How do you turn feedback failures into improvement actions?

Effective feedback assessment involves asking open-ended questions that unveil the root motives. By avoiding leading queries and encouraging detailed responses, we gain deeper insights into the authenticity and relevance of the feedback. This approach empowers us to make informed product decisions and drive genuine improvement.

Getting 'real-world' feedback on failures or product non-performance is key to making any needed course corrections with the product. This feedback should be supported with analytical data and customer/user operational insight, and not based on erroneous inspection reports or non-participant hearsay. Root cause analysis is often required and encouraged to get to the source of an issue, even if a customer 'believes he knows' what's amiss.

Asking direct and tough questions is often required to resolve a non-conformance quickly. If clarity is not gained early on, then certain misunderstandings and knowledge of the product's shortcomings can easily be glossed over, and the true cause unresolved.

-Help me understand what part of the process is driving this feedback. -Will you show me how you perform this process while I ask questions as you go? -You do this process so frequently I consider you an expert; let's get into the details of what an expert needs here. Build the confidence of the user, show yourself as a servant leader for them, and the walls they've built up that led to the nebulous feedback come crumbling down.

When sifting through feedback, consider the broader context of your product strategy. Delve deeper into the underlying needs and motivations driving the feedback. Just as "The Mom Test" emphasizes understanding the "why" behind users' statements, explore why certain feedback aligns with your product's vision and goals. This exploration can help you identify feedback that not only fits your roadmap but also resonates with your user base, prioritizing enhancements that deliver the most meaningful impact.

Feedback is an important input for a PM to act upon. But it's critical to filter the noise. Evaluating feedback and finding things that truly served the product requirements is much needed. It requires an ability to distill, extrapolate, and validate first and then make it part of backlog. Acting upon every piece of feedback will confuse everyone including PM, team and users.

A great challenge many product teams face is the conflict with stakeholders or management, especially due to 1) not prioritising what they wanted, 2) not building the solution as they wanted, or 3) the delay of impact leading to a perception of a bad decision. This will turn into common feedback. Every PM needs a cool head and understand this is normal, and the best reaction is listening, and deconstructing that feedback. Make the blackbox of prioritisation more transparent and invest in continuous communication.

In personal experience, instead of calling as product failures, we believe in calling them as product learning opportunities. Product feature set is just one part of the product story. We try to find which of the 4Ps - Product, placement, price, promotion, could have led to us not reaching our initial set target. Depending on the specific P, we try to gather more user feedback on that specific area itself and add to retrospective.