1. Get rid of stale data
Have you ever spent months developing a certain feature that you were sure was going to be an absolute winner - only to find out that none of your customers really cared or wanted it in the first place?
You’re not alone. While it’s great to collect feedback and ideas about how to improve, making sure that you’re using the most up-to-date and accurate data is crucial to making sure you’re not wasting valuable time or effort on a feature that your customers neither want nor care about.
Spreadsheets and forums are great for tallying votes, but rarely give you the insight you need - is this feature going to solve a customer headache? Or is it just something that’s nice to have? Do they still need or even want it?
Introducing a dynamic prioritization system like Receptive can help do away with stale data and unlock real insights into what your customers actually want. User priorities aren’t static, so your feature request prioritization system shouldn’t be either.
2. Throw out your tin-can comms system
That amazing new feature that your customers have been incessantly asking for is finally out. You write blog posts, shout about it on social media, and send out emails like there’s no tomorrow - but somehow your customer success team STILL get asked about it months after its released. You’re fairly sure your customer received a bajillion emails about it, but whatever.
Trying to keep your customers updated about everything you’ve done can sometimes feel like you’re trying to communicate with a tin-can phone - especially if it’s one of your more cough vocal customers who’s asking for it. Tools like Receptive’s customer engagement email tool and Intercom’s customer feedback tool can streamline the whole process.
Receptive auto-emails personalized feature progress and releases updates to customer teams with the click of a button (say goodbye to that ridiculously long list of segments on mailchimp), and Intercom’s tool helps prompt your customers to provide qualitative feedback based on actions they do or don’t take.
3. Show your customers you’re actually listening
Like crappy comms systems, it’s equally as difficult to make sure your customers know you’re actually listening to them. We’ve all felt the pain of landing an awesome customer (magical unicorns = bae), only to watch them churn a couple months later because they had no idea you were already working on that deal-breaker feature for them.
Without a public roadmap, it’s hard to reassure potential and existing customers that key features are on their way - lack of transparency can create unnecessary churn and brew customer discontent. Even indicating that you’ll eventually release it can be seen as a sign of good faith, and you’ll probably get quite a few ‘we can’t believe you actually listen to what we’re saying!’ responses.
“Not having any idea of where a company is heading forces customers out the door, while transparency keeps the right customers in. If a customer is considering leaving, but you have some important features on your roadmap, that may change their mind.”
Read more about how AgoraPulse reduced churn by using Receptive.
4. Don’t get Pied Pipered
A familiar scenario we can unfortunately all relate to - someone gets stuck on what they think is going to be a game changer, and sadly for your team, that person happens to be someone you feel you actually have to listen to (perhaps your very own Jack Barker?).
They spend weeks shouting about how awesome it’s gonna be, but you don’t have any proof that it’s going to be something your customers hate. I mean, it’s just a bad idea. But without the proper evidence to back you up, it can be difficult to shut a HiPPO’s (aka ‘Highest Paid Person’s Opinion’) suggestion down.
(If you haven’t already seen it, Unbounced’s April Fools prank a while back nailed it on the head)
That’s why it’s so important to seek validation - weigh up suggestions with real data from a wide range of customers to make sure you’re making the best product decisions. Put ideas to your customers, and give them the opportunity to say if it’s awesome or just plain awful.
No one wants to waste time or resources on something that’s not going to add value. Getting a global consensus means you spend your time building the right things - and your tech team will actually feel good about the decision.
5. Save your sanity: put everything in one place
Is your feature requests management system about as organized as Michael Scott’s thought process? You’re not alone. Not having a consolidated feature request system can lead to chaos. Every team (and in some cases, every employee) has their own system to manage requests, making it next to impossible to identify customer pain points and everyday annoyances.
Centralizing all the feature requests from sales notes, account lists and development spreadsheets can make your life so much easier. It can help your management, product and support teams save time collecting and managing feature requests, and allows you to quickly identify recurring themes.
You might even discover that many of those ‘back-burner’ features are actually really important. Tools like Receptive put product discussions and analytics in one place, creating simple workflows that the entire team can use.
