Your Product Teams are Lying to You
Are your product teams acting on the best product feedback data? How do you know that everyone is working on things that really matter?
Do you know what all your developers are working on? Can you be sure they aren’t building the last request they heard from your most demanding user or pushy salesperson? Or are your product decisions being fuelled by politics, reaction and gut decision?
One of the hardest tasks for your product teams is acting on good information. They are inundated with product feedback, ideas and feature requests from customers, management, support and sales so it can be impossible for them to know where to start.
Product teams combat this the only way they know how — with copious amounts of spreadsheets, complex prioritization scoring systems, product trees, Trello boards, customer feedback forums and a whole lot of post-it notes. The whole thing adds up to one big, confusing mess and a lot of wasted time. No-one understands who requests have come from, how important they are or how people’s priorities change over time.
Product decisions become reactive, gut-based and determined by the most vocal users both inside and outside of your organization; are they the people your product teams should really be listening to?
As a SaaS leader, ensuring that your teams are acting on relevant, up-to-date and prioritized information (without the gathering of the data taking up hours and even weeks of their time!) is one of the most powerful and cost-effective things you can do not only for your product, but your whole organization. You can’t afford to waste time and resources building things that don’t align with your strategy:
The simple truth is that building the wrong features negatively impacts growth and valuations yet making informed product decisions in SaaS is a real challenge. In the midst of competing voices from your customers and internal teams all pulling product in different directions, the proper gathering and understanding of data is critical. Getting it wrong and building features that don’t count are an insanely huge opportunity cost on your business — just think what you could achieve if you knew that every feature was really going to count.
Product feedback — your biggest, missed opportunity
Thanks to David, Bergin, Emmett and Elliott, Flickr
Product feedback is already all over your organization and more is coming in every, single day.
It comes through your support channels, Customer Success, Sales and from your internal teams who feel frustrated. They often wander over to your product teams where they shoulder tap asking “Can you just…?”, “Whatever happened to…?” and “When is feature X going to be released?”
This data is there anyway and it’s building up fast. So why not use it to your advantage? Product feedback is an absolute goldmine of information that will help you build the right things and ensure that every member of the team is working on initiatives that directly impact the objectives of your organization.
Your customers, prospects and teams want to help you…they want your product to solve their problems, they want your business to be successful.
By embracing product feedback and creating a separate channel for it, you will have a system of record for your product teams, your customers’ feedback will no longer be disappearing into a black hole and….
- Internal product battles will be a thing of the past;
- Customer experience will be majorly improved;
- You will have decreased churn & increased upsell;
- Sales will increase and lost prospects can be reactivated;
- You’ll understand what the market needs;
- Product teams will have room to breathe, think about things, and act strategically;
- Oh, and you’ll be building better products too!
Product feedback is your opportunity to give your product teams the data they need to make great decisions and also ensure your customers receive a market-leading service. When it’s easier than ever to switch SaaS providers, service and a great experience around product feedback makes you really stand out from the crowd:
By gathering product feedback from your teams, prospects and customers in one place, your product teams can actually use the data to de-risk product decisions. Instead of the loudest customers or pushiest sales person getting items onto your product roadmaps, you’ll be working on things that really count. The ROI is enormous.
Typical savings & ROI from implementing a channel for product feedback
The action you can take as a SaaS Leader
It’s time to take action. As a SaaS leader, you are in the unique position of being able to unlock this growth by ensuring that your product teams have the data they need and that your customers get the service they deserve.
Here’s the summary: How CEOs can Help Product Teams get the Data they need
We also have a complete guide available which covers everything from why you need a Product Feedback Policy to getting your product teams started in the right way. It will take up very little of your time and can be led by your teams…just make sure the momentum comes from the top.
Get The SaaS Leader’s Guide to Customer Feedback
Other resources
Understanding customer, team & market demand will drive the growth of your SaaS business
The Feedback Loop: Episode 2. DaVita Kidney Care & SS&C
Lessons from top SaaS Founders: Tale of the “no” — how to scale by saying “no” to almost everything
Originally published at www.receptive.io on May 11, 2018.
