2018: Product Feedback Trends in B2B SaaS
Leading B2B SaaS companies are changing how products are made, how companies are built & how their customers are treated by welcoming product feedback in the right way. Here are the top trends we have been seeing this year…
Thanks to Tanner Boriack, Unsplash
As leaders in Product Demand Intelligence, we know how important product feedback is to the growth of B2B SaaS organizations.
We’re not quite at the end of 2018 but it’s proving to be a very exciting year here at Receptive. We now enable over 1 million people to give and use product feedback effectively which is having a huge impact on how B2B SaaS products are built around the globe.
There have been a lot of changes as a result of the SaaS industry beginning to capitalize on the power of product demand data from their customers, teams and the market. We have learned a lot so I’m going to add a cheeky new section every day.
Here are the trends we have been seeing over the course of the year:
Trend #1: Product Feedback is Part of Business Policy
Thanks to Pietro De Grandi, Unsplash
Imagine running support with no SLAs in place or taking on customers with no contracts… the lack of policy would make is extremely hard to set expectations and offer customers the service they deserve.
SaaS companies are realizing that product feedback requires a business policy to properly manage expectations on both sides. We call it the Product Feedback Policy.
It’s a short document that outlines how your customers and teams should give product feedback and how your product and leadership teams use the information provided to guide product decisions.
This goes a long way in removing the blackhole of product feedback that is often felt by other team members & customers when they give SaaS vendors suggestions, product feedback and ideas. Often they are put on a “list” or a “backlog” or “sent to the product team” and then the customer or team member never finds out what happened to their suggestion. Was it used? Did it matter? Do they even care?
Having a Product Feedback Policy dramatically improves your customer’s experience with your company. It stops your customer-facing teams having to issue generic responses which is great for customers, but it also takes a huge amount of pressure off your teams. There’s a process and expectations are set; this inspires a lot of confidence all round.
If you don’t have a Product Feedback Policy in place yet, here’s more information, and a free template:
>>> Get my free Product Feedback Policy template
You can find some excellent examples online from leading SaaS companies such as Influitive, Qualifio and Open Social.
Trend #2: The Rise of the Product Demand Manager
Over the last quarter, we have seen a huge rise in the number of SaaS organizations that have product feedback management / product demand intelligence as a dedicated role.
There are 2 main reasons for this:
#1 The cost of working on the wrong things is HUGE
CEOs and VPs are leading this drive for a dedicated role as SaaS markets become more & more competitive.
The cost of having teams working on, marketing and supporting product developments that don’t fit with company strategy (or help customers achieve their goals!) is just too big to ignore.
#2 Data-informed decisions are the new norm
Building features & product improvements based on the loudest customers, pushy sales people or a demanding CEO is still a big problem for many SaaS companies.
The good news is this is changing fast.
As people have access to solutions like Receptive (which gives SaaS companies prioritized product demand from customers, teams and prospects) it’s much harder for emotional product decisions to be made. Instead, data can be analyzed, you can see which product feedback matters to which groups, what the financial impact would be and how well a suggestion aligns with the overall company goals.
We have welcomed this change and have seen the impact it’s having within SaaS organizations every day. If it’s not possible to have a dedicated team member, just recognizing the importance of good demand data in decision making is a big improvement. Assign the responsibility to an appropriate person and ensure they have time set aside for product feedback.
Trend #3: The Best Companies Segment Product Feedback
Collecting votes for feature requests is a recipe for product and business disaster. Votes for feature requests can’t tell you:
- Who a product request is from
- How important the request is (does it really matter or is it just a nice-to-have?)
- What the pain point actually is
- Any financial information about the MRR associated with a customer account or prospect
Without being able to understand where feedback fits, it’s impossible to know if it aligns with your business strategy. You also have no idea whether or not you are going to be spending time and resources developing and supporting product features & improvements that really make a difference.
Product teams are recognizing the importance of segmenting their product feedback and we are seeing a lot more companies treating product feedback as a library of information that they can access as and when they need it. Some examples include:
- Looking at different account sizes. If you are building to close more SME deals or support more SME customers, then look at product feedback from those accounts alone.
- Are you supporting loads of free trial accounts? Then you should definitely separate that feedback from your paying users. Free trial users have very different demands on your product because they are simply at a very different stage in the process.
- Do you have churned accounts? Again, separate the feedback. You’ll be able to spot patterns and take action. Are you losing accounts due to a huge feature gap or were they bad fit users in the first place? Without segmenting this product feedback from paying users, you’d never know.
- Working on a redesign? You’ll want to look at feedback that just affects that area of your product, not everything else ! Be selective then you can reach out to the right people, get customers involved and truly understand the use cases and pain points associated with a specific product area…
…the examples could go on & on but I’ll stop…for now anyway… ;)
Building a successful SaaS product is not a popularity contest. B2B SaaS organizations are now moving to treat feedback as a library — getting the data they need when they need it. You have to act smart. Building based on votes will lead you down the wrong path over and over and over again.
Build that library and use it, don’t let feedback be a popularity contest or you’ll be doing a disservice to your organization and your customers of today and tomorrow.
Trend #4: Product Feedback as a Customer Experience is your Competitive Advantage
Finally, another huge change we are seeing is that B2B SaaS companies are recognizing just how important customer experience is.
Markets are becoming increasingly competitive and customers are demanding that they get the experience they are paying for. I talked about this quite a lot in my talk at SaaS North, Ottawa at the end of last year (The Customer is NOT always right). You can read it in full here, but here’s a snippet on customer experience:
“…you shouldn’t forget to communicate back to your customers — it’s a big opportunity for you as a business to stand out. Most customer success & product teams are pestered for product updates on a daily basis so a little bit of communication can go a long way in building trust and keeping everyone on the same page.
In reality, a lot of SaaS companies fail at this part in the process. Customers contact you with feedback only never to hear back on where it went, was it used, was it relevant, what now…?
But customer experience matters a lot. It really does! Feedback is your opportunity to give customers a great experience and ignoring them tells them a lot about how much you value them.
For most of us, the number of opportunities we get to directly connect with our customers reduces as we scale. Usually it’s through a support ticket of piece of product feedback and these opportunities are few & far between in a lot of cases — you need to seize this opportunity!
Inspire confidence with strong direction on product and communicate well because your customers will love you for it.”
Get involved!
What trends have you been seeing? I have quite a list and want to hear your experiences too. Email me on hannah@receptive.io or pop a comment on this post.
