What do you think about letting the customers/users to be highly involved in ideation?

Hey Summer - 

Engaging customers in ideation can be a great way to learn about the challenges users are having with your products/tools, and to innovate in a direction that supports your existing user base. Having customers involved can be great for helping with customer satisfaction and retention. 

What I’ve found is most important is ensuring that your product org - from the product managers all the way up to your executive team - is bought in on bringing user feedback into the product development process. This means that PMs have to have time dedicated every week to engaging with customers, and you need to build out clear processes about how user feedback is incorporated into roadmap planning. 

What you want to avoid is a situation where you’re soliciting feedback from customers, but there’s not enough communication or follow through, so users don’t know/understand what’s happening with their ideas and feature requests, or they’re not seeing those things actually getting rolled out in the product. So make sure you’ve got commitment from product to build a portion of what users ask for, and that you’ve got good tools and comms in place to be able to effectively close the loop with your customers and show them where their feedback is having an impact. 

Do it right, and you’ll build great loyalty with your customers, and a great product that truly serves their needs.