count!

What is Product Management Customer Feedback?

Product Management Customer Feedback seeks to capture a customer’s evaluation of the user experience. Customers offer their thoughts, assessment and reactions while immersed in a product. Product teams collect feedback to understand users’ motivations, behaviors and needs.

Crucially, feedback reveals customers’ opinion of a product. Customer evaluations drive the product development strategy. Acting on this information, teams can address bugs, enhance the user experience, add new features or develop new products.

Why is Product Feedback Important?

Remember Blackberry?

Companies like Blackberry who don’t attach importance to customer & market feedback, perish. They fail to innovate and become extinct. 

Collecting and using product feedback helps:

Inform Business Decisions

Feedback impacts business’ strategy. Companies allocate resources and chart a path forward based on user feedback.

Businesses may have a clear vision for their product. However, it’s essential to validate these ideas to find out if the feature or product is viable. Understand what customers want from your product. Deliver these improvements and solicit more feedback. A continuous loop.

Various types of feedback helps teams across an organization. Product teams examine the user experience. Marketers understand more about the target demographic, tailoring communication to them.

The market landscape evolves over time. Capturing customer feedback helps companies identify trends and stay relevant. What are user preferences today? In what direction are they headed?

Improve the User Experience

Sometimes, product teams are so focused on a product’s success that they’re too close to see its flaws. 

Incorporating feedback into the product development process is critical to improve the offering. Product management teams attain a rich understanding of customer needs. They gain insight into user pain points while using an application. 

Customer feedback reveals bugs and product flaws and other areas for improvement. Developers prioritize tasks based on the severity and frequency of product feedback. They pinpoint areas of UX/UI optimization and create solutions, rolling these out via product updates. 

This results in experiences that delight users.

Promote User-Centricity

Product and development teams want their products to have all the bells and whistles. Caught up in adding new features and functionality, they lose sight of who they are building the product for.

Regularly collecting product feedback allows teams to develop user empathy. This promotes a customer-centric mentality across the organization. Multidisciplinary teams constantly circle back to the question:

How will product changes affect end users?

Aligning everyone ensures that everyone keeps users firmly in their thoughts. The result? Everyone pulls in the same direction to create customer-oriented products. And did we mention happier customers, too? 

Enhance Customer Loyalty

Showing customers that you care is BIG. Companies who regularly collect feedback and act on it, have loyal customers. Why? Customers feel as if their voices are being heard. They feel valued and respected. 

Customers become invested in the product’s success. They’re more likely to purchase if product teams incorporate their inputs. Over time, they become repeat customers. This enthusiasm can even turn into brand advocacy. Satisfied customers share the product with their friends, family and colleagues. That’s free marketing. 

Overall, actively seeking product feedback breeds customer loyalty. Engaging with customers throughout their journey helps improve retention and reduce churn.

Create a Competitive Advantage

Spoiled for choice, customers today have innumerable options when choosing a product. 

Companies must differentiate themselves and offer the best products and services. Engage in constant dialogue with customers, proactively responding to evolving user needs. Collecting feedback shapes how people perceive a company and product. This sets firms apart from their competition. It shows they care. 

A continual flow of customer feedback equips companies with market intelligence. Act on this information. Sound out new growth prospects. Where do the gaps and opportunities lie?

Stay ahead of the pack by collecting customer feedback.

Types of Product Feedback

Product feedback can either be:

• Active. Feedback solicited directly from customers. E.g. sending out a customer satisfaction survey.

OR

• Passive. Unsolicited feedback provided by customers (without a company asking). E.g. product reviews, customer support tickets & chatbot transcripts.

Below, we’ve further categorized various types of feedback into two overarching themes:

Product Analytics

1. Concept Testing. Identify the most promising ideas and share iterations with your target audience. Incorporate their feedback to refine product concepts. 
2. Product Viability. Product-Market Fit(PMF) surveys identify whether a product satisfies a genuine market need. 
3. Usability Testing. Grounded in data, testing examines customer behavior. How do users navigate through a product? 
4. User Experience (UX). Learn all about it with our guide to User Testing. 
   1. In-App Ratings. Evaluate a particular aspect of the user experience. No need to redirect users outside the application.
   2. Customer Effort Score. Measures how easy or challenging it is to complete tasks within a product.
5. User Onboarding. Evaluates the quality of onboarding experience. Use feedback to personalize the experience, and reduce both friction and time-to-value.
6. Feature Requests. Made by users who’d like to enhance their user experience. Collect ideas for future developments and prioritize tasks based on frequency and 
7. Bug Reports. Technical errors, problems or roadblocks that make a product behave not as intended. Address these ASAP to avoid customer churn.

 Customer, Brand & Sales Metrics

1. Satisfaction. Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) surveys measure exactly that. How happy are users with a product or service? Tracks customer sentiment. 
2. Reviews / Testimonials. Public feedback that provides insights from a customer’s perspective. Carries a lot of weight with prospective users who rely on this information before making a purchase. 
3. Complaints. A form of feedback that documents customer grievances. Respond quickly to these. It’s essential to be responsive to maintain customer trust. 
4. Customer Retention. How many customers did a company keep? Are they happy with the product?
5. Churn / Cancellation. Discover why customers leave your product or downgrade their plans.
6. Objections. Decipher the reasons why people DON’T purchase your product. Their reasoning boils down to three factors – price, product fit or competition.
7. Customer Loyalty. NPS surveys evaluate customer loyalty. On a scale of 1-10, users rate the likelihood of them recommending a product to others. 
8. Social Media Mentions. Half the planet is on social media. What people say here, matters. Users share their thoughts about their experiences, good and bad. Being present and active on social media is a must. 

Product Feedback Process

How do you implement a successful feedback strategy? Follow these steps to turn feedback into actionable insights:

1. Establish clear goals. What do you want to learn from users? Goals help you choose the right method for feedback collection. What type of data will you collect? 
2. Set up studies. Quantitative data reveals what’s happening. Are customers dropping off at a certain stage? Qualitative data explores the ‘why’ behind the numbers. Why are they dropping off? Get input from a representative slice of the user base. 
3. Ask the right questions. Use open and close ended questions. Keep interactions short and simple. The more questions you ask, increases the likelihood of people speeding through the process. This compromises the reliability and quality of data.
4. Make yourself approachable. How will customers reach out? Establish clear and open communication channels so customers can provide feedback. Let conversations flow organically – allow users to air their grievances. 
5. Collect, organize and analyze data. Use multiple channels to get a 360 degree view of the user experience. Ask internal stakeholders like customer success teams to share feedback. Leverage tools that help automate the process of collecting and analyzing data. 
6. Act. Your evaluation of feedback reveals actionable insights. After prioritizing product updates, implement changes and push them to the product.
7. Close the Loop. Don’t rest on your laurels. Follow up with users to understand whether the update has helped address their issues. Aim for a continuous feedback loop. 

How to Collect Customer Feedback – 8 Best Ways

Begin your feedback loop by collecting customer feedback from a diverse array of channels.

Depending on the type of feedback you’re after, these act as a great foundation for analysis:

1. Surveys. An efficient and inexpensive way to collect feedback at scale. Include close-ended questions for quantifiable insights. Qualitative open-ended questions help provide context. Choose from one of many delivery methods such as via email, direct links or QR codes.

2. User Interviews & Focus Groups. Help you understand the context – the underlying reasons “why” customers feel how they do. Detailed qualitative responses provide helpful insights and suggestions. Converse directly with users in person or via phone / video conference.

3. In-App / Website. Pop-up feedback forms or widgets as customers interact with key touchpoints along their journey. Receive instantaneous feedback to discover underperforming areas of your app or website. Be careful not to scare customers away with overwhelming questions!

4. Usability Testing. Focuses on how customers interact with a product. Learn how quickly users complete tasks, and if they struggle to complete any. Conducted with a prototype so users can test a functional mockup of a product. Use this data to improve the user experience. 

5. Sales & Customer Success Calls. Sales teams engage in lengthy conversations with prospective customers. Potential customers reveal their needs and problems. Capture every detail with a transcription software.

6. Customer Support. Analyze customer service interactions to find out issues users are experiencing. Categorize their frustrations into bug fixes, usability and product improvements. No better place to start ironing out the kinks. A gold mine of feedback.

7. Social Media Monitoring. Customers openly use social media to voice their appreciation (or lack thereof) for a product. Use sentiment analysis to keep track of brand mentions, good and bad. Unsolicited feedback that provides insight into what customers really think. #nofilter

8. Customer Reviews. Help shed a light on the experiences of actual users. Users take to platforms such as G2, Capterra and Trustpilot to rate products and give open and honest feedback. Analyze customer sentiment to understand their likes and dislikes about a product. 

How to Organize Customer Feedback

You’ve amassed a great deal of product feedback. Now what? Making sense of it is a whole new ballgame. 

Here’s how to organize customer feedback effectively to turn data into actionable insights:

1. Aggregate all customer feedback into a single tool for analysis. Look for similar elements to spot patterns and trends in the data. 
2. Synthesize feedback into categories. Examples of categories include bugs / usability issues, feature requests or product improvements. Add context to categories – consider who provided the feedback and their use case. 
3. Prioritize customer feedback based on its:

• Frequency. How many instances of this issue? 
• Impact. Will it have a big influence on customer experience? What is the potential impact on revenue? Is it necessary to fix this ASAP?
• Actionable. What can we do to address this? Does it align with business strategy? Is it feasible? 
• Timelines. Is this a brand new request? Or has it been requested for a long time? Is it immediately implementable? How long will it take? 
• User Type. Which users want this? Segment your user base to understand what matters to different user groups. 
• Accounts. How many different customers have the same concern? What is the revenue for each account?

Once you’ve identified and prioritized product improvements, test and validate your ideas. Conduct usability testing on a small sample of users before rolling out wholesale product changes. 

What is the Best Product Management Customer Feedback Tool?

Look out for these features as you choose a Product Management Customer Feedback Tool:

• Integrations. Choose a tool that helps collate and analyze feedback from various channels mentioned above. 
• Automation. Allows you to streamline task management and ensure consistent feedback collection. 
• Usability. Is the tool easy-to-use? Does it have a steep learning curve for new users? 
• Diverse Metrics. The tool should be able to analyze various types of customer feedback. 
• Security. Ensure confidential user data is always protected. Choose a tool compliant with local data security guidelines. 
• Customer Support. We’ve already waxed lyrical about the importance of customer support. Does the tool offer helpful and responsive support when users get stuck?

So which tool checks all the boxes?

Marvin is a centralized research repository. Product managers use it to handle and house large swathes of customer feedback. 

We integrate with tools designers and researchers love. Automate your qualitative and quantitative data collection using Marvin. Assimilate customer feedback from a host of applications. View our integrations here. 

Create and distribute customer surveys from the app itself. During analysis, import NPS surveys and sit back. Marvin crystallizes insights from thousands of responses. Conduct your thematic analysis in the Analyze tab, and generate a codebook that helps prioritize product improvements. 

Broadcast your findings across the organization. Share insights with non-users with just a couple clicks. Customer Success, Marketing and Sales teams love us as they can now hear directly from users.

Marvin’s intuitive UI is clean and easy to navigate. Run into any difficulties, and our customer support team is always happy to assist you. Marvin is GDPR, SOC2, and HIPAA compliant so your data is safe and secure. 

You don’t want a tool that houses feedback. You want one that allows you to collect, organize and analyze large amounts of customer feedback. Analyze your data and come up with actionable insights with Marvin. 

Feedback collection, organization, storage and analysis. All in one place. 

Discover the difference with Marvin – Try a demo. 

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

We address the most popular questions about product management feedback:

How Can I Integrate Feedback into the Product Roadmap?

Roadmaps chart the evolution of a product. Essentially, they lay out a product’s strategy. Feedback helps product managers prioritize tasks on the product roadmap. 

Uncovering user needs and pain points, product teams identify features that customers care about. Using these insights, they make informed, data-driven decisions and enhance the user experience.

A more customer-centric approach leads to increased customer satisfaction and higher revenue generation. 

Here are some ways to successfully integrate feedback into your product roadmap:

• Collect Data. Design surveys that gather qualitative and quantitative data. Use various types of feedback to inform decisions. Assimilate your data into a research repository like Marvin. 
• Uncover Usability Issues. Conduct user testing to document how users interact with the product.
• Segment Feedback. Distill feedback into themes. Prioritize features and improvements based on impact and alignment with the product strategy. Learn how to tag user research insights with Marvin. 
• Communicate Findings. Relay your insights across the organization. Marketing, Sales, Engineering and Product Development teams. 

What is Termed as Product Feedback Loop?

A Product Feedback Loop is the process of collecting feedback and responding to it. 

Feedback loops look something like this:

(Why explain when we can show you?)

Depending on the type of customer feedback, loops can be either positive or negative. To ‘close the loop’ is to address the feedback. Either resolve the issue (negative loops) or acknowledge positive customer feedback.

Remember, it’s important to create a process where feedback is consistently collected and acted upon. 

One infinite loop.

Did you know? 

Apple’s HQ address is “1, Infinite loop”. Coincidence? A company who obsesses about the user experience. They have a strong track record of collecting feedback to improve their products.

Is Active Feedback Better for a Product than Passive Feedback?

Both active and passive feedback are valuable. 

Active Feedback involves companies directly asking their customers for feedback. Companies reach out because they want to understand something better. They seek to find out user preferences and opinions of a product. 

Companies don’t seek out Passive Feedback, it’s instigated by customers themselves. A major advantage is that companies receive candid and unbiased feedback. This helps identify usability issues and common feature requests that enhance the product. 

Any piece of product feedback is only a snapshot of a moment in time. Thus, companies must conduct similar studies over time to measure their progress. Balance both types of feedback to get a wholesome picture of the user experience. 

You never know where the next big idea for improvement comes from.

Conclusion

Collecting customer feedback will always be essential for companies. 

Customers offer insights that product teams can incorporate into the product. Whether these are bug fixes, product improvements or new features, they all enhance the user experience. Close the feedback loop to constantly iterate products. 

In turn, this drives product and business growth. Customers perceive that companies value their opinions, and form attachments with brands. Increased customer satisfaction leads to loyalty – more retention and less churn. 

Many companies set up their workflow to collect vast amounts of customer feedback. However, secondary use of this feedback is non-existent. After collecting data, they store it and forget about it.

Not anymore.

With Marvin, user insights are just a search away. Assemble all your customer feedback in one place to build on foundational knowledge.

Make collecting feedback a priority across your organization. Reach out to our team to set up your demo.