{"id":77197,"date":"2021-12-01T13:14:32","date_gmt":"2021-12-01T13:14:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.prodpad.com\/?p=77197"},"modified":"2025-01-13T16:26:04","modified_gmt":"2025-01-13T16:26:04","slug":"customer-feedback-product-process-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.prodpad.com\/blog\/customer-feedback-product-process-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Customer Feedback: The secret sauce in your product process"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

When I sat down to write this post on how to use customer feedback<\/a> to mitigate product management pain points, I knew roughly what I wanted to say. I thought I\u2019d run through the importance of collecting customer feedback so you can make good choices about what to build. I\u2019d talk about the need to iterate on the changes you make and that you should follow the principle of \u201cbuild-measure-learn\u201d. And I\u2019d explain why asking for feedback can lead to increased engagement from users, with all the benefits that engagement brings with it.

I always like to use imagery to illustrate my points, but as I searched, all I could find was memes<\/a>, hundreds of them. I know our marketing team regularly posts memes and jokes on our Twitter feed and that these posts get great engagement, but why are there so many of them?

My conclusion is that product managers are experiencing the same problems everywhere, and so it\u2019s easy to tickle their funny bones with observational comedy. With that in mind, I thought the best way to showcase the value of a good feedback mechanism was to use memes and dig into why they\u2019re funny. My next post<\/a> will look at how to create a good user feedback mechanism and rise above the problems they illustrate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Customer Feedback mechanisms help us introduce psychological safety<\/h2>\n\n\n
\n
\"Customer<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Product managers<\/a> need to be able to say no, and that\u2019s not always done with tact. But how does the PM know that their stakeholder\u2019s idea is unpopular? How do they push back with such confidence? Maybe the PM doesn\u2019t care about anyone\u2019s feelings (I\u2019m sure we\u2019ve known people like that), or maybe they can be confident because they have feedback that supports their case.

If you\u2019re in conflict with a stakeholder about their idea, it\u2019s easier and less confrontational to say \u201cfeedback indicates that this isn\u2019t something our market would benefit from\u201d. The stakeholder isn\u2019t wrong, the market isn\u2019t ready for their idea<\/a>. It\u2019s the feedback\u2019s fault. Customer feedback helps to manage conflict here, and introduces psychological safety<\/a> into the discussion, so we\u2019re more likely to stay engaged and work productively with stakeholders.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"Spongebob<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

We regularly get feature requests from customer-facing colleagues – sales, operations, support, success – people who act as a proxy for an individual customer (or sometimes many) and are under pressure from them.\u00a0

Spongebob is burning the feature request <\/a>because he\u2019s fed up with having to deal with this stuff. He can\u2019t possibly act on every request he gets, and it\u2019s easier to just burn the request than deal with it. Not only that, he knows that this isn\u2019t going to progress, and he just can\u2019t work out how to say so (he\u2019s not as tactless as our Doberman dog meme). What if he had a mechanism so that the request could be used to help validate decisions, and was useful?

Just like the last meme, this situation would be easier to handle if Spongebob had a way to manage the customer feedback that lands on his desk. There would be no secrets and he\u2019d be able to use it to make his job less confrontational and stressful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Feedback helps us to build the right thing, and resonate with our market<\/h2>\n\n\n
\n
\"Building<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

We need our products to be successful so that the organization achieves its goals and, frankly, we all continue to keep our jobs.\u00a0

How do we avoid failure, or at least minimize the risk of failure? And if a product fails, and we need to change course and pivot, how do we reduce the likelihood of it failing again? The answer is to use our feedback wisely.

A launch based on an understanding of user needs<\/a> is more likely to be successful. This understanding is twofold – it\u2019s partly about understanding the user but it\u2019s also about how we launch the product. How do we ensure our user base has the information it needs to begin using the product? How do we communicate in a way that resonates? Understanding our users means that we can build the right thing, but also that we can relate to them and help them be aware that a solution exists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

User testing is a great source of feedback<\/h2>\n\n\n
\n
\"UX<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Most of us will have seen this meme or variations of it. It signifies the difference between UI and UX, how design can make something pretty, but how our users will bend what we give them to their way of working.\u00a0

In reality, great designers are constantly seeking feedback from their users in order to design a user experience that works well, in addition to being aesthetically pleasing. We tend to think of customer feedback as being asynchronous, but that isn\u2019t necessarily the case.

Let\u2019s think about the different methods we can use to get feedback. We often think of feedback<\/a> as coming in the form of feature requests by email, or in a support ticket. But what about usability testing? Beta testing? There are a number of different ways to collect feedback. When a designer puts a prototype in front of a user, or even observes them using a real product, they\u2019re collecting feedback that can be used to iterate on the design and make it more usable, more delightful. Hopefully, that rut in the grass doesn\u2019t appear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Be thoughtful in how customer feedback is used<\/h2>\n\n\n
\n
\"Be<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

I expect many of us have seen this one. Like the last example, this is about design, and it illustrates the point that feedback isn\u2019t a license to just do whatever the user asks for. Just because we get lots of feedback telling us to jump doesn’t mean we should ask \u201chow high?\u201d.

Understanding feedback is as important as collecting it. We need to ask why again, and again and again, until we really understand the user\u2019s pain point.\u00a0

I often quote the example of my 75-year-old Dad, who once rang to tell me he needed to write a macro in Excel. Rather than teach him how to do it (which would have needed some learning on my part!), I asked why. He told me he needed to make sure a specific field in his spreadsheet was filled in a certain way. I continued to ask why until I thoroughly understood the context (what spreadsheet was it, who was it for, why did they need it, what problem was it solving for them). We settled on a different solution (we just formatted the field to pick from a list of values in the end).
This solution was much simpler to implement, solved the real problem, and didn\u2019t involve the two of us learning how to write code. He was blown away with its simplicity, and I gained valuable daughter points.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Feedback can come in the form of product analytics<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

In this example, think of user feedback as an expression of frustration, and an indication that there is a problem to be solved. It\u2019s letting us know there is an opportunity to help our users, and in a business environment, to make money. In a less commercial environment, it may be an opportunity to introduce efficiency. Without access to users and a feedback loop in place, we would create complex solutions that add to frustration rather than solve problems.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"Measuring<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Feedback doesn\u2019t always come in the form of customer requests or individual user comments. The dictionary definition of feedback is \u201cadvice, criticism or information about how good or useful something or somebody\u2019s work is\u201d. I\u2019d argue that the value of feedback is not just its content, but also the volume, prevalence, or frequency associated with it. I might have 100 pieces of feedback relating to a problem experienced by my users, for example, but if it was received over five years, from 15,000 users, it might not be that big a problem.\u00a0

Data and analytics and an understanding of how to interpret them are important here. If we aren\u2019t able to collect information from users on usage in the real world, how can we know what works and what doesn\u2019t? User feedback comes in the form of real usage data – if our users like our product and find it useful, that will feed back to us in the form of high adoption rates. If it\u2019s not working for some reason, we\u2019ll see that in the data.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reduce the friction to get more feedback<\/h2>\n\n\n
\n
\"Feedback<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

This one makes me laugh a lot. It\u2019s a little bit like the phrase \u201cIf we build it, they will come\u201d – but of course, users won’t react to a new feature if they don\u2019t know about it – it\u2019s why we have marketing. It\u2019s the same with customer feedback – if we don\u2019t provide an easy way for users to tell us what they think, they probably won\u2019t bother.\u00a0

They\u2019re lots of fun, but these memes are also really useful because they genuinely showcase the value of a good customer feedback mechanism. They show us that user feedback loops can help us introduce psychological safety, that feedback helps us to build the right thing, and to ensure we resonate with the market. They also show how important it is to consider all possible forms of feedback and remind us that we need to consider carefully how we use it.\u00a0 If we don\u2019t have feedback and don\u2019t know how to use it, we\u2019re shooting blind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n
\n

Enjoy this article?<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Read on for part two <\/strong>and discover how to introduce an effective customer feedback process<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Alternatively, sign up for our newsletter, The Outcome, below and never miss a beat!<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

\n
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Find out how customer feedback loops help us build the right thing, introduce psychological safety, and to ensure we resonate with the market.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,9],"tags":[],"pp_uni_tag":[],"class_list":["post-77197","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-product-leadership","category-product-management-best-practice"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nCustomer Feedback - The Secret Sauce in Product Process<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Find out how customer feedback loops help us build the right thing, introduce psychological safety, and ensure we resonate with the market.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.prodpad.com\/blog\/customer-feedback-product-process-1\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Customer Feedback: The secret sauce in your product process | ProdPad\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Find out how customer feedback loops help us build the right thing, introduce psychological safety, and to ensure we resonate with the market.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.prodpad.com\/blog\/customer-feedback-product-process-1\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"ProdPad\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/ProdPad\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2021-12-01T13:14:32+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2025-01-13T16:26:04+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.prodpad.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/user-testing.png\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"600\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"344\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/png\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Liz Love\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@prodpad\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@prodpad\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Liz Love\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"9 minutes\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO Premium plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Customer Feedback - 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