How do you collect and prioritize product feedback from different sources?

Collecting and prioritizing product feedback starts with actively listening to users across various channels. We identify patterns, categorize their needs, and then balance what’s most impactful with what’s feasible. By aligning feedback with our goals, we ensure we focus on what matters most. Finally, we keep users in the loop, showing them their input directly shapes the product, fostering trust and connection.

1. I focus on determining what specific aspects of the product need improvement or validation. This includes identifying customer pain points, usability issues, or areas for enhancement. 2. I establish measurable outcomes for each feedback goal. Whether it's increasing user engagement, reducing churn rate, or enhancing feature functionality, I ensure these metrics align with broader business objectives. 3. I map out a structured approach for collecting and utilizing feedback, ensuring it directly contributes to achieving our defined objectives and aligns with our product roadmap and strategic goals.

Before collecting product feedback, an important step is to define your feedback goal. Feedback is about gathering the right data to drive strategic decisions. Here are some common feedback goals: 🚀 𝗣𝗿𝗼𝗱𝘂𝗰𝘁 𝗗𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗹𝗼𝗽𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 & 𝗜𝗺𝗽𝗿𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁: Feature Prioritization, Alpha/Beta Testing, Post-Launch Validation, Regulatory Insights. 🧭 𝗠𝗮𝗿𝗸𝗲𝘁 𝗔𝗹𝗶𝗴𝗻𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 & 𝗦𝘁𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗴𝘆: Market Fit Validation, Use Case Discovery, Competitive Positioning, Pricing Optimization, New Market Exploration. ❤️ 𝗖𝘂𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗺𝗲𝗿 𝗘𝗻𝗴𝗮𝗴𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁: Retention, Experience Enhancement, Onboarding & Training. Once the goal is clear, choose the appropriate feedback method to ensure data gathered translates into actionable insights.

In the vast sea of feedback, a clear map is crucial. Set your compass by defining your feedback goals before plunging in. Ask yourself: What core issues are you aiming to resolve? Which metrics are you seeking to improve or validate? How will you measure feedback's influence? A targeted feedback goal not only anchors your efforts but also shields you from being swamped by irrelevant or conflicting data. Remember, to steer your product in the right direction, you first need to know where you're heading.

Without a clear direction, you are just wandering around. Anything we do in life always have a goal even if we didn't define it, our actions on how we act practically define it. So when you are on the road to gather feedback, you need to be able to answer a simple question. Why are you collecting feedback and what do you intent to do with it afterwards? Without a clear answer for this question, you will be wandering around with no benefit at all. if you answer this question correctly, you are able to understand the following:- 1) Short, Mid, Long term impact of reviews 2) Which stakeholders to share the feedback with 3) What kind of resources you need to dedicate 4) Which initiatives will be pending on these feedbacks 5) Roadmap planning

To collect and prioritize product feedback, start by setting clear objectives. Identify the main problems or areas the product needs to improve, and connect these with overall business goals. Decide which key metrics—like user engagement or customer satisfaction—are most important to measure and improve. Establish how the impact of feedback will be measured to ensure it aligns with these goals. This approach helps focus on the most relevant feedback, avoid getting lost in too much information, and make decisions that align the product with the company’s strategy.

1. Outline specific objectives: Define clear and measurable goals for the feedback process. 2. Formulate focused questions: Craft precise questions aligned with your objectives. 3. Identify key performance indicators: Select relevant metrics to gauge the impact of feedback. 4. Establish a feedback collection plan: Determine the appropriate methods and channels for collecting feedback. 5. Set evaluation criteria: Develop a framework to assess the quality and relevance of feedback. 6. Streamline communication: Ensure effective dissemination of feedback-related goals and procedures to all relevant stakeholders. 7. Implement an action plan: Translate feedback into actionable steps to address identified issues or enhance existing processes.

Before you start, there's no use collecting user feedback if you're not willing to act on most of it. Make sure you value user feedback as much as you do input from project stakeholders (ideally even more).

I have a different perspective here: If you're a #startup, collecting ALL feedback is crucial. So, initially, you shouldn't apply a filter and limit yourself to specific goals. Instead, gather and structure ALL feedback from various sources. However, it's essential to be mindful of time and prioritize feedback based on your strategic objectives.

We set up a centralized feedback platform to streamline inputs from various sources. This ensured that feedback from customer support, social media, and direct user submissions were all consolidated for analysis. Creating a tiered prioritization system worked well. Critical issues affecting a majority took precedence, followed by features with high demand. We also considered the impact on user experience and the alignment with our product roadmap. Leveraging data analytics tools to identify patterns in feedback. Categorizing feedback into usability, bugs, and feature requests helped in addressing specific aspects systematically. Communicating updates based on feedback builds trust and keeps users engaged in the product's evolution, period

Quantitative metrics like revenue, adoption rates, and opportunity size are pivotal for making informed product decisions. Revenue metrics reflect market acceptance and help identify economically valuable features. Adoption rates indicate the product's usability and relevance, aiding in pinpointing areas for enhancement to boost user satisfaction and adoption. Evaluating opportunity size helps in assessing potential market share and identifying untapped market segments or areas for product evolution. Leverage these metrics alongside qualitative feedback to create a well-rounded product narrative to drive informed decision-making, transparency, and continuous improvement essential for securing stakeholder support across all levels.

The sea of product feedback is deep, and you can cast your net in many directions. Surveys, interviews, reviews, analytics, support tickets, social media, beta testers, and internal teams - each channel is a potential source of invaluable insights. But remember, not all waters are worth fishing in.Your choice of feedback source should align with your feedback goal, your product's stage, and your target customer segments. Want to explore a new feature idea? Surveys or interviews with potential or existing users may yield the best catch. Looking to boost usability or retention? Analytics or reviews could be the treasure troves you seek. Choose wisely, and let your goal guide your selection.

In my experience, I seek for a good balance between quantitative and qualitative data sources. Purely quantitative data can give your a perspective of important trends (e.g. surveys), but in-depth understanding of the customer behavior and intentions come from qualitative feedback (e.g. interviews). I usually start from qualitative sources, identify common insights and use quantitative methods to confirm hypothesis/assumptions.

Not all feedback is created equal. In fact, some feedback is worthless and counter-productive. Take some time to identify the channels that matter most to you.

To select the best feedback sources, focus on those that match the product’s goals, stage, and target audience. Different sources—like surveys, interviews, analytics, or social media—each offer different types of insights. For a new feature, direct user input from surveys or interviews can be most helpful, while analytics or reviews might better identify issues with usability or retention. Consider blending feedback from unexpected sources, like community forums or competitor analysis, to uncover fresh perspectives. This approach ensures that the feedback collected is both relevant and innovative, helping shape the product in a meaningful way.

Each source of feedback has its own unique characteristics, and your product needs its own type of feedback at each stage of its life. By choosing the right source for your product, you can find the right path for your product development.

My rule of thumb is to go where the customer is. Review sales pipeline comments (e.g. salesforce), sales and demo videos (e.g. gong), have weekly reviews with GTM teams, form customer or product advisory boards, chat with customer success & support about the recurring issues customers face. Ideally, you would benefit from a product management tool like productboard or similar tools to bring all the feedback into one place to triage and build on.

We streamlined feedback collection, leveraging customer support, user surveys, and social media. This diverse approach ensured a holistic understanding of user sentiments. In my experience, combining quantitative and qualitative feedback is crucial. Metrics like NPS offer numerical insights, while open-ended survey responses and user interviews provide valuable context. Helpful strategies involve incorporating feedback loops within the product. In-app forms, accessible support channels, and user forums create continuous avenues for users to share insights, fostering a sense of community.

Paid customers simply matter more than free trial users, beta testers, social media users etc. It's also a good idea to segment user feedback at different product funnel stages: Potential customers Free trial users Paid users Referring users Churned out users You can then learn more about these different segments and increase adoption and referral rates

After collecting feedback, organizing it for analysis is crucial. Utilize tools like spreadsheets, databases, or feedback platforms to systematically sort the data. Categorize and tag feedback by criteria such as source, type, theme, and impact. This approach helps in spotting patterns, trends, and key issues. Additionally, prioritizing feedback based on urgency and frequency highlights the most critical areas for action. Regularly reviewing and updating the organization process ensures that new insights are captured and addressed effectively.

One thing which is helping us organizing the feedback data is, using AI. ChatGPT or similar AI tools can really help organizing and summarizing all the data point and present a clear summary on which side of product needs focus, where the major pain points are.

With feedback in hand, your next task is to make sense of it. The ocean of data you've gathered now needs to be tamed. Tools and methods such as spreadsheets, databases, feedback platforms, or matrices can assist you in this endeavor. The goal? Categorize, tag, or score your feedback based on various criteria. Consider the source, type, theme, sentiment, urgency, frequency, or impact. This systemization allows you to spot patterns, trends, gaps, or outliers in your feedback data, giving you clear insights to act on. When your feedback is well-organized, you're primed to make data-driven decisions that can shape the future of your product.

After gathering feedback from diverse sources, it's crucial to organize it effectively for analysis and action. Utilize tools like spreadsheets, databases, or feedback platforms to categorize and tag feedback based on various criteria such as source, type, theme, and urgency. By structuring your data, you can identify patterns and trends, allowing for informed prioritization and decision-making in product development.

It's important that feedback doesn't get too abstracted and you keep a traceability of insights. I find breaking down user research into smaller nugget quotes and mapping them out using Affinity Mapping is very helpful.

We organized feedback into key categories like usability, bugs, and feature requests for targeted analysis and action. In my experience, adopting a tagging system was beneficial. Tags helped identify recurring themes across sources, aiding prioritization and streamlined communication with development teams. Things that I've found helpful include regular reviews of categorized feedback. Setting up routine trend analyses and sharing insights fosters a proactive response. Utilizing project management tools for task assignments based on feedback ensures a systematic approach to product improvement.

In my approach, I turn feedback into a structured masterpiece on a Miro board. By color-coding, framing, and strategically arranging the feedback, I create a clear, organized visual landscape. This method doesn't just store information; it brings structure to the chaos of diverse inputs, making it easier to spot patterns and key insights that drive product development.

I think teams of frequently get overwhelmed with the amount of feedback they gather. What I've found usefull is using a tool like dovetail and a clear tagging structure based on product parts and sentiment. This way your method is flexible enough to organise any feedback. You can write summaries per product part and use that to inform your your problem backlog.

The sea of feedback has been charted, now comes the time to chart your course. Prioritizing your feedback insights is your next step. Use proven frameworks and techniques such as the RICE score, MoSCoW method, Kano model, or impact-effort matrix. Your mission? Compare and rank your feedback insights. Consider the reach, impact, confidence, effort, must-have, should-have, could-have, won't-have factors. Reflect on the elements of delight, performance, basic, and cost. This will guide you in deciding which feedback insights are worth implementing, which need testing, and which ones to discard. The beacon guiding your product's journey comes from well-prioritized feedback.

Also might be useful to measure each of these dimension over a time period, i.e. QoQ or YoY, to gain further actionable insights.

A challenge of product managers is to choose which feedback is most impactful. Make sure you add in the context of who the users are that are providing feedback. If you acted on their feedback, would they increase the revenue with the company (buy more, use more, refer more users) or would it mean stopping revenue decline (they'd stay). Prioritisation should start with what the problem to be solved for the company is. Then you can prioritise using cost/effort, ROI, Kano, Rice, MoSCoW. Start all prioritisation with the product vision and strategy and look at the value created for the business and customers.

I'd keep this stupid simple, which will help with aligning your team and communicating with stakeholders. I like to identify problems in feedback and put them into a problem backlog. Each problem's impact is decided by the amount of users it affects and how frequently it occurs.

When prioritizing, it's crucial to steer clear of the "loudest person in the room" bias. Sometimes, we encounter requests with relatively minor impacts, but they're passionately advocated by vocal customers. It's essential to remain mindful of this bias and prioritize based on impact rather than the how "vocal" is the the request.

I prioritized feedback insights by assessing impact and urgency. Critical issues affecting a large user base took precedence, followed by features with high demand. This approach ensured focused attention on areas that mattered most. In my experience, a tiered prioritization system is effective. Consider the potential impact on user experience and align feedback with your product roadmap. Balancing the immediate needs of users with long-term strategic goals helps in making informed decisions. Categorize insights into critical, high-priority, and future considerations. Regularly communicate updates based on feedback to build trust and keep users engaged in the product's evolution.

To prioritize feedback effectively, use different models based on experience. For example, the RICE score helped choose a major feature with broad impact over a minor tweak by evaluating reach, impact, confidence, and effort. The impact-effort matrix identified a small usability fix with high benefits and low effort as a priority. The MoSCoW method sorted feedback, prioritizing essential updates like security fixes as must-have, while optional enhancements were classified as could-have. The Kano model distinguished between basic needs, performance improvements, and delight factors, ensuring both core requirements and additional enhancements were addressed.

When you articulate for your stakeholders, the actions based on feedback - Along with explaining "Why", also explain "why now ?" - What will you loose if you dont act on a particular feedback now and similarly what will you gain now from acting on this feedback . In addition , since speed matters in business - decide which decisions/actions are one way door decisions (cannot be reverted) versus two way door (can be reverted) to prioritize

Once you've charted your course, it's time to share your navigation plan. Communicating your feedback actions is crucial. This involves explaining to your users, stakeholders, and team members the 'how', 'what', and 'why' of your feedback process. How did you collect and prioritize feedback? What did you learn from it? What decisions did you make based on it? What do you expect as outcomes? Solicit further feedback on your actions and remain open to iteration based on the results. Transparent communication builds trust, sparks engagement, and keeps all parties aligned in the journey. After all, the voyage of product development is a shared expedition. Each feedback loop takes you closer to the shores of success.

We revamped our communication strategy for feedback actions. We started providing regular updates on resolved issues and implemented features directly influenced by user input. This transparent approach enhanced user trust and engagement. In my experience, a clear and consistent communication plan is crucial. Share not only what changes are being made but also the reasoning behind them. Acknowledge user contributions and emphasize the role their feedback played in shaping the product's direction. Things that I've found helpful include; using multiple channels for communication, like newsletters or blog posts, to inform users, even those not actively engaging. Don't just fix issues; tell the story of how feedback is driving positive change

Product Ops can be a superpower here. Great product ops functions will spelunk, analyse, triage, combine, pattern match, aggregate, summarise, distill, curate, contextualise and socialise the signals coming from the multitude data sources to massively up-level product teams. They become a 3rd eye for product teams. They frame thematic data through the lens of company and product strategy to provide insights that can be leveraged to make better decisions, and inform opportunity creation, justification, and prioritisation. When first implementing product ops, this is one of the highest leverage places to start.

Product feedback is not always linearly continuous through lifecycle. It is vital for Product Manager to navigate feedback skillfully, protecting Product roadmap and ensuring alignment with broader strategy. Ability to say No while considering stakeholder input is essential. Successful PM backs decisions with data, earning stakeholders' trust and making informed choices leading to successful outcomes. For eg. once I faced a situation where a senior Business executive advocated for a feature, but I questioned its ROI. Instead of immediately investing in developing MVP, I opted for operations-driven POC to test market demand. Market feedback revealed a lack of interest in feature, ultimately convincing executives of validity of my decision.

Here is some additional sources of feedback I like using: 👌 Community it can be your own Product Community or external Communities where your target customer can discuss your or your competitors; 👌 Public Groups depending on Product type it can be Reddit, Quora, LinkedIn or Facebook; 👌 Review web-sites example - Trustpilot or G2 👌 AppStore or Google Play reviews also can be a great option to receive feedback.

Interpreting and synthesizing product feedback is a key skill for product managers, one that is rarely innate and most often gained through experience. This skill is the balancing of internal stakeholder needs with external user input, and then translating raw feedback into product problems and then product capabilities. The best place to start is with an established framework like RICE or MoSCoW, as these can be done collaboratively with a cross-functional team. You can increase your scale and efficiency by leveraging your program/project management partners or product ops team (if you have them), as they are the masters of driving structured processes.