Using the community to gather product feedback and ideas can be exciting but overwhelming. How do you deal with incoming product feedback and how do you set the right expectations for the community? Surely not all product feedback can be implemented.
This series of articles outlines guidance and best practices for Product teams who want to use inSided ideation to capture user feedback, ideas and feature suggestions from their customers to build better products.
This is the second chapter in the series and explains ideation workflows and how to close the feedback loop to your users.
The series covers the following topics:
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Chapter 2 - Finding the right workflow (you are here)
After you’ve finished reading the chapters you should view the inSided blog, another great resource on building better products.
Before you start
There are a couple of things you need to do before you start collecting product feedback from the community.
Manage expectations
The most important aspect of collecting feedback is to manage the expectations. All product feedback and ideas should be welcomed but it is important to ensure that the community understands the rules of the game. Not all ideas can be implemented, either because they are too complicated, too specific or because they do not fit the product vision. ideas that can be implemented might take some time to investigate and execute on. Explain the community how your product development teams are working with ideas and what they can expect.
Configure and assign the right idea status
Idea statuses can help you manage the expectations. Idea statuses should be descriptive, clear and on point. New ideas will always receive a status new, but what follows is up to you. Make sure you assign the right status to the right idea. Be careful with an “in progress” or “added to backlog” status if you can’t deliver in a timely manner.
We recommend using statuses that represent one of the following stages: Open, Delivered, Closed.
Idea review meeting
Depending on the amount of ideas you collect you should perform a (bi) weekly review of your ideas. Use this review to go through all the ideas and perform the following tasks.
Review new ideas
Review the new ideas and briefly discuss with your team how to follow up on it. Discuss whether you like an idea and what the initial first response should be.
Assign a owner
Make sure an idea has a clear owner. The owner is responsible for providing an initial response, assigning the right status and following up with the development team in case you want to take an idea into development.
Assign the right status
Use the idea status to clearly communicate what the community can expect from the idea. When you don’t want to work on an idea say No. When you deliver an idea, set the status to delivered.
Always reply to an idea
Thank the contributor for his idea. If something is unclear ask for clarification. Even when you have to say to No to an idea it’s good to communicate this. It’s all about managing expectations.
Review top ideas
Take another look at popular ideas. Are there new votes or new replies? Do you have an update for the community on the idea, is the status still right?
Periodic tasks
Besides a regular review of the ideas there are other recurring tasks that will help you to work with product feedback
Weekly or bi-weekly
Initial review of new ideas
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Prioritize and moderate ideas
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Assign the right status
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Provide a reply
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Follow up on ideas with your development team
Monthly
Initial reporting and performance overview
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Review most popular ideas
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Check total and new votes on ideas
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Check total and new comments on ideas
Quarterly
Provide a recap to the community
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Summarize delivered ideas
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Thank idea contributors
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Provide update on top ideas that have an open status
Bi-yearly
Review older and open ideas
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Provide update on older ideas that you want to keep open
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Close older ideas and explain why
Ad-hoc
Tasks you can perform on a daily basis
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Provide status updates on ideas
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Respond to customer questions
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Publish release notes
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Announce new features (based on ideas)
Cross team collaboration
Every team in your organization can help you with ideation
| Which team to talk to | How can they help you | How can your team help them |
| Customer Support | Direct product feedback / requests to the community | Manage customers expectations better, shorter handling time |
| Customer Success | Raise awareness of ideation, promote submitting / voting | Efficient feedback channeling, increase NPS |
| Markering | Promote ideation | Promotion of ideation driven roadmap, case studies, insights |
Closing the feedback loop
When you successfully deliver on product feedback and ideas it’s time to close the feedback loop. Inform your community what’s new, improved or changed based on the feedback they provided to you. You can use inSided product updates to publish release notes, changelogs, roadmap updates or new features. When you close the feedback loop keep the following things in mind
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Give credits to the author and contributors of the idea
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Include clear call to actions to the product update and additional product documentation
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Make sure that customers understand and know how to work with the new improvements
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Make product updates visual with images, videos and .gifs
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Always ask for feedback and keep on improving your product
In the next chapter we’ll take a look at how you can set product and engagement goals and how to measure these
Read Chapter 3
