Product Feedback: Why You Need It (And How to Get It)

Getting feedback (from real live customers!) is a crucial part of the product development process. And ideally, you want it as early as you can get it. Phil Tadros of Doejo, a firm that specializes in building products using agile practices, even goes so far as to say it’s the main error a lot of managers make: “Too many product managers fail to solicit feedback from both their team and customers early enough in the development process.”

Aside from getting feedback early on in the process, you’ll also want to collect feedback at all of the major milestones in the product (and when new versions are released). Getting that customer insight on how they’re liking the new additions to the product and what they’d like to see in the future can help guide your product roadmap and create a stronger product in the end.

Collecting customer feedback

Uservoice did a survey on the influence of customer feedback on the product development process, with the results showing that most companies find traditional customer interviews to be the most valuable source of feedback.

Image via Uservoice report, “Survey: The Influence of Customer Feedback on the Product Development Process”

The problem is that they’re also the most time-consuming/costly way to get feedback. When budgets are tight (or as the amount of feedback to be collected grows) people tend to turn to in-app feedback as a way to get more feedback without having to more conduct 1:1 interviews.