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I’m a huge fan of agile processes in product development. It’s an iterative process where you develop incremental improvements. These developments are consistently reviewed to see how it impacts the end-user. The review process allows a customer to access the product and provide feedback. You use this feedback to improve the product’s next iteration.

The model is fascinating for a startup and might get tricky as you grow big. But you can emulate this with a subset of eager customers in a larger organisation. The key trick is to use product feedback to continually evolve your product. Although this concept applies heavily to software development, you can easily extend this to a startup scene. As a startup, you can extend this to developing Minimum Viable Products for continuous evolution.

What is product feedback?

Product feedback is the input shared by your users about the utilisation of your product/service. This includes identifying how your customers feel about your product, their satisfaction levels etc. If you’re able to follow the full cycle of an agile process – you’ll be able to deliver a product output at regular intervals. In an ideal world, this is every 2 weeks.

In order to get valuable feedback to improve your product consistently, it is important to capture usage data on each release. Make sure that you don’t have too much in a single release. Or else, you’ll not be able to identify or qualify feedback to a specific development. The best results can be achieved when these developments are small and tangible.

You can capture product feedback through multiple routes. The most common ones are:

• Product Surveys and interviews
• Working with focus groups
• Tracking data for use of the product
• Customer support tickets
• In some cases you’ll also get great input via social channels

The main point to remember is that you need feedback for a good product. Or else, you’ll end up developing a product in a vacuum that has the danger of becoming something that no one wants.

Product Feedback Examples

Most popular brands constantly collect your feedback as a user. This product feedback can be in the form of user ratings, comments and surveys. Some common ones are uber asking you to rate their driver, google’s feedback form which keeps asking you whether the content is relevant for you etc? In each instance, these companies are looking for a pattern. A single user doesn’t define the product journey. But a group of users certainly do.

I’d recommend this Hubspot article which refers to templates for capturing customer feedback. Do note however the language being used in each of these products in their surveys. We ought to be very thankful for users giving us honest feedback. If you’re implementing any of these examples, make sure that you don’t harass the customer with multiple questions. Make sure that the focus is on the most important areas of development for you. That way, the feedback is specific and valuable for both yourself and the end-user.

Product Feedback Management

The most important thing is to ensure that you’re continually listening to the market. However, there’s a key piece of consideration while valuing this feedback. Used optimally, this product feedback management can be a great way to manage customer development through this process as a startup.

• Look for patterns: Individual feedback is hard to validate. Something that works very well for a person X might not work for Y. Look for things that influence your customer or targeted user base. This feedback must be focussed and specific.
• Develop a mechanism to listen: Keep your listening mechanisms consistent. Don’t be defensive or block ideas coming in. Your product will never be perfect. That’s probably the best testament to your customer base if they feel comfortable and safe to leave constructive feedback.
• Be careful of your HIPPOs: The HIPPOs generally refer to highest paid person’s opinion in a room. This applies to product feedback as well. I agree that we should treat our customers fairly. But if you’re being fair to the product development process, please ensure that no one customer bullies your entire product roadmap. The feedback process is fair only when you have an objective mechanism to find something which impacts the majority of your user base.

Collecting product feedback is not a singular exercise. It will need consistent change, development and iterations to make sure that your designs work for your users. Try to talk to your customers regularly. This can be in the form of blogs, focus groups and usage trials for new products. These avenues create brilliant insight which can further be used to develop your product further.