Getting Real with Customer Feedback: Step 3 in a 3-Step Guide to Making It Work!

Step 3: Keep the Spark Alive: Sustaining Engagement and Driving Results

While launching any new initiative is challenging, keeping it going is MUCH MUCH harder. Sustaining engagement and usage on an idea management tool is critical to building on that trust and truly getting the outcome you want: market leadership! Ultimately, our goal is not to implement an initiative, but to truly change how we work: to seek and incorporate customer feedback so that we deliver solutions that serve our users and distinguish us as market leaders. This is where the rubber hits the road. This is when your role as a leader becomes even more critical. Otherwise, we will slip back into those outdated habits of burning down the backlog and lose an opportunity to differentiate.

It has been 6+ months since you launched your customer feedback initiative and/or idea management tool. It will take approximately 1.5 – 2 years to convert this from an initiative to a consistent operating model – 2 annual cycles. So lean in and utilize the processes outlined below to sustain momentum and deliver on your objectives.

Measurement Drives Behavior

It’s true, and that’s why you have to be careful to ensure you are measuring the right metrics to get the right behaviors. In the first two articles, I suggested measuring responsiveness and implementation rates and you should continue measuring those outcome-focused metrics. Review them by team, product, area, etc, and measure them against past rates to ensure they are meeting or exceeding initial launch behaviors as well as meeting or exceeding the targets you have set. In other words, make sure you are actually using the customer feedback.

Now that you have been doing this for several months, and ideally have implemented some customer feedback, make sure to measure the impact – the usage AND the outcomes.

• Are users using the new features they suggested and voted on? What is their adoption rate of the new features? How does that compare to your historical adoption rates? If the users are not using the new features, make sure to dig in and find out why not. It could be as simple as timing, maybe the feature is most needed in October and November for holiday shopping. But it might not be, so check to make sure you didn’t miss the mark.
• What customer outcomes have you identified? For example, decreased effort to process a task or increased revenue.
• What internal outcomes have you identified? How is support volume on those customer-supplied ideas and how does it compare to features that didn’t come from the idea management tool? Same with defects – look at your defect rate for those items where you got significant customer feedback. Theoretically, since your customer feedback process includes getting use cases and user feedback, you should have avoided pitfalls that turn into “working as designed” bugs. You may even see quicker implementation and time to live from the professional services teams because you covered a wider array of use cases. All of these outcomes are possible and incredibly beneficial to your company and your customers.

In Step 2, I also suggested measuring account creations, logins, and other engagement metrics. Those are helpful to measure on an ongoing basis, you may want to adjust that to be engagement growth…not just raw engagement but has engagement continued and expanded?

• Return Rate: Are participants accessing the idea management tool repeatedly?
• New Engagement: What percent of new users are engaging in the tool within x months of going live?
• Engagement Growth: Are existing users continuing to add ideas? If they aren’t, then that could indicate a lack of trust.

Consider adding new metrics/dashboards to ensure what has been added doesn’t become stale. It would be very easy for a product manager to just look at new ideas. And while, of course, we should review new ideas – we have to look at the big picture. What ideas continue to grow steadily? Or more importantly, what trends can we identify by observing client participation – which areas of the product are growing, what types of needs are they sharing (automation, AI, effort, etc.)

Celebrate Change through your Champions

This is a big shift for your teams, especially your primary users, so take this as an opportunity to recognize the team members who are really embracing the new approach to customer feedback.

• Share quantifiable results of the impact – features, votes, etc. And again, make sure to put those results in context. For example, not just 1000 people voted for this idea…but 20% of customers voted or it appeared on 10% of RFPs. That small shift from a raw number to a contextual piece of knowledge makes all the difference in driving home the value.
• Share quotes from users – either from the idea management tool directly or from other feedback mechanisms like NPS surveys. If you really commit to doing this, you WILL see positive feedback on NPS surveys. You will likely find quotes about the feature itself or even about how they feel so engaged and validated.
• Ask your power users to share examples of how it helped them deliver better products. There is a strong probability you will hear stories of how increased user participation helped them avoid a pitfall, provided invaluable use cases enabling them to adjust and solve the need cleaner, faster, or better, or even gave them the ammunition to deprioritize something they had planned (saving time on a roadmap).
• This is also a good opportunity to ask users to share some of their favorite tips and timesavers.

As with any initiative, you will proactively get your own user feedback. What is working for them and where do they need help or adjustment? Remember, the primary users are YOUR customers so make sure to follow your own best practices. Here are a few reminders to help you support them.

• Consider a tips & tricks newsletter – think bite-sized, above-the-fold type of emails that include one or two tips and a statistic or win. Super consumable and focused on the users.
• Help onboard new primary users with training, adoption, and early supportive services.
• Proactively reach out for listening sessions – semi-annually or quarterly – to ask for ways to make their jobs incorporating customer feedback easier.

Leverage Your Colleagues

Your customer-facing colleagues are your best cheerleaders…especially if you can make their jobs easier. And making users happy will definitely do that!

Make sure to provide them with tools so they can look up customer participation. And not just the raw data, but a summary showing them how many ideas have been submitted, what percent have been implemented, etc. Use it as an opportunity to write the narrative you want. You should be able to create a dashboard like below that your CSMs can pop right into their QBR. Talk about value?!?

Also, make sure to share overall talking points and quotes with customer-facing teams and executives. We know they love soundbites so make sure they have them! Point out how you use this information, how you communicate it to customers, how you highlight their impact during roadmap reviews, etc. This ongoing value reminder will ensure any investments you have in this area continue to be funded and even expanded!

Harness Customer Voice to Drive Market Buzz

As humans, we want to be seen. We want to be heard. We want to know our voice counts. The most effective product managers leverage the idea management tool to validate our users, proving to them that their voices have been heard.

Anyone who works with me knows I am obsessed with a closed-loop process. We absolutely must tell our clients and users what we have done with their feedback. In this case, you have an incredible story to tell!

Go back to your clients through the user community, newsletters, etc., and get into the details. When you give roadmap updates, note how many users voted for an idea. Share use cases or quotes from clients on those ideas. Tell a story about a specific enhancement – how you determined to prioritize that need, how you utilized focus groups and listening sessions to learn more, and how you used their feedback to build the enhancement and solve their need. Doing this will ensure your clients know that they are making an impact and, therefore they will continue to partner with you.

Use this as an opportunity to document the process of including customer feedback from initial research to customers using your product!

Shift your press releases from “new features” or “announcing a major innovation” to “Thank you to <client> for partnering with us to address <need>” or “<Number of clients> impact how we serve <market>”. Acknowledge the clients and users who suggested ideas or participated in the idea management tool. Tell the success story of how they made you better! Share how they helped you clarify the need and gave you perspectives to ensure you solved the need in the best way possible. In doing so, you will gain market trust with current and future customers by demonstrating how well you listen to users. Check this example for inspiration.

You have to be slightly careful here, you don’t want to imply that you can’t come up with ideas or you might get a “what are we paying you for?” sentiment. But you also don’t have to overthink it. For example, instead of saying that a user “gave you an idea”, talk about how you “partnered with several users to leverage their expertise” in your development.

Every company says they love their customers, “Customers are at the heart of everything they do.” With this story, you can PROVE it! And you’d be surprised how many of your competitors can’t.

Check out the first two articles!

Step 1: Kickstart Your Customer Feedback Journey

Step 2: Get it Right: Successfully Launching Your Idea Portal