Your team is resistant to user feedback. How can you convince them of its value?

User feedback is essential in product development, just as family input is crucial when building a house. Before constructing a home for four members, we carefully plan, consult with the family, and adjust based on their feedback to ensure the final structure meets everyone's needs. Similarly, when building a product for a mass target segment, user feedback is vital to ensure it’s convenient and satisfying for all. Resisting user feedback is like gold resisting the hammer—without shaping, gold can’t become a beautiful ornament, and a product can’t succeed without user feedback

Technology is merely a set of tools to help simplify and enhance the lives of people. In order for a tool to be effective it must fit the needs of those who are to use it, therefore their input and feedback is the most important asset in developing and rolling out technology. Build what they want, enhance their lives, and you will be successful.

User feedback provides valuable insights into how real users experience your product, helping you identify what works well and what needs improvement. By listening to user feedback, you can make more informed decisions, prioritize features that truly matter to users, and ultimately create a better product that meets their needs and expectations. This not only leads to higher user satisfaction and loyalty but also increases the chances of your product's success in the market.

-Why: Understanding the strategic importance of user feedback is crucial for the team to appreciate its role. -How: Explain how user feedback directly impacts product development, customer satisfaction, and market success. Highlight how it can uncover issues that might not be visible internally and lead to innovations that meet actual user needs.

First of all feedback is a condition of roles in my consulting company. It is part of all our practices that we do for customers when we build Solutions for them because they pay us. So weekly regular feedback loops that are status reports that are standard are a common cycle. We use the same feedback to get feedback to our people. It is feedback loop into daily interop with the team so there's some structures that we've implemented so feedback is built into our everyday ops. People actions are shared publicly. We do daily standups and present against something like a kanban board or a project plan to say where things are and then when things are not going well is it common practice for "radical candor" to get feedback to a person.

I am a visual person and imagine a giant wall that rests between our users and our developers. In many companies, the PM has a secret doorway and serves as the interpreter between the two. I try to tear down the wall. Here are a few ways to approach this: * Bring your developers to your industry tradeshow and meet users face-to-face. I brought my team to London, and it changed the course of our development efforts. * For B2B customers, we brought a small team to a customer site, presented our roadmap in the morning, paired a developer with a user, and observed how our product was being used (aka "shadowing"). * Spend a day with the Support team. Meet real users and break down an internal wall.

-Why: Empathy helps the team connect with the users' experiences, making feedback more meaningful. -How: Encourage the team to engage with users directly through interviews, surveys, or customer support interactions. Share user stories or testimonials that illustrate the challenges and successes users face with the product.

We've tried institute design thinking into every one of our software build and design practices and projects because that means we design in feedback loops that are meant to be calling processes built right into the software We think about empathy for the user and for all the stakeholders that may depended on information coming from processes or decisions that will affect them. Some people call this human-centered design. So we ask ourselves where is the human and how are we affecting them for every input process and output of a system I want to do Empathy by Design not by exception.

It is important to integrate qualitative feedback from end-users with quantitative data. Developers may understand better comments from end-users if they are backed up by data points. Shortening feedback loops after changes will help us well to measure the impact of improvement in the usability of the features.

-Why: Integrating user feedback into the development process ensures it’s considered regularly and systematically. -How: Establish a clear process for collecting, analyzing, and implementing user feedback. Use tools like user feedback dashboards or regular review meetings to keep the team engaged with real-time data and trends.

La retroalimentación de los usuarios puede ayudar a mejorar los procesos y ayuda también a identificar fallas que probablemente no se tenían consideradas. Se debe de analizar la información asociada a la retroalimentación con reserva pero siempre de una forma objetiva y cuantitativa de tal manera que pueda ayudar a justificar cambios y mejoras en el producto. Asimismo, el impacto que pueda tener la retroalimentación en la mejora de procesos ayudará a contar con un producto que otorgue una mejor experiencia de usuario.

Success stories are powerful tools to convince your team of the value of user feedback. By sharing examples of companies that have used user feedback to improve their products and achieve great success, you can demonstrate the tangible benefits of listening to users. These stories show how feedback can lead to better product decisions, increased customer satisfaction, and even significant growth in market share or revenue. By highlighting real-world cases, you make it clear that prioritizing user feedback isn't just a good practice—it's a proven strategy for achieving long-term success.

-Why: Concrete examples of how user feedback led to successful outcomes can be powerful motivators. -How: Share case studies or examples where user feedback directly resulted in improved product features, increased customer retention, or new business opportunities. Highlight these wins to show the tangible benefits of listening to users.

-Why: Cultivating a culture that values feedback encourages openness and continuous improvement. -How: Promote a team culture where feedback—both from users and within the team—is seen as a tool for growth rather than criticism. Recognize and reward team members who proactively engage with and act on user feedback.

Fomentar la retroalimentación de parte del usuario asociado a un buen proceso de recopilación y análisis de la misma puede ayudar mucho en el largo plazo dado que se generará un círculo virtuoso donde el cliente está en el centro y las actividades de mejora de producto, mejora de procesos y de experiencia de usuario se ven beneficiadas de dicha interacción. Si se logra aprovechar esta retroalimentación del usuario para mejorar procesos y productos, en el largo plazo es muy probable que se note el impacto en la adopción de los productos y/o servicios, de reduzca el churn y se mejoren las calificaciones de NPS. Esto al final también tendrá un impacto positivo en la marca.