Product Suggestions
Step-by-step information with examples
You’re a SaaS enterprise critical about constructing a product your prospects love.
That signifies that you add new performance when your prospects ask for it.
And that means you want a system for managing characteristic requests and buyer suggestions.
What’s the easiest way to do this? How are you going to deal with buyer characteristic requests in order that they get on the roadmap and don’t get misplaced?
This text offers you a step-by-step information — with examples — to construct a consumer suggestions assortment system that you would be able to belief — whether or not you’re a brand new startup or an enterprise.
First, work out the place your new characteristic requests come from. This is likely to be your buyer help software (Intercom, Assist Scout, Zendesk), CRM (Hubspot, Salesforce, and many others.), buyer calls, emails, Slack, or one thing else.
- Make a listing of those sources of buyer suggestions.
- Establish a very powerful one.
Instance: You recognize that you just get characteristic requests and consumer suggestions from Zendesk, help emails, and sometimes by Typeform surveys. Zendesk is your most necessary supply of buyer suggestions.
Now, you wish to acquire your characteristic requests out of your sources right into a single place the place you’ll be able to analyze them. You may acquire consumer suggestions in any variety of instruments — spreadsheets, Trello, Google Docs, and many others. You too can use a purpose-built characteristic request administration software like Savio.
The method you choose right here in all probability is determined by your quantity of requests and what you wish to do with them as soon as organized.
- The essential model is kludging collectively a handbook solution to centralize consumer suggestions. This may increasingly even be copying and pasting suggestions from one software to a different.
- The intermediate model is to automate the method to get rid of handbook work. Bear in mind, the extra friction you take away from the system, the extra doubtless your crew will truly use it.
- The superior model is increasing to attach all your suggestions sources, not only one. However you are able to do this later — I like to recommend beginning with one solely suggestions supply to start with.
Instance: You may copy and paste suggestions that you just obtain in Zendesk to Google Docs.
Or, for a extra automated course of, you need to use Savio’s Zendesk App to ship suggestions from Zendesk to your Savio Suggestions Vault.
It’ll robotically get added to your Savio vault.
Subsequent, reply to the shoppers and allow them to know you’ve captured their requests. That is truly a very highly effective step. It exhibits you’re listening to their ache factors and fosters buyer loyalty.
Instance: Listed below are some examples of how we reply to our prospects.
Right here’s the half the place the system will get a bit tough. Ultimately, your suggestions shall be a form of information that you just analyze. Based mostly in your evaluation, you’ll prioritize some options above others. To essentially try this evaluation effectively, you have to arrange your suggestions because it is available in and add vital info and attributes. Necessary info and attributes to notice alongside along with your suggestions embrace:
- Related characteristic requests. Be certain each bit of suggestions is related to a characteristic request. Attempt to be constant in order that requests for a similar characteristic are related to one another.
- The particular person making the request. Who makes the request issues. Preserve observe of the particular person’s contact info so you may get in contact with them later to ask any questions or shut the suggestions loop (Step 8).
- The corporate or account. If your corporation has company- or account-level shoppers, maintain observe of this too. It’ll show you how to maintain requests made by totally different folks from the identical firm collectively.
- Related buyer particulars. We additionally wish to maintain observe of buyer attributes which will show you how to make prioritization choices (Step 6): issues like MRR, whether or not the shopper is energetic, their subscription, and extra.
Instance: In the event you’re utilizing spreadsheets to maintain observe of product suggestions, you possibly can have columns for every of these attributes: buyer contact info, firm, MRR, subscription, and so forth.
In the event you’re utilizing Savio, we’ve taken care of this all for you. This categorization and group step — we name it triage — includes choosing a characteristic request, making certain that the correct particular person is hooked up to the request (which is finished robotically whenever you log suggestions out of your help software or CRM), and together with any tags that is likely to be related.
You have to guarantee your Product crew members see the suggestions and sorts of characteristic requests that prospects are asking for.
In the event you’re a product supervisor or are on the Product crew, this step will occur naturally as you’re managing your characteristic request monitoring system. However should you’re setting this technique up as a Buyer Success crew member, or from one other crew, this step is extra necessary.
Learn extra: How To Share Buyer Suggestions so Product Truly Listens
We suggest holding a scheduled assembly to debate characteristic requests with Product. These ought to occur no less than as usually as you replace your roadmap, so Product can perceive what prospects are asking for earlier than they make prioritization choices.
Instance: In the event you’re utilizing spreadsheets, you’ll be able to share the spreadsheet with Product at an everyday assembly. You should use formulation to filter and type requests to indicate Product what prospects are asking for.
In the event you’re utilizing Savio, you’ll be able to simply filter and type characteristic requests by buyer attributes.
For extra element, you’ll be able to click on right into a characteristic request to see buyer verbatims.
Learn extra: How To Run Your Product Assembly Utilizing Savio
That is the toughest half: deciding what to construct subsequent. Prioritizing characteristic requests is particularly troublesome whenever you don’t have a transparent concept about what your prospects need. It turns into a lot simpler when you will have perception into your prospects’ issues and the options they’re asking for. (Trace: for this reason we had been so involved with categorizing and organizing our requests in Step 4).
With a purpose to make good prioritization choices, you have to be clear on your corporation objectives. Perhaps this quarter you’re engaged on lowering churn, or getting extra prospects on a paid plan, or constructing options that help a strategic path. Being clear in your most necessary goal will make prioritization simpler.
Now, choose options that align with that aim:
- Making an attempt to cut back churn? Prioritize options requested by churned prospects.
- Need to win extra offers? Prioritize options requested by prospects from misplaced offers.
- Seeking to broaden buyer accounts? Prioritize requests from prospects with open offers.
Instance: You have got a number of enterprise shoppers that make up nearly all of your income and also you wish to maintain them completely satisfied. So this quarter, your product crew chooses to prioritize options from Enterprise shoppers. You type by your requests to search out those hottest amongst your Enterprise shoppers. These get precedence in your product roadmap.
Now the options are getting constructed. The subsequent step is to observe them by the product improvement course of. You wish to know once they’re shipped so you’ll be able to inform your prospects, so your advertising crew can create advertising content material, so your help crew can present help on it, and so forth.
So, construct a solution to observe their standing into your workflow:
- The essential model is to often e mail your dev crew for updates. (Be good — they’re working exhausting.)
- The superior model is to automate this in order that when a ticket will get up to date of their improvement software, the requests’ standing updates robotically in your system.
Instance: Savio updates characteristic request statuses robotically once they change in Shortcut or from Jira. As your Dev crew updates a selected characteristic request standing of their pipeline, its standing will get up to date in Savio, too.
When your Devs change a standing of their improvement software…
… you’ll see the standing up to date robotically in Savio.
Automation for the win.
Closing the suggestions loop means following up with a buyer whenever you constructed a characteristic that they requested for. It’s an elective step, however we extremely suggest it. It’s simple, and it offers you credit score for listening to your prospects. You present that you just’re listening to buyer experiences and expectations, that their suggestions issues to you, and that you just’re committing to constructing a product they love. It’s so highly effective.
So construct that observe up into your course of:
- The essential model of this step is to e mail every buyer manually whenever you construct a brand new product characteristic they ask for.
- The superior model is to automate this and ship batch emails.
Instance: In Savio, you’ll be able to shut the loop with prospects that requested for a product characteristic request in just some clicks. Simply draft your e mail template, choose the shoppers, and hit ship.
By now you will have a system for dealing with characteristic requests. You’re monitoring them, you’re retaining them in a single place, you’re categorizing them and organizing them with the intention to use them to prioritize and make good product choices. Then, you’re taking note of once they get constructed after which letting your prospects know.
Ultimately, you’ll see outcomes. As you construct a product that constantly meets your prospects’ expectations, you’ll discover you get extra prospects and extra suggestions.
This can be a actually good factor.
You simply have to ensure your system can deal with it.
As you’re beginning out, you may cobble collectively a characteristic request monitoring system utilizing Jira, a spreadsheet and even Trello. However finally, it will get inefficient. Chances are you’ll discover that requests fall by the cracks.
Think about scaling your system to a purpose-built characteristic request software program software for SaaS groups. And — no shock right here — we extremely suggest Savio for that.
