A few weeks ago I closed my 25,000th support ticket in Intercom. I want to share a bit about my customer support strategy and how it transformed over the years.

The before times

For the first 75,000 interactions, when I got a customer inquiry with feedback, I had nothing in my arsenal but a spreadsheet. I would track their comments there with a quick note and maybe a link to the call/transcript. Customer feedback accounted for up to 20% of customer interactions, so that spreadsheet soon became an unwieldy mess. I had to choose between:

• Keeping it clear, merging suggestions, and tallying votes or…
• Actually communicating and solving a customer issue

 The latter always took priority, so the data was incomplete at best.

 Then, I started managing my own support team. Asking my customer care team to try tracking feedback using a similar manual system was almost pointless. Tagging conversations was helpful but gave us no meaningful insight into the profiles of the clients making requests. I spent entire days manually poring over each customer interaction.

 When the planning meeting came around, and I presented my findings, devs were skeptical. They needed to know which accounts these top requests were coming from. I’d have to say something like:

“I can stay late tomorrow and crunch the numbers, but I didn’t have time to compile all that data. And it’s not something I can do regularly unless that is my only job.”

As a result, the customer service team spent countless work hours on gimmicky features that were rarely used. Meanwhile, the core functionality our users needed fell by the wayside. You can imagine what that did to the customer satisfaction. My pulse on the frontlines often validated my initial instincts, but I lacked the data to back them up.

A few years of wasted development cycles passed. Eventually, my hunches were much more seriously considered. But they were still only hunches. 

To sum up, my daily life looked something like this: 

• Misdirected development efforts: we built features that didn’t resonate with users.
• Customer happiness declined: their valuable feedback felt lost in the abyss.
• Wasted resources: we spent countless hours manually digging through conversations.

Frustration is often the name of the game when scaling up a support team. Little did I know, it didn’t have to be.

Enter feedback tracking

When I first used Canny, I immediately wished I had a time machine. It was a tool I had needed my whole career. It felt like I had regrown a limb I didn’t know I had lost.

Suddenly, that 20% of my interactions could be handled by the user clicking a single button and upvoting an existing feature request. And for the few who still wrote in with feedback, I could easily deflect it to the app. However, unlike other deflection methods, this was a massive improvement in the customer experience as well. Now, they weren’t just given empty words assuring them they’d been heard. They had a verifiable URL to reference their input and track its status.

I could now easily submit bugs and suggestions I ran into as an employee. I didn’t have to escalate things to tier 2 dev support or ask if we were aware. I could just throw them into Canny for easy tracking and triage.

When it came time to plan, I could now represent the voice of the customer with actual data — data that didn’t take days to compile. In fact, with the roadmap function, the voice of the customer at Canny is now almost fully automated.

In my previous role, we had three people answering support tickets and one doing analysis full-time for around 13,000 existing customers. My current role at Canny requires just me for that same figure. And it’s better — not just for the company, but for the end-users. Don’t take my word for it — I work here. Head to G2 or Capterra to see what actual users say about Canny’s support.

It’s easy to overlook support and assume it’s a necessary evil. In reality, support is the rudder of your ship. It can sit down there collecting barnacles that need the occasional sick day. It can get you through the occasional storm. Or it can guide your organization to where your clients tell you they need you to go. Support is often the key to customer retention.

If you want to improve any aspect of your organization, a dedicated support and customer service team that is paying attention will have some valuable insights for you. For example: 

• Should we offer a French version of the app?
  • We handle a lot more tickets in Spanish than in French.
• Should we prioritize that integration with Salesforce?
  • We get a lot more people asking about HubSpot.
• How do we decrease churn?
  • Paying users and prospects are usually concerned with ____.

The best part is – they just have to use Canny. It allows them to answer each question in seconds.

Effect on customers

Using a customer feedback tool also improved the customer experience.

Good customer service starts with listening. When a client takes time to submit a feature request, they want to be heard.

Great customer service is about acting on feedback. Just providing your customers with a way to submit feedback and saying “thanks for your feedback” isn’t enough. If customer loyalty is your goal, you have to exceed customer expectations, not just satisfy customer needs.

Excellent customer service happens when users feel valued. When they know their opinion matters. And when their ideas turn into features. That creates a really satisfied customer.

Of course, none of that matters when users don’t know about it. But if they see an update and know they affected this change, they feel a special connection to the brand. We call this customer loyalty. That drives up the net promoter score and makes for a happy customer. That’s what we call exceptional customer service.

When I got my hands on Canny, I could suddenly do all that and more. Customer relationship management became simpler for the customer success team. Customer satisfaction score soared.

I’ve learned a lot about building a customer support strategy throughout the years. Here are a few best practices.

How to build a customer support strategy

Knowing what I know now, this is how I’d build a customer support strategy from scratch.

1. Make a plan

I’d start with the overall strategy and ask myself:

• What support channels will we provide?
• Who is responsible?
• What will we do with feedback/complaints/bug reports?
• What metrics are important?

2. Get the right tools

Pick a support tool for your team. We use Intercom for example. It lets us chat, create tickets, build help docs, and more.

Then, add other tools that will streamline feedback even further. A dedicated feedback tool, like the one I found in Canny, is a game-changer. It streamlines collecting, analyzing, and acting on customer feedback. This isn’t about replacing your team with software. It’s about giving them superpowers.

3. Actively listen

Listening is the cornerstone of great support. But active listening? That’s where the magic happens. Encourage your team to not just hear but understand what customers are saying. This means going beyond the surface level and really digging into the problems your customers face.

4. Turn feedback into action

Listening is only half the battle. The real test is turning that feedback into action. This means prioritizing feedback that aligns with your business goals and addressing it in your product or service updates. Show your customers you’re not just listening, but you’re also making changes based on their input. Making them feel heard can really boost satisfaction.

5. Measure and iterate

What gets measured gets managed. Track how changes based on customer feedback affect your customer satisfaction score and support metrics. Use this data to continuously refine your strategy, ensuring it always serves your customers’ evolving needs. In my job, I look at the following:

• Comparing churn rates of users who have feedback attributed vs those who don’t
• NPS scoring
• Support satisfaction follow-up surveys

6. Empower your team

Lastly, empower your support team. They’re not just problem solvers; they’re your frontline strategists. Provide them with the training, tools, and authority to make decisions that will improve customer satisfaction. When your team feels empowered, they’re more engaged and effective.

Lessons from 100,000 support tickets

My journey with 100,000 customer talks taught me a lot. Using a tool like Canny changed everything. We went from drowning in feedback to using it smartly. This wasn’t just easier for us; it made our service better and our customers happier.

We learned key lessons. Listen well, act on feedback, and keep checking the results. This makes customers feel heard and builds loyalty.

Looking ahead, customer-focused support is key. It’s more than solving problems; it’s about using what customers tell us to improve. This approach has made our support team a big part of our success.

Let’s go beyond fixing issues to understanding and surprising our customers.

Ready to transform your customer service strategy? Invest in a dedicated feedback tool and empower your team to become data-driven champions for your customers.

Jacques Reulet

Jacques has championed customers at both Coinbase and Shopventory before joining Canny to head up Customer Success. He's also like, really tall.

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The post 100,000 reasons to track client feedback first appeared on Canny Blog.

The post 100,000 reasons to track client feedback appeared first on Canny Blog.

Increasing your customer retention rate by only 5% may lead to a 25-95% profit increase. Seems like a big deal!

This article explains how and why customer feedback management improves customer satisfaction and retention.

It builds brand loyalty

A satisfied and loyal customer rarely complains. And very happy customers become your brand evangelists. They tweet about you without you even asking. They tell their friends and bring business your way. Sounds awesome, right? But how do you get there?

Paying attention to their feedback is a great way. Here’s a scenario to illustrate:

1. Customer submits product feedback (“please fix this bug”)
2. Other users vote on it (“yes, I’m having the same issue”)
3. You comment to get more details
4. You prioritize this issue based on votes, effort, urgency, etc.
5. You actually fix it
6. You tell your customers about it (and the ones who brought it up find out first)

What do you think is going to happen if you follow through on their feedback? They’ll be ecstatic! Actions speak louder than words. So acting on customer feedback will make your customers feel heard and valued. Here’s an example of how we got a request to build a ClickUp integration.

Chris Wainwright, Director of Marketing at Humi, says: 

“Feedback from our customer base lets us know what they like about our HR software. And, what needs improvement. We use that information to make improvements. That leads to a better user experience for all users of our product. This helps us keep our existing customers and win new customers. Because, they know that we’re listening to their feedback. And, making changes based on what they tell us!

The more feedback we get from customers, the better we can tailor our products to customer needs”

You can take your customer relationship one step further and build a loyalty program. Encouraging feedback can be a great component of any loyalty program. Many programs actively reward users for contributing feedback.

It’s surprising how many companies fail with feedback collection. Even fewer involve customers in their product management.

Make sure you’re not one of those companies 🙂 Check out our best practices for feedback collection here.

It prevents complaints

Why wait until someone is really upset? 

The last thing you want is to receive complaints in the form of customer reviews (like G2 or Capterra). Or, negative feedback on social media.

Be proactive instead. Manage customer expectations. Give your users a direct channel of communication. Invite them to share their opinion, have a conversation, and take part in the process. Better yet, set up a public roadmap to show them that you’re working on their issue.

The roadmap assures users that you’re continuously improving. And, that you’re not another “zombie project”. It also promotes customer engagement.

There’s evidence that simply asking for feedback can reduce customer churn. Even if the customer doesn’t actually provide feedback! That’s because people just want to feel heard. They need to know that their opinion matters. If they do speak up, someone will actually listen and take their opinion seriously. And, the company will do something about it.

Customer success and customer support teams can really get involved here. When they talk to users who submitted feedback, users will know that someone’s listening. 

f an upset customer is chatting to support, asking for feedback is a great way to diffuse the situation. Encourage your teams to always ask for feedback when interacting with customers. It goes a long way.

Plus, the CS team can also keep those users up to date on the progress of their requests. All this can go a long way! 

“The two most frequent customer service annoyances are:

1. Waiting for sales or support help 
2. Being placed on hold for an extended period of time 

Response speed is a crucial factor in enhancing customer satisfaction.”

Jamie Irwin, James & James Fulfillment

Things like AI-enabled chatbots and other automation can help here. But feedback management really lies at the core of reducing that churn rate.

David Bitton of DoorLoop describes it like this:

“Customer feedback tool lets you identify when customer satisfaction begins to decline. This way, you can make changes before the situation worsens.” 

In contrast, if users believe that they can’t change anything, they won’t bother saying anything at all. They’ll simply move on. So try to prevent that from happening. And start early on – before they get upset and start looking elsewhere.

It invites users “behind the scenes”

When your customer base feels like they can join you “backstage”, they get that much more invested. They’re almost collaborating with you to build the best product for their needs. So really, they’re doing it for themselves. You’re just providing a vehicle.

Users also feel like they have a direct line of communication with you. They’re heard by the decision-makers in the company they chose. 

Be active about making, replying to, and managing comments. In other words, spend time on customer feedback analysis. It really helps customers feel seen and heard.

It helps you stay ahead of the curve

When you work in isolation, without user feedback, you’re simply guessing. 

There’s a lot you can do to figure out what your users want:

• examining trends
• researching and benchmarking against competitors
• checking past performance
• calculating customer lifetime value
• mapping your customer journey
• brainstorming customer retention strategies
• planning customer loyalty programs 
• and more…

What’s easier? 

Asking them.

When you collect feedback data, you start seeing patterns. When a certain number of customers mention or ask for the same thing, you’ve got to start paying attention. An actionable customer insight like this can really share your product strategy. You can use feedback management software to process feedback quickly and efficiently.

User feedback can help you uncover new ideas that don’t already exist in the market. Don’t miss these valuable insights!

Your users want to give you feedback and ideas. You just need to ask them. Doing so lets you improve product development and make an informed decision. And that’s the best way to become and remain competitive!

Otherwise, you end up playing catch-up.

It builds a community

People love connecting over a specific topic. When a product is exceptional, users create communities around it. Think of all the Lego fans out there for example! It wasn’t Lego marketers who created those communities – the fans created them.

It might seem less likely in the B2B tech space, but it certainly exists. Tech fans love getting involved, so give them a way to do so!

Users can then collaborate, vote on various ideas, discuss, and get very involved. In a way, you’re crowd-sourcing ideation for your product. All thanks to user feedback!

It helps you build exactly what your users want

And isn’t that the ultimate goal? Give your customers exactly what they want by asking them.

Joe Kevens from PartnerStack says: 

“Feedback helps us understand what our users want from our product. We get direct feedback straight from customers to our Customer Success Managers. Through onboarding and Net Promoter Score surveys, and even through reviews. For example, when we get a new review on G2, we send the review details to our Slack channel. That lets our product team members see what the user highlights.” 

He also adds that: 

“In SaaS, some of your partners use a product in instances across a range of use cases and maturity levels. They also use your competitors’ products. So, your partners arguably can provide better feedback than your customers. Though, it should go without saying that customer feedback is still very important.”

When you have those open conversations, you can uncover very specific pain points. From there, your product team will be able to figure out solutions. As a result, your customers will enjoy a better customer experience. In fact, you can even customize that customer experience.

And that, in turn, will keep them around. This brings us back to our very first point – customer loyalty. See how we closed the feedback loop here? 😉

Knowing what your users want most is also critical to prioritizing feature development. Prioritization doesn’t depend only on customer feedback. But, it’s a critical consideration.  

With limited engineering resources, it’s critical you prioritize the most important feature request.

Please and keep your customers through feedback management

It’s hard to improve if you don’t know where to start. So let your customers tell you. When you open up the gates for their feedback, it will be much easier to understand what really matters to them. And, when you show how much you care, they’ll want to stay with you forever.

Jacques Reulet

Jacques has championed customers at both Coinbase and Shopventory before joining Canny to head up Customer Success. He's also like, really tall.

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The post How feedback management leads to improved customer satisfaction and retention first appeared on Canny Blog.

The post How feedback management leads to improved customer satisfaction and retention appeared first on Canny Blog.

Sprint planning.

Strategy sessions.

Whatever your team calls them, planning meetings are a fact of life for any functional company. 

A productive planning meeting requires 3 key components:

1. Representatives for those who will be affected by the meeting’s outcomes
2. A clear decision that needs to be made
3. Actionable steps going forward

But, even though these components make for a productive meeting, there’s still something missing. 

Everyone has a voice at meetings—except your users

Often, a planning meeting will include at least one representative from each of your company’s relevant teams—the product team, marketing, support, design, etc. 

This makes zero sense. Presumably, you’re building a product for your customers. 

Now, it’s obvious that you can’t invite your entire user base to chime in every time you need to assign projects. Even if you could, many of them are going to say the same things. 

Plus, you’d have to keep track of who’s making which requests—is the request coming from freemium users, or people on a trial who just showed up? Or the long-term enterprise clients who genuinely matter to the company balance sheet?

But, the customer’s voice needs to have representation. 

In most companies, this looks like a beleaguered support team armed with loosely connected tickets and conversations. 

When you hear phrases like, “we’ve been hearing a lot of…” or “I recently talked to one user who…” you know you’re not dealing with hard data. 

These support anecdotes may be right, but unless they dig up their ticket history and slap the takeaways on a spreadsheet, they’re not especially helpful.

Bring real user feedback into the room

You can’t make informed decisions based on disjointed anecdotal data. That results in wasted engineering resources that may or may not be relevant to most of your users. 

But you also can’t just ignore your customers. This can result in creating a product or feature that you love, but that is lousy for your user base.

Your customers need a proxy to be in the room on their behalf, accurately conveying their sentiments. 

This is where Canny comes in. 

You can see what requests are the most popular, read user comments, identify which users are requesting what, check how long a submission has been on the board. The data is there. It’s immediate. No need to “circle back.”

When a request is submitted, you can ask users to clarify. Just add a comment and every voter will be notified that an admin has asked a question. In other words, you can start a one-to-many conversation with customers without needing to sort through a slew of emails, or send out a tedious survey.

Decisions without guesswork

So what are the results of inviting Canny into your team meetings? Well, with the user’s voice in the room, you can be confident that all stakeholders have had their say. 

You can filter the feedback to see who’s asking, what they’re paying, how long they’ve been around, and other key variables. 

There’s a balance between building the product you want to develop and the product your users are asking for. You’ll have to use your development resources strategically, and you won’t build what your customers are asking for every time. You still get to decide what you build, but now you have actual data on what your customers want to help inform your decisions.

When you use Canny, you know which requests will make the most significant impact on the bottom line. You can quickly tag and identify low-hanging fruit. You can also decide that a request just isn’t in the cards. Just close it and explain your reasons. This way, current and future users can see that explanation.

Making your meetings better by incorporating user feedback

Having all this data at your fingertips also frees up other resources: 

• Support teams don’t have to compile educated guesswork. They can simply focus on supporting your users. They also don’t have to field every feature request as a support ticket, since users now have a clear place to leave that feedback. Support may not even need to show up to the next planning meeting!
• Product teams don’t have to guess which requests will have the most impact. They have a clearly-defined place to go to see what users are asking for, and they know which users to reach out to when clarification is needed. They can even use Canny’s product roadmapping software to add feature requests to your roadmap. 
• Marketing knows which features to trumpet once completed. 
• Sales can circle back with a prospect once their dealbreakers are addressed. 
• Founders, the executive team, and other key stakeholders can easily keep tabs on the speed of development.

Finally, Canny lets you hold people accountable. With just two clicks, you can assign ownership of a task to a team member immediately. That way, everyone walks out with their action plans clearly defined. 

Integrating user feedback into your planning meetings makes them more productive and useful. You can feel confident that you’re prioritizing and building your roadmap with your users in mind. 

Having a feedback tool like Canny will give them a voice in your meetings—and it’s as easy as pulling up a shared screen.

Jacques Reulet

Jacques has championed customers at both Coinbase and Shopventory before joining Canny to head up Customer Success. He's also like, really tall.

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The post Using Canny to integrate user feedback into your roadmapping and planning meetings first appeared on Canny Blog.

The post Using Canny to integrate user feedback into your roadmapping and planning meetings appeared first on Canny Blog.

But, the best determiner of whether someone goes to the gym regularly has less to do with details like the equipment or facilities.

Instead, it’s the location of the gym itself and where you live in relation. The more convenient the gym’s location, the more likely you are to become a regular.

That same principle applies when trying to collect customer feedback with Canny, or any other user feedback tool. If it’s inconvenient for the people you want to hear from, you won’t be hearing from them. But if you make it easy to give feedback, they’ll be more likely to give it!

Let’s go over some of the main ways to make it easy for your audience to give you feedback.

Option 1: Add links to your user feedback tool within your product

A link within your product will likely drive the majority of your traffic, so there’s a reason it’s the first suggestion. It also has the advantage of being relatively easy to do. 

So, even if you do nothing else, adding links within your product is the way to go. 

You’ll want to place links strategically. Look for places where someone is outside of the regular workflow. 

It’s also a good idea to add an extra link to areas where you really need more feedback, such as beta testing new features.

Ideally, you want the user to be able to leave feedback instead of contacting support. So anywhere they would go to reach out to customer support, that’s where you’ll want to give them the option of leaving feedback instead. 

Your support team will also thank you for it. You’d be amazed at how many support tickets are really just feedback requests fielded by an agent. 

A user feedback tool like Canny frees that support agent up to work on other things! ClickUp, a Canny customer, estimated that using Canny reduced incoming support volume by around 10%.

Option 2: Connect your integrations 

People always get comfortable with what they know. After a while, it can be hard to introduce yet another tool or dashboard to keep up with. 

This is where integrations save the day. Customers don’t need to learn an entirely new tool. An integration simply adds a layer of value to the tools they’re already using.

With a direct integration, you also get the benefit of seeing a link to the conversation in Canny. So you can reference the support thread when understanding feedback.

You can learn more about Canny’s integrations here. And, check out this article for more on how to use Canny for customer support. 

Option 3: Manually vote on a user’s behalf within your user feedback tool

Not really the most convenient option for the user, but one that comes in handy! 

This is also great for sales interactions, or one-off situations where you just want to manually add a person’s vote and sign them up for updates.

You can also use this method to limit the visibility of a private board in Canny. But, be beware when adding a person’s vote to a private board. Only your admins have access, so customers won’t get email notifications on status updates.

Instead, you can use custom access boards to allow both admins and select users to access your board. 

Option 4: Invite users to participate via a simple URL

You’d be amazed at how much user feedback you get when you simply ask for it. Sending out a simple link in your newsletter can get people to your board and submitting feedback. A quick prompt is all it takes for some people.

A quick word of warning here: Don’t rely on a one-time invitation. Collecting feedback needs to be an ongoing process, so don’t just send out a link once and then never ask again. 

Whenever appropriate, just add a Canny link if you want to hear from your users! 

Or, all of the above

The best products are the ones that adapt to you. Take that same approach and adapt to your users’ preferences. Take into account the culture you’ve already established. Use your own blend of the strategies above to make it easy. 

No two users are alike. Some folks are happy to click on an email link, others never even open the message. Some prefer to bypass human interaction if they can. Others will hold for hours and charge past every automated option to speak to a human. Thankfully, you have options for dealing with whatever comes your way!

Bottom line: Making it easier to give feedback leads to more feedback. So, make it easy for users to access your user feedback tool. 

More feedback leads to better project management. Better project management leads to a better product. It’s why teams trust Canny to give their users a voice while filtering out the noise.

Jacques Reulet

Jacques has championed customers at both Coinbase and Shopventory before joining Canny to head up Customer Success. He's also like, really tall.

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The post 4 ways to make your user feedback tool more accessible to customers first appeared on Canny Blog.

The post 4 ways to make your user feedback tool more accessible to customers appeared first on Canny Blog.

These are the best practices for effectively moderating comments—check out our entire Canny best practices section here.

Ah, the comments section. 

It’s not controversial to say the comments section has earned a bit of a reputation for being…less than helpful at times, and deservedly so. 

Anonymous comments on sites like YouTube are often incredibly toxic. It’s almost enough to make you forget all the positive interactions that make up the overwhelming majority of comments. 

But, comments are helpful (even when people disagree). They provide valuable feedback. And valuable feedback is what Canny is all about! 

Leveraging Canny’s comments section will let you refine the ideas that come through and guide your development strategies.

A few simple best practices will help you avoid the common pitfalls and turn your comments section into an engine of progress. 

With that in mind, we’ve put together a few helpful insights for you to make the most of your comments. 

Dealing with toxicity

Moderation doesn’t have to be a constant effort:

You always want to have your best foot forward, but people understand that the occasional troll or spammer will find their way in. 

You’ll want to take decisive action when you spot a problem:

Watch for spam and don’t be afraid to ban those who post it. Warnings should only be reserved for true VIP users. 

Never tolerate abusive or hateful comments on a board: 

If it’s from a legitimate user, it’s best to delete the comment and follow up privately via email with a one-time warning. If that person intentionally offended another user, apologize to the victim and let them know you’re taking action. 

Use integrations like Slack or Zapier: 

Make use of Canny’s integrations to keep track of incoming comments (among other events) on your boards. You don’t have to respond instantly, but the sooner, the better. 

Most importantly, set a positive tone in all interactions with your users: 

Maintain that when moderating comments. If you feel a discussion is getting heated, invite users to reach out privately. Better yet, be proactive in reaching out via a private channel. This applies whether they’re upset with you or with each other.

To reply or not to reply

That is the question. 😉 

Don’t obsess over every comment thread. Especially if the post is not a high priority for your team. While it’s reassuring for users to see an admin add their voice to a thread, frankly, not every thread is worth the effort.

Check for questions 

When you do find your way to a post, keep an eye out for question marks. That’s when clarification may be needed and the voice of an admin could be most helpful. (We go into detail about how to ask feedback follow up questions here.) 

Likewise, watch for threads with a lot of replies. While users are usually well-meaning, you may need to correct something and be that authoritative voice.

Keep the conversation on topic 

It’s also a good idea to jump in if things have gone way off-topic in an unhelpful way. 

If a new issue arises out of the comments, create it as a post and let interested users know that you’ve added their votes in that separate area. Try to keep things on-topic within a given post.

Be mindful of screenshots 

Finally, be very cautious about posting screenshots. Make certain to blur/crop/censor any personal data. 

Also, immediately edit/delete any user comments that share personal info. It’s best to use internal comments for anything remotely personal.

Use comments as a resource

Comments are not just something you need to babysit. They’re also a valuable resource for clarifying what a user means with their feedback. Having many voices in the comments section will give you further context for how a post may impact your users.

Remember to use your admin superpowers here! When an admin posts a top-level comment, everyone gets notified about it. 

The users who are in that thread are self-selected. They’re actively interested in this post. Make the most of that by opening up a dialogue and going a little further into the weeds. This is the audience who will be most willing to engage!

Trust your users

If someone has found their way to your Canny board, it’s because they care about your product. 

Trolls on a feedback board are more rare than you might think. It’s logical to be worried about them. But, don’t let a fear of abuse dissuade you from reaping the benefits of gathering feedback. 

Comment abuse is rare and easy to deal with, given Canny’s toolset. On the unusual occasions it does occur, be aggressive in stamping it out. Banning someone from your Canny board doesn’t bar them from contacting you directly. If you have a person who doesn’t play nice with others, mark them as spam to prevent further posting and foster a more positive environment. 

Remember the Spock principle: “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one.”

Engaging with users in your comments will show them you care about the details of how your product affects them. That makes them more loyal and more likely to give feedback in the future. It also shows new users that you value input, a major selling point for someone on the fence.

It still requires some trust. Not every user has great insights. Not everyone has a particularly helpful way of sharing the insights they do have. 

But the benefits so far outweigh the risks that it’s not even a close contest. Comments are such a valuable resource, that we’re willing to deal with the occasional moderation required.

Jacques Reulet

Jacques has championed customers at both Coinbase and Shopventory before joining Canny to head up Customer Success. He's also like, really tall.

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The post Moderating user comments diplomatically first appeared on Canny Blog.

The post Moderating user comments diplomatically appeared first on Canny Blog.

User feedback is never perfect. Customers have unrealistic expectations or niche use cases. They don’t really understand the effort it takes to make changes to your product.

But, their feedback is a valuable resource. They’re the ones using your product. So, they have a great perspective on how it could be better.

It’s important that you don’t ignore user feedback. When users provide feedback, they’re expecting you to do something with it!

Failing to take action on your feedback can have negative consequences—the long-term kind that negatively impact relationships with your most valuable users.

Let’s look at some of those consequences, and steps you can take to avoid them.

What happens when you ignore user feedback

Feedback piles up and becomes a burden, versus a source of stimulus

Too often, user feedback is treated like an article of dirty laundry.

It’s collected, and (hopefully, maybe, eventually) you’ll get to it later on. Feedback becomes a byproduct of customer interactions, instead of a valuable resource. It’s certainly not farmed or cultivated.

The whole point of asking users for their input is so that you can do something with it. Users will give you brilliant ideas. But, you have to do something with those ideas.

Let’s look at a couple of examples:

Our internal comments function, as well as our roadmap view, were both user-generated. (Click on either link to see the original submissions!)

But when feedback is a free-for-all, ideas like these often get buried. You don’t know what to work on first. You can’t measure the impact a suggestion might have.

It becomes an unwieldy list that everyone is afraid to look at.

Users can sense if you’re not acting on feedback (and will stop giving it)

It’s better not to ask users for feedback at all than to ask for their input and ignore it.

Collecting feedback cannot be an end goal. When you take in feedback, there needs to be a resolution of some kind.

Otherwise, it’s like putting up a nice-looking suggestion box. People will notice if it’s never opened. Your users will also notice if they never hear back about any of their suggestions.

Users feel they’re doing you a favor by giving you their feedback—and they are! When those ideas disappear into a void, giving you that feedback becomes a waste of time, both for them and for you.

Users won’t feel product loyalty—and are more likely to churn

If a user believes their input is never even considered, they’ll be less likely to stay loyal to your product.

This makes them easy targets for your competition. Your competitors won’t have to work hard to entice these customers away.

It also makes it harder to get opinions when you launch a new function or need some input on what to build next. When you meet your users with silence, they’ll eventually respond in kind.

Taking action on user feedback

Take it all in: Be active about collecting feedback

User feedback can be overwhelming. But, don’t let that stop you from doing something with it.

Encourage your users to leave feedback! Be active about it. It’s a positive sign for them that you’re dedicated to improving your product.

Asking for feedback also encourages user retention. A user who gives input is more likely to feel invested in your product. They will be more patient with your development speed.

It also helps to focus on your target market. Request feedback from the customers you wish you could clone. Let your user base know that they (and their opinions) are valued.

This way, you’re a partner, not just a vendor.

Organize and prioritize

Don’t simply “throw it on the pile.” Organize your feedback.

You need to keep track of who requested what. Also, how many people have made that same request. This way, you can understand which ideas carry the most value and should be prioritized.

Let’s say I have a suggestion from three of my enterprise customers. There’s another suggestion from thirty of my freemium-tier users. I should have a way to determine that the former’s value outweighs the latter’s!

Prioritize the demands of your target users for larger projects. But don’t ignore the low-hanging fruit—quick wins will demonstrate you’re working actively.

Feedback should be accessible to your team. In Canny, we make it searchable and allow you to tag/categorize submissions. This way, you have a finger on the pulse of your users.

Finally, you should have a public roadmap (obviously). This way, your users can see you’re actually working on things when they come to your Canny page. The feedback they provide isn’t just going unnoticed. It’s going through a process.

Close the loop

Even if the answer is no, you should not leave a user hanging.

Users appreciate communication more than most companies realize. Making a user feel heard means responding to them in some way.

It doesn’t have to be a heartfelt, personalized essay, either. A plain, straightforward update will still be appreciated. Even something as cold as “Your submission is now under review” lets your user know they’ve been heard.

But sometimes, the response is to clarify. Many ideas come in half-baked.

Even asking a simple question or two might have the user think twice about their request:

Depending on the situation, the best thing to do might be to wait for more feedback. It’s fine to let the user know you’re waiting on others to weigh in so that you can gauge interest.

And, it’s okay to show users that there really isn’t enough interest from your user base to warrant building something.

Ultimately, you should be communicating, asking questions, and sharing updates on progress when you can—not just the final outcome.

Small actions help avoid negative outcomes

You don’t have to ship code at breakneck speed to show users you’re taking feedback seriously.

Users want to be seen and heard. Whether it’s as simple as asking a clarifying question or just marking something as “under review,” a small gesture goes a long way.

Yes, you will get some unhelpful suggestions. They can’t all be winners.

Here is where fear often creeps in. We see it all the time—companies not trusting their customers.

But give your users credit. The overwhelming majority are reasonable people. They know you can’t do everything all at once, especially if you show them all the things you are doing.

Even if you don’t trust your users to provide good ideas, neglecting their feedback is not a solution. It’s quite the opposite.

Even bad or negative feedback will tell you something about how your product is being perceived. Don’t be afraid to allow for bad ideas. Shutting out feedback makes it harder to find the next great innovation your app needs to stay competitive. It makes your users easier to walk away rather than increasing their loyalty.

User feedback has helped us improve our product, too

At Canny, we know the value of user feedback. We use our own user feedback software to harvest input from our customers. Those submissions have led us to create features we hadn’t thought to build. Many are now a core part of our product.

As a result, we have a 98.5% retention rate at the time of this writing. Our customers are a reliable source of feedback—even those who submitted posts that were ultimately rejected.

So trust your users, keep them in the loop, and make feedback a priority. It pays dividends in more ways than one.

Jacques Reulet

Jacques has championed customers at both Coinbase and Shopventory before joining Canny to head up Customer Success. He's also like, really tall.

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The post What happens if you ignore user feedback? first appeared on Canny Blog.

The post What happens if you ignore user feedback? appeared first on Canny Blog.

After all, they’re the ones paying for it. They’re the ones using it. They’re going to have ideas for making it better.

It’s not enough to passively take in feedback, though. It’s what you do to collect, manage, and respond to that feedback which makes the difference.

Put yourself in the user’s shoes. It’s one thing to see an announcement about a new feature I may or may not want. It’s quite another to receive an email saying, “Hey that feature you requested—it’s live!”

When I get that email, I feel heard, seen, and appreciated. I feel like I somehow “chipped in” to this effort to improve the product. It doesn’t feel like marketing to me. It feels like I’m being thanked. It makes me want to stick around and see what else they release. I’m now invested.

In short, it increases customer loyalty.

Leverage feedback collection during support interactions

Feedback is going to come your way. If someone is using your product and there exists a way to contact you, you will be contacted.

At the very least, your customers will reach out to you for product support. No matter how thorough your documentation, there will always be questions.

Any support agent (who’s been on the job for more than an hour) knows it isn’t only giving out answers. It’s also fielding suggestions.

Support means you’re hearing directly from your customers. But often, those agents don’t have a good avenue to push suggestions from customers up the chain.

But, offering product support isn’t the same as actively seeking customer feedback

Worse yet, many companies appear to think support and feedback are the same thing.

They assume that, since customers give feedback during the support interaction, that’s the same as actively collecting feedback. There’s no formal process to receive feedback, much less request, prioritize, and act on it.

Actively collecting feedback isn’t only good for keeping customers, either. Your employees likely have even better ideas. They want to be heard even more than your users do.

Make sure that feedback is being captured! You can worry about making sense of it later. But don’t let ideas just disappear into the void.

Make sure your customers know they’ve been heard

Stagnant companies get set in their ways.

They know what’s best. They will tell users what users need and want. User feedback and suggestions bounce off them like bullets off Superman.

Then, these companies are caught by surprise when a user-centric competitor eats their lunch.

The stagnant companies send feedback into the void. They have a canned line they trot out. Something like, “we thank you for your input and we will certainly take it into account as we move forward with…” etc. It’s maddening to get that response. You know right away that you may as well have given that feedback to a stray cat.

When you receive actionable user feedback, that should trigger an action. Even if it’s not an immediate action, your user should get more than just a “thanks for your input” message. They should see that that feedback has been received (not just be told it has).

Even if you don’t have any short-term plans to address it, capture it. Add it to your public roadmap. The mere fact of knowing it’s not trapped in a support ticket is significant.

You can also take the pressure off your support team by proactively soliciting feedback. Give your users a self-serve way to add their suggestions and see what other ideas are in the works.

Since you’re on the Canny blog, it won’t surprise you to know we have a perfect example of this on our Canny feedback board. You’d be amazed at the roles curiosity and anticipation can play in preventing churn.

Close the loop—show what’s happening next

If you show what you’re working on publicly, you might worry that your users won’t think you’re moving fast enough.

But, if you want a user to be patient with your development speed, show them your development speed! A public roadmap will show users you are working hard on improvements. A public changelog also trumpets your recent accomplishments. Those give users valid reasons to be patient.

So don’t just take in a suggestion—take action on it. Even if that action is taking in more feedback about that suggestion. Invite comments from other users on existing ideas. Figure out who else it benefits so you can let everyone know once it’s implemented!

Even if the eventual action is to just close the request, let the user know. Don’t leave folks hanging. If a decision has been made, update them! It shows users that they do have a voice in development and decision-making.

Increased customer loyalty and a promoter for life

Bottom line, to increase customer loyalty, a user should feel invested in your product. A user who sees their feedback acted upon will feel invested. (For more on this, check out our articles on how to announce product updates, and why keeping a changelog matters.)

Your customers will feel like they helped build your product—and rightly so. Now, it feels a bit more like their product.

Even a single instance of user feedback being heard and acted upon will make the difference. It instills a sense of brand loyalty like nothing else.

They’ll be able to say, “you know the ___ button? That was my idea!”

If you want someone to promote your product, make it theirs. Users will promote your product to others (and within their own teams) if they feel they had a hand in building it.

So give them that, by actively seeking out, listening to, and following up on their feedback. Make them feel like contributors to your company’s success—because they are!

Jacques Reulet

Jacques has championed customers at both Coinbase and Shopventory before joining Canny to head up Customer Success. He's also like, really tall.

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The post Increasing customer loyalty by collecting feedback first appeared on Canny Blog.

The post Increasing customer loyalty by collecting feedback appeared first on Canny Blog.

Ouch. No one likes to hear that.

But it’s actually something to look forward to. Negative feedback can give you a cold, hard dose of reality.

Is negative feedback a good thing?

For many companies, the accepted opinion is the product is great. Everyone has worked hard on it. People are paying for it. We must be doing something right!

Companies who think this way can have a hard time receiving difficult feedback.

The fact is, not everyone will be thrilled with your product.

But take heart! Dissent is disagreement, but it’s also the start of a conversation. It offers you a blunt, clear view of where you can improve.

Taking a punch

Let’s go back to, “Your product is terrible.”

There’s a visceral reaction to reading something like that. Take a breath. The emotional part of the brain needs time to let the initial reaction subside.

Never respond to negative feedback with your initial reaction. Ten times out of ten, your instinct is to get defensive and argue. As soon as you get emotional, you lose.

Read through negative feedback a few times and start asking questions:

• Is this coming from a user or a random person?
  • You should always know who is giving you feedback. Is this person a solo operation on freemium who complains every Thursday? Or, is this an enterprise user with a legitimate problem?
• Why did they take the time to write this?
  • If it’s an isolated “blip,” most overlook it. This user is so motivated, they took the time to reach out.
• Do they make any valid points?
  • Ultimately, this is what you’re after. Don’t defend or convince—understand.

If you don’t know the answers to any of these, find out.

Once you know who the feedback is coming from, it’s time to probe further.

Engage with the user

Don’t just stand there. It’s an opportunity! This means you put on a smile and engage the user. Don’t gloss over their frustration. If all they wrote is, “your product is terrible,” then we need to know more.

Regardless of their delivery or tone, they took the time to give you feedback. Thank them for it.

Arguing with a user may feel good, but it doesn’t tell you why they got so upset in the first place. Own the fact that something didn’t go according to plan.

The postmortem

All feedback has at least some value—even if it’s the value of knowing you need to filter spam more aggressively.

Find the valid points in dissenting feedback. Even if you need to stretch for them. Even if you disagree with them.

Here’s an example: 

Your pricing may be exactly where you want it, but stop and ask some questions:

• Why bother writing this?
  • They could have looked at your pricing and decided it wasn’t for them.
• How small is “small”?
  • Can they really not afford the pricing, or is this a negotiating tactic?
• What do they define as “reasonable”?
  • Are they looking at any competitors to determine we’re “insane” in our pricing?
• Do we have something?
  • Is there a discount they would qualify for?
• Do I want them as a customer?
  • Sometimes, it’s just not a good fit. No one’s fault.

Interpreting negative feedback

A good thing to do is literally translate valid negative feedback into actionable steps.

Minimize adjectives here. For example, saying “this irate user wrote a nasty complaint about our newly-released beta feature” will bias things.

Instead say, “this user wrote in about X feature.” Stick to the facts and avoid commentary or cop-outs.

Let’s take a look at another example:

Even if it’s completely off-base, ask what may have led to their perception. They may not be the only ones who feel negatively, but they may be the only ones who will express that negativity.

Try and see things from their point of view—let’s translate:

“The new view feels overwhelming. I feel I’m seeing too many things at once. It is at odds with what I’ve come to expect. I prefer the old view.”

Now, it’s time to ask more questions:

• Are they on the right “new view”?
  • With UI matters, it’s usually good to ask for a screenshot. Does what they see match what you designed in the first place?
• Do they have a point?
  • Take a look at the UI. What is/isn’t relevant to the user at that moment? Put yourself in their shoes. Or, better yet, ask them what they do/don’t want to see!
• Are they an outlier?
  • Have you had positive comments from a bunch of other users, and this user is the only one who doesn’t like it? Or has everyone else been silent? The latter may be a sign that this user is saying what others won’t.

Drive forward—on the high road

When you respond, make sure your emotions aren’t running high. Let your blood pressure come down.

Before you hit “send,” look through your reply for two key red flags: The words “you/your” and any adjectives. Remove them if at all possible.

The goal here should be to show your dissenters that they’ve been heard. It’s not to defend, accuse, or justify anything. The primary focus is to listen. State facts, not opinions.

If there is an action you can take, then take it! This is where a feedback tool like Canny comes in handy. You can use feature voting to add their vote to an issue they care about and thus ensure they get updates on what matters to them.

Don’t expect kudos. Be prepared for further conflict.

And, draw the line if things get truly nasty and abusive. If they’re more focused on insulting you and your team than telling you about the product, red flag. Stop responding. In extreme cases, it may be best to cut ties altogether and fire them as a customer.

Keep your guard down

Don’t listen to your ego. Negative feedback isn’t as bad as it seems—it’s something to be treasured. It’s precious, which also makes it difficult to receive. That’s to be expected.

Bake the process of handling negative feedback into your culture. Dissent shouldn’t just be welcomed—it should be downright celebrated. Without disagreement, you won’t know how to make your product better.

Never let a hard piece of feedback go unanswered. Dissenting, negative feedback shouldn’t be treated like a bad review—it should be the start of a fruitful conversation.

Jacques Reulet

Jacques has championed customers at both Coinbase and Shopventory before joining Canny to head up Customer Success. He's also like, really tall.

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The post Encouraging dissent: Why negative feedback is valuable first appeared on Canny Blog.

The post Encouraging dissent: Why negative feedback is valuable appeared first on Canny Blog.

The same is true for software product adoption. If a team is splintered across disparate tools, don’t expect their product to be unified.

This is where so many companies struggle: Every member of the team has their own tool, versus the team as a whole adopting a single tool.

We have run into both the struggle of getting the whole team to adopt a tool, and having our tool be fully adopted by other teams.

Both can be frustrating. But, we’ve picked up some best practices along the way to help.

Getting your team to adopt a new tool

We’ve all been there. It’s a happy day. You’ve just come from a session on Capterra or ProductHunt. Now you have the perfect productivity tool. The one that’s going to cure your every ailment.

You introduce it to your team with a company-wide post. Everyone chats back with 👍 emojis. A week later, only your three or four example entries are there. The engineers haven’t gotten around to integrating the JavaScript snippet.

A month later, and even you’ve forgotten. Later that quarter, (after a quick chat with the company bookkeeper), it’s all over. But this other new tool…

So what went wrong?

Well, adopting a new tool is a bit like adopting a new puppy. You can’t just show up with one and expect the entire household to be thrilled. There are other stakeholders involved.

Building consensus around what tool to use

People are more likely to use a tool if they agree that they want to use that tool. It’s the difference between, “Honey, let’s talk about getting a puppy,” versus, “Look, honey! I got us a puppy!”

This doesn’t necessarily mean you need to schedule a meeting. But it does mean you need input and buy-in from your team. Otherwise, it’s a bit like informing the office that you’re changing your hair color. It’s all well and good, but it doesn’t really affect me.

To get buy-in from your team, focus on answering these points:

• What’s the problem?
• What happens if we don’t address it?
• Why don’t our current tools work?
• What tools did we look at?
• Why are you recommending this tool in particular?

Let’s break that down:

1. What’s the problem?

It happens in software. There’s a temptation to take a brilliant solution and go looking for a problem.

But, there may not really be a problem to solve. And if it is a problem, does the solution make things easier or more complex?

A good example of this is data tracking. Sometimes people want as many data points as possible.

But, they’re not being used for anything. Nothing’s being done with the data. Collecting them adds cumulative man-hours to the team processes. But just in case, we pay for an awesome tool that helps us collect them.

2. What happens if we don’t address it?

The old “less is more” adage. Play it out and think it through. What happens if we don’t “fix” this perceived problem? Will it actually hurt us? Or is it just a minor annoyance?

Scale is an important point here. A minute of work from a three-person team is an inconvenience. A minute of work multiplied across a hundred people is downright expensive.

3. Why don’t our current tools work?

This is a classic blind spot. Why have a Dropbox account when we already use G Suite and thus have Google Drive? Why sign up for Monday if we’re already using ClickUp? Why not just take two minutes a day to update a spreadsheet versus signing up for Grow?

Don’t let a good discount or the appeal of a shiny new toy fool you. Don’t go to a completely new tool just because it’s new.

However, let’s say you’ve evaluated your current toolkit and it genuinely doesn’t fit the bill. If that’s the case, keep reading.

4. What tools did we look at?

The “rule of three” is a good one here. Present at least three options and take the time to do some math.

For example, let’s say your problem is that you need to be able to make phone calls.

This could mean you sign up for AirCall, since they have the nicest website and the most features.

But notice that “make phone calls” is a pretty limited scope.

You may not need all the bells and whistles. Decide on what “boxes to check.” Does it have a decent UI? What does setup look like? How about price?

Decide what’s important to you and filter for that criteria. You may find that a more minimal option like Toky is actually going to give you what you need for a much lower price.

5. Why are you recommending this tool in particular?

Make your case! Which one do you think wins and why? Your team should see that you’ve given this serious thought.

That being said, encourage dissent (that’s a whole other blog post) and be willing to lose. You’re presenting options and building consensus, not handing down edicts.

Implementing the new tool with your team

Congratulations! You’ve got the team on board.

But now the rubber needs to meet the road. First thing to do is add this tool to your internal knowledge base. New employees should be able to find a guide that will walk them through using this tool with minimal effort.

It helps to set a date on this beforehand.

So, the conversation isn’t, “Hey everyone, let’s start using ____ for our ____.”

The tone is much more, “Hey, as we discussed, we’re going to transition to using ____ for our ____ as of 2024. Here’s a link to our knowledge base for using that tool. Reach out to me or [person] if you have any questions.”

There should be some formality to this. Send reminders beforehand, then the day of implementation. Then follow up with anyone who’s not using it. A simple one-on-one chat should do.

“Hey, [name]! Just a friendly reminder that we’re using ____ now for all our ____. Let me know if you’re having any trouble with getting set up or have any questions using it! 🙂”

Be sure to shut down any alternatives as quickly as possible. The best way to ensure the wrong method isn’t used is to make it unusable!

Product adoption is a process

Bottom line: Getting your team to adopt a new tool is never as easy as “plug-and-play.” It takes effort, like anything else.

But if you’ve taken the steps above, you’ll no doubt see the payoff in the form of a smooth and (hopefully) permanent transition.

Here at Canny, we understand the challenges around product adoption. As with any tool, Canny users sometimes struggle to get their teams on board.

But, by going through this process outlined above, getting buy-in and company-wide product adoption is much easier. It’s ultimately up to users to drive product adoption with their teams and customers.

That said, we’re here to help—we hope this guide has been useful, and don’t hesitate to reach out with questions. You can also start by trying Canny’s product feedback software for free, and learn more about why collecting customer feedback matters.

Jacques Reulet

Jacques has championed customers at both Coinbase and Shopventory before joining Canny to head up Customer Success. He's also like, really tall.

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The post Product adoption: How to get your team to use new tools first appeared on Canny Blog.

The post Product adoption: How to get your team to use new tools appeared first on Canny Blog.