“Product managers believe they should spend 53% of their time on strategic activities, but only 8% can focus at this level.”

Pragmatic Institute

But who will do all the manual, time-consuming work that still needs to get done?

You might’ve guessed the answer: AI.

At Canny, we asked ourselves:

This is how we came up with Autopilot. It’s an AI-powered suite of tools that simplifies and automates feedback management. One of Autopilot’s key features is Feedback Discovery. It finds, extracts, and deduplicates feedback from customer conversations.

Now, it can find feedback on ten review sites:

1. G2
2. Capterra
3. App Store
4. Google Play
5. Trustpilot
6. Trustradius
7. Product Hunt
8. Salesforce AppExchange
9. WordPress
10. Shopify

I’m excited to walk you through this new feature.

Why automate feedback management?

When you dreamed of being a product manager…we bet you didn’t dream of this:

• Manually copy-pasting feature requests from G2 to a spreadsheet
• Sifting through that spreadsheet with hundreds of lines of customer feedback
• Desperately trying to find patterns and commonalities
• Attempting to find duplicated ideas and merge them
• Building features no one ends up using

There are more issues with managing feedback manually, including:

• Inefficiency. Sorting through large volumes of feedback can be unproductive and overwhelming.
• Human error. It’s easy to miss important feedback and make mistakes.
• Inconsistency. Manual processes can lead to inconsistencies in feedback categorization and management. This creates even more manual work down the line.
• Lack of scalability. As the amount of feedback grows, it becomes increasingly difficult to manage manually.
• Delayed responses. Manually sorting feedback can delay the response time to customer issues and feature requests.
• Lack of comprehensive view. It’s challenging to get a holistic view of all feedback across different platforms.
• Difficulty with tracking trends. It’s harder to identify patterns and trends in feedback.

Let’s see how automated feedback management can solve all these issues.

What is Canny Autopilot?

Canny Autopilot is an AI-powered extension of our core product. Our suite of AI tools includes:

1. Feature Discovery – to find, extract, and deduplicate feedback in customer support, sales communications, and now in public reviews
2. Smart Replies – to respond to your users and ask for more context
3. Comment Summaries – to summarize busy comment threads and give you the main outcomes

Our product has always been feedback-first – we believe it’s the foundation of all good product management. We built Autopilot’s Feedback Discovery to help product managers find, extract, and deduplicate that feedback faster and easier.

We spent months testing, iterating, and perfecting it to ensure it extracts feedback with very high accuracy. To achieve this, we used a multi-layered AI approach. This means we don’t just ask AI: “Is there feedback here?” We keep asking questions and iterating on results until we get the most accurate output possible.

“We don’t just have a single-stage process. We’re not going straight to the API and asking: ‘What is the feedback here?’ or ‘Is there a bug report in this?’ Instead, we have a multi-stage process. We ask one small question at a time and try to get the most accurate response possible. This is how we get higher fidelity and accuracy rates.”

Niall Dickin, engineer at Canny

We’ve received lots of positive feedback so far.

“I LOVE how it auto-scans our support tickets and magically finds customer feedback without me lifting a finger. We’ve been able to 10x the feedback coming into Canny & remove many duplicate posts, with only a few minutes of work a week.”

Keenan Jones, VP of Product, Credit Repair Cloud

Finding feedback in customer reviews

But we didn’t stop there. Today, Autopilot finds feedback not only in your customer communications. Now, it can scan your public reviews and find feedback there.

After Autopilot detects feedback, it extracts and imports it into your Canny portal. Then, it finds duplicate requests and merges them for you.

Note: if you don’t want Autopilot to automatically merge duplicated feature requests you can turn off automated mode. This way, you’ll see what Autopilot recommends to merge, but you’ll be able to make those decisions yourself.

“I thought, surely I can’t just turn it on, and it’ll do its magic. But that’s exactly what it’s doing. We’re seeing hundreds of support tickets turned into actionable insights…with very high accuracy.”

Matt Cromwell, senior director of customer experience at StellarWP

Why public review sites?

Reviews often contain feature requests that slip by unnoticed. That’s why we connected Autopilot to ten public review sites (and we’ll keep adding more). Now, you can capture all the feedback right where it lives. You no longer need to:

• Manually scroll through and read every review
• Look for feature requests and feedback in those reviews
• Copy-paste each idea to your feedback portal
• Compare these ideas to your existing feature requests
• Identify and merge duplicates one by one

Autopilot now does all that automatically. 

The truth is, your feedback is out there. It lives in your App Store, Product Hunt, and Trustpilot reviews. And right now, you’re relying on humans to find and pass it on.

It’s easy to let that feedback slip through the cracks. When it does, you don’t have the full picture of your customer sentiment. And you can’t make objective data-based decisions for your product.

Autopilot automatically captures your feedback from anywhere it lives. There’s no limit to how many sources you can connect to Autopilot either.

“Canny’s Autopilot ensures feature requests never fall through the cracks. We’ve seen an 80% increase in requests logged since introducing Autopilot.”

Owen Doherty, COO at OrcaScan

Getting started with AI

We get it – trusting AI might be daunting. You might not want to use customer chats, sales call recordings, and other private data just to test an AI tool.

Instead of testing Autopilot with your customer communications, try it with public reviews first. You probably don’t need to get your team’s approval for testing Autopilot with public reviews.

Use your free AI credits – every account has them, even our free plan! Once you see the quality of feedback detection and extraction, you can decide whether or not you want to connect more sources.

We did this specifically for those who are nervous about fully trusting AI right away. 

How does it work?

Autopilot’s Feedback Discovery can find feedback in minutes. All you need to do is connect a review site and watch it happen. Here’s a quick step-by-step tutorial.

Once you connect a review site, Autopilot will scrape it to identify possible feedback. Then you can either:

1. Use Autopilot in automatic mode to let it merge duplicated posts (you’ll still see an audit log and will be able to adjust what Autopilot did)
2. Review Autopilot’s suggestions and decide what to do with each item

Conclusion: save time and focus on strategic tasks with Autopilot

We know that manually collecting user feedback might not be your idea of strategic work. We get how much time feedback management takes. And we want to make this simpler for you.

Autopilot’s Feedback Discovery can free up your time for strategic tasks. Try it today with public reviews and see how much feedback is out there.

Maria Vasserman

Maria loves all things creative – writing, photography, movies and beyond 🎥 When she's not creating content to tell the world about Canny, she's either photographing a wedding, jumping at a rock concert, camping, travelling, snowboarding, or walking her dog 🐕‍🦺

All Posts - Website · Twitter - Facebook - LinkedIn

The post Introducing automatic Feedback Discovery for leading review sites first appeared on Canny Blog.

The post Introducing automatic Feedback Discovery for leading review sites appeared first on Canny Blog.

This is where Canny comes in. Canny helps you collect, manage, and act on user feedback easily. It centralizes all feedback, organizes suggestions, and helps you prioritize what matters most.

In other words, Canny is your home for all feedback. But it’ll only be useful if you invite feedback and encourage discussions.

Here’s how you can promote your Canny board, encourage feedback, and take full advantage of Canny.

First steps with Canny

Getting started with Canny is simple. Follow these steps to set up your feedback portal. You’ll get valuable insights faster than you think!

1. Set up a board. Boards are the foundation of your feedback system. Create boards for different topics or areas of your product. Each board will house related feedback posts.
2. Create new posts. You can create them yourself using the feedback you’ve already received. Users can create posts to give feedback or suggest new features. You can also let Canny automatically create posts from your customer chats (more on that in the Autopilot section). Each post can have upvotes and comments.
3. Upvote. Users vote on the posts they care about. This helps you see which ideas are the most popular and important to your users. Your team members can upvote posts on behalf of other users too.
4. Add comments. Users can start a discussion and help clarify feedback. Both users and team members can participate in the conversation.

Let’s talk about different types of boards. Canny offers public or private boards.

• Public boards are visible to everyone. Use these to collect actionable feedback from all users. They are great for gathering diverse input and fostering a sense of community.
• Private boards are only visible to the people listed in the Admins page in your Canny settings. Use these for internal discussions
• Custom access boards are restricted to specific users or groups. Use these for sensitive topics, internal feedback, or feedback from a select group of customers.

Your Canny portal will become even more valuable if your whole team gets involved. So, invite your team members to join Canny. This helps everyone involved in product development view and manage feedback. Together, you can reply to users faster, dig deeper into insights, and prioritize the right feedback.

Once your collaborators are all set up, try the following:

• Invite users to join. You can send a direct invitation to all your users.
• Add links to your feedback board in your product.
• Promote the board through your communication channels. The more users contribute feedback, the more valuable insight you’ll gain.

We’ll cover each of these in more detail later in the article.

Or, automate feedback collection

Managing feedback can take considerable time. That’s why we built Canny Autopilot – to automate your routine tasks.

Autopilot automatically finds feedback in your customer conversations (in HelpScout, Zendesk, Intercom, Gong, and beyond). Then, it pushes that feedback into Canny and creates posts and upvotes to existing posts. It can also merge duplicates, auto-reply to your users, and summarize comment threads.

You can monitor Autopilot every step of the way and moderate its actions. Or you can let it run and just review its actions later – your choice.

Now that we’ve covered your first steps with Canny, let’s dive into promoting your board.

Promoting your Canny board

It’s time to maximize user engagement and get as much feedback as possible. You’ll make smarter product decisions when you have it all in one place. Here are some effective strategies that our clients use to promote their Canny boards.

Reach out via email

Send emails to your users with a call-to-action (CTA) to visit your Canny board. Highlight the importance of their honest feedback in shaping future product features.

Include links to your Canny board in regular emails too (newsletters, updates, etc). You can even add it to your email signature.

Engage users inside your app

Strategically place links to Canny inside your app. Encourage users to leave feedback after taking a certain action. Make sure those links are easy to find.

“Our customers often mentioned how prominently we feature Canny in our product. We believe that our users perceive us as open, close to the customer, and receptive to feedback because of it.”

Raphael Allstadt, co-founder of tl;dv

Try social media

Invite your social followers to leave you feedback and submit ideas. Use engaging visuals and direct links to your Canny board.

Your social media manager can respond to people sharing feedback and link to your Canny board. Direct all your feedback to one central location.

Add links in customer communications and support channels

If a customer is looking for support, they often have feedback or ideas for your product. Make it easy for them to share. 

• Customer emails and newsletters. Include links to your Canny board in regular customer communications. Always remind users to share their feedback – in monthly newsletters or product update emails.
• Support channels. Ensure your customer support team includes links to the feedback board in their communications. This can be in email signatures, chat conversations, or support articles. You can also set up your chatbot to automatically prompt users to leave feedback. Bonus: automatically funnel feedback from support chats into Canny with Autopilot.
• CRMs. Scan notes from your sales calls for feedback. Often, feature ideas come up. Stress to your sales reps how important it is to pass on that feedback. Also, try Autopilot – it can automatically extract feedback from Gong recordings (more sources coming soon!)

Embed the feedback widget on your website

Embed Canny’s feedback widget on your website to make it easy for visitors to leave feedback without navigating away.

Place this widget on high-engagement pages like the help center or product pages.

Publish changelog entries with CTAs

Whenever you publish a changelog entry, include a CTA inviting users to visit your Canny board. This keeps users engaged and encourages them to provide ongoing feedback.

Share your roadmap publicly

Sharing your product roadmap publicly lets users see what you’re working on and understand your backlog. Make sure to highlight that your roadmap includes feedback and ideas from your users. 

This transparency can motivate users to provide more feedback. They’ll know their input influences future developments. This can help improve your customer experience too.

Check out our recent live session for more ideas and examples.

There’s one more critical thing to remember. Gathering customer feedback is great. But acting on it is essential. Always keep your users in the loop. Here’s how.

Keeping users informed and engaged

Don’t keep your users in the dark. They took their time to send you a feature request. Even if you don’t choose their idea, follow up.

It’s like going through a job application process. Sometimes, you apply and never hear back. Other times, you apply, interview, and also get ghosted. This definitely leaves a sour taste in your mouth.

In contrast, some companies send personalized emails and manage your expectations. They explain their decision and make you feel valued. Even if you don’t get hired, you still feel like the company cared enough to follow up.

It’s similar with customer feedback – follow up, manage users’ expectations, and they’ll appreciate it. Here’s how you can do that.

Regularly update users on feedback status

Regularly update the status of feedback posts to close the feedback loop. Keep users informed about the progress of their suggestions. When you change the status of a post (e.g., from “Under Review” to “In Progress”), Canny sends automatic notifications to users who voted or commented on that post. This shows users you take customer feedback seriously and take action.

Build a community

Canny isn’t just a place for all your feedback. It’s a community portal where your users become more involved and engaged.

Serve your community well – host events, webinars, roadmap presentations, or Q&A sessions. Let users interact with your team, learn more about the product, and provide live feedback. 

Encourage users to discuss their feedback by commenting on posts. You can start conversations by asking follow-up questions or inviting other users to share their thoughts. This will gather more helpful feedback and build a sense of community around your product.

You can also automate part of this. Canny Autopilot includes Smart Replies that reply to users on your behalf. They automatically find posts that lack context and create human-like, relevant responses. They prompt the user to share more details.

Ensure your team members actively participate in these discussions. Their engagement can provide additional insights. It also demonstrates that your team values user input.

Having a more engaged community can help you collect more feedback and ideas.

Why should you invite feedback?

Feedback is essential for successful product development. Promote your Canny board, and you’ll get valuable insight straight from your users. In the meantime, you’ll also create a community. 

Close the feedback loop with regular updates. Encourage discussions and use AI to efficiently manage customer feedback.

Try some or all of these tips to drive more feedback. Your users will thank you 😉

Maria Vasserman

Maria loves all things creative – writing, photography, movies and beyond 🎥 When she's not creating content to tell the world about Canny, she's either photographing a wedding, jumping at a rock concert, camping, travelling, snowboarding, or walking her dog 🐕‍🦺

All Posts - Website · Twitter - Facebook - LinkedIn

The post Ten tips for promoting your Canny board to gather valuable feedback first appeared on Canny Blog.

The post Ten tips for promoting your Canny board to gather valuable feedback appeared first on Canny Blog.

Without their feedback, you make decisions based on guesswork.

Feedback comes from many channels – surveys, customer conversations, social media, reviews, and emails. This can be overwhelming and it’s easy to miss important insights.

Organizing this feedback can be tricky. That’s what we’ll talk about in this article – how to organize customer feedback. Effective customer feedback management starts with organized feedback.

Methods of collecting feedback

Collecting customer feedback is the first step to understanding your users. It’s important to gather feedback from different sources to get a complete picture. Here are some key methods.

Surveys

Surveys are a great way to collect detailed feedback. They let you ask specific questions and get useful answers. You can use online tools like Google Forms, Typeform, or SurveyMonkey to create and share surveys. Distribute them through email, your website, or on social media.

Social media

Social media platforms are full of customer feedback. People often share their thoughts and experiences on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Watching these channels helps you gather real-time feedback. Social listening tools like Hootsuite and SproutSocial can help you track and analyze this feedback.

Customer reviews

Reviews on websites like Capterra, G2, and Google provide valuable insights. Encourage your customers to leave reviews and make it easy for them. Don’t forget to respond to reviews – it shows that you value their opinions and want to improve.

Feedback forms and portals

Direct feedback forms on your website or app are another effective method. You can create a custom feedback form and strategically place it across your website and in-app. For example, it can appear after a user takes a certain action in your app.

Canny lets you create a feedback form and link it to an organized feedback portal. Form submissions appear in one central place – your feedback portal.

You can also direct customers directly to your feedback portal. They can easily leave feedback and see what your other customers are asking for.

These forms can collect specific feedback about user experiences or general suggestions. Make your feedback forms easy to find and fill out.

Customer communications

Your customers won’t always leave you feedback where you want them to. You might have a dedicated feedback form. You can send out a survey, but your users will leave feedback where it’s convenient for them. For example, they might share something during a call with your customer success rep. Or they might message your support chat and mention they’re missing a certain feature. You can direct them to your feedback board at that moment, but there are no guarantees they’ll follow through.

Collecting feedback from those conversations is critical, though. Make sure your team understands how important this is and captures that feedback in a way you can access it.

The key to organizing: combining feedback sources

You get feedback from lots of different sources already. Maybe you’re already tracking some of this feedback. The goal is to get a full view of customer opinions. Each source offers unique insights.

First, make sure you’re checking all these sources. Then, find a place to store and consolidate all your feedback. This is how you’ll get a complete understanding of your customers’ needs and preferences. 

Once you have a combined, deduplicated list of all your feedback, you’ll have something to work with. 

Only then can you make informed product decisions based on feedback.

Product managers use a variety of tools for this:

• Spreadsheets/Google Sheets/Air Table
• Boards like Trello
• Project management tools like Asana, Monday, ClickUp

These tools are a great start, but they’re not dedicated to feedback. As a result, you might run into issues down the line. For example, you’ll likely run into duplicate feedback. Manually combining it is time-consuming.

We recommend a dedicated feedback portal.

Featured tool: Canny

Canny can be your dedicated feedback portal. Instead of copy-pasting feedback from various sources, you’ll have all of it neatly organized in one place. Canny integrates with most feedback sources, so you can easily capture it.

You can also:

• Invite users to submit feedback, feature requests, ideas, and bug reports
• Add feedback on users’ behalf
• Let users upvote existing ideas
• Upvote ideas on their behalf
• Invite users to comment on existing posts and have conversations
• And more

Canny Autopilot is the newest AI addition to Canny. It automatically extracts feedback from communication channels like Intercom, Zendesk, HelpScout, Gong, and more. Then, Autopilot:

• Centralizes and automates feedback management: collect and manage feedback from multiple sources in one platform.
• Deduplicates feedback: don’t waste time removing and merging duplicates manually.

You can prioritize your ideas and quickly find the most impactful projects.

Deduplicating & merging feedback

When you have lots of feedback, you’ll eventually run into duplicated requests. Set aside some time to comb through everything and find those duplicates. Your feedback portal will get much cleaner when those duplicates are merged together. 

Finding and combining them manually takes a lot of time and effort. It can easily take all day. That’s why Canny Autopilot has a built-in deduplication feature. It can suggest what to merge or merge duplicates automatically.

Canny Autopilot suggesting to create new posts or merge duplicated posts

If two posts are almost identical, you can add someone’s upvote to an existing post. That way, your board will be even more clean and organized.

It’s easy to get lost in a sea of ideas. Deduplication helps you see the most important feature requests.

Categorizing feedback

It’s time to make all that feedback actionable. And that’s when we get to categorization. This helps you see patterns, prioritize issues, and effectively address customer needs. Here are some methods to categorize feedback.

Thematic organization

Start by grouping feedback based on common themes. These might include product quality, bugs, customer service, user experience, or feature requests. For example:

• Product quality: comments about the durability, functionality, and reliability of your product. This can include bugs and feature requests.
• Customer service: feedback about the support and assistance customers received (including customer support, success, and sales).
• Customer experience: insights into how easy or difficult it is to use your product.

Take it further with Canny – create a separate feedback board for each theme.

Tagging and labeling

Another effective method is to tag and label feedback. You can mark each piece of feedback with specific tags to make it easier to sort and analyze. Try the following tags:

• Sentiment-based tags: positive or negative
• Suggestions for improvement: ideas from customers on how to enhance your product or service.
• Key performance indicators: retention, upsells, or NPS.
• Sprints: Q1 sprint, bug bash, up next.
• Urgency: urgent, high priority, or customer promise.
• Effort: low, medium, or high.
• Platform: desktop, mobile, etc.

Use tags to categorize, quickly filter, and prioritize your feedback.

We add a tag to each post in Canny and set up automation to speed this up. For example, we can ask Canny to tag each post containing the keywords “billing” and “account” as “Billing.”

Then, we can easily filter our boards by certain tags to only see certain posts. We can quickly find what we need. Our roadmap has a separate column for tags, so we always know what we’re looking at.

Segmenting

Segmenting your users helps you see what different customers are requesting. For example, you can create the following segments:

• Free users
• Paying accounts
• Churned users
• B2B clients
• People who signed up in the last 6 months
• Individuals based on their role

Not all clients are created equal. Sometimes there’s a specific user group you want to focus on.

Let’s say your number one concern is churn. You can focus on the feedback churned or churning customers shared. Then, you can fix those issues and try to win them back.

Segmentation helps you see who sends what kind of feedback. This visibility makes product decisions easier. You’ll instantly know what the most important groups of customers care about the most.

Analyzing feedback

The next step is to analyze your feedback. You want to understand the underlying trends and sentiments. Here are some methods you can try.

Quantitative data analysis

Quantitative data analysis involves looking at measurable data. Here are key aspects to focus on:

• Frequency of mentions: track how often certain topics or issues are mentioned. This helps identify the most common concerns or praises among your users. In Canny, you can quantify this with the number of votes each post gets.
• Revenue: tie feedback to MRR or ARR. This will show you what ideas are associated with the most revenue.

Qualitative insights

Qualitative analysis focuses on the content of the feedback. This involves interpreting the meaning behind users’ comments. Key methods include:

• Sentiment analysis: determine whether feedback is positive, negative, or neutral. This helps you gauge the overall mood of your customers.
• Feedback themes and patterns: look for recurring themes or patterns in the feedback. This can reveal common issues or areas where users see the most value.
• Contextual details: consider the context in which feedback is given, such as customer personas and scenarios. This helps you understand the specific needs and experiences of different user groups. Consider asking customers for additional context if their feedback is vague. 

Automating feedback analysis with Canny

Canny can simplify the process of analyzing feedback. Here’s how:

• Automated tagging and categorization. Canny can automatically tag and categorize feedback based on themes like product quality, customer service, and user experience. This saves time and ensures consistency.
• Customer segmentation. Segment feedback based on different customer groups. This will help you better understand the needs and experiences of various user personas. For example, you’ll quickly see what the highest-paying customers are requesting. This will help you make ROI-based product decisions.
• Vote tracking. Quickly see which features are in high demand. You can merge duplicated requests by having one original post and adding votes to it. Then, you’ll get a real sense of how popular each request is.
• Comment Summaries. Sometimes you’ll have a long thread of comments under a post. Now you can get an instant summary of the key points in one click.  

Prioritizing feedback

Even with your feedback organized by tag, segment, and theme, it can still be challenging to know what to do with all the feedback. Which piece of feedback is the most important?

Prioritizing helps you pay attention to the most important issues first. Here’s how to prioritize feedback effectively.

Impact and urgency

Consider both the impact and urgency of the issues. Evaluate how significant the feedback is and how quickly it needs to be addressed. Here are some key factors to consider:

• Impact on user experience. Prioritize feedback that significantly affects the user experience. For example, if a bug prevents users from accessing a key feature, it needs immediate attention.
• Business impact. Assess how ‌feedback impacts your business goals. Feedback that can lead to increased revenue, customer retention, or market competitiveness should be a top priority.
• Cost. Consider the cost of acting on each piece of feedback – money, time, and other resources. 
• Frequency of feedback. Issues that multiple users mention frequently indicate a widespread problem.
• Urgency. How critical is each piece of feedback? Will customers churn if you don’t fix this soon?

There are lots of prioritization frameworks and models that can help assess all of these factors. For example, you can try the Impact-Effort matrix. It encourages you to think about how easy or difficult it’ll be to build each feature. 

Check out more prioritization frameworks here.

Before you jump into fixing mode, try to identify the root cause of each issue.

Root cause analysis

Root cause analysis is a method to identify the underlying causes of an issue. By understanding the root cause, you can implement more effective and lasting solutions. Here’s how to perform root cause analysis.

1. Identify the problem. Clearly define the problem based on the feedback you received.
2. Gather data. Collect all relevant data related to the problem. This includes feedback details, user reports, and any related metrics.
3. Analyze the data. Look for patterns and commonalities in the data to identify potential root causes.
4. Identify root causes. Use techniques like the “5 Whys” (asking “why” repeatedly until the root cause is found) to drill down to the underlying issue.
5. Implement solutions. Develop and implement solutions. Test and monitor the solution.

How we prioritize at Canny

Canny can help you effectively prioritize your feedback.

No two businesses are the same, so a custom prioritization formula will help serve your unique needs. Here’s how it works in Canny.

1. Define prioritization factors. Common factors include:
   • Impact factors
     • Customer impact
     • Revenue potential
     • User engagement
     • Votes
     • Churn impact
   • Effort factors
     • Development effort
2. Assign weights to factors. For example, you might decide that customer impact is twice as important as development effort. Weights help ensure that the most critical factors have the greatest influence on the final score.
3. Scoring system. Canny’s prioritization feature is flexible and supports any prioritization model you want to use. No matter which model you choose, it boils down to the Impact / Effort formula. Team Canny uses a weighted scoring method.
4. Instantly get the final score. Canny automatically gives you the final score for each piece of feedback. It calculates it by combining the weighted impact and effort scores. Canny normalizes these scores to ensure a balanced comparison. The formula is Score = Impact / Effort.

5. Adjust and refine. You can adjust the weights and factors as your business priorities change. This way your prioritization never goes stale and always aligns with your business goals.

Example of a custom prioritization formula

Suppose your business decides the following factors are important:

• Potential revenue (weight: 2)
• User votes (weight: 1.5)
• Churn impact (weight: 3)

If a piece of feedback scores:

• Potential revenue: 50
• User votes: 40
• Churn impact: 60

The calculation would be:

• Potential revenue: 50 * 2 = 100
• User votes: 40 * 1.5 = 60
• Churn impact: 60 * 3 = 180

Total impact score = 100 + 60 + 180 = 340

If the effort required is scored at 4: final score = (340 / 4) * 1000 = 85,000

Use this formula to compare scores for various feedback items and prioritize those with the highest scores. This way you’ll work on the most impactful features first.

If you don’t want to get into the weeds of calculating this, you can let Canny do this for you. Just decide what weight each factor holds, and Canny will do the rest.

Prioritizing by segment

You can also view feedback specifically from your target segments. Canny helps segment feedback by different criteria, such as customer type or product area. This makes it easier to identify and prioritize critical feedback from key segments.

For example, you might create a segment for your enterprise customers. You can check out what feedback they voted on and quickly understand what features they care most about. You can see the highest-scored items for just that segment. That lets you cater to this key segment by acting on their feedback.

Use feedback to build a roadmap

Now that you’ve collected, organized, and prioritized feedback, you can add it to your roadmap. The roadmap further organizes your feedback. It gives you a clear path of what you’ll build and when.

Link user feedback directly to planned features and improvements. Find high-impact features that address common pain points or add significant value to the user experience. Those should make it to your roadmap.

Here are a few roadmap templates to help you get started.

Closing the feedback loop

We’ve talked a lot about gathering, organizing, and actioning user feedback. Closing the feedback loop is often just as important. If you build a feature but don’t tell your customers about it, how will they find out? Keeping track of who left what feedback is an organizational challenge in itself. Having a tool that automatically does this solves that challenge. 

Consider these two main ways of closing the feedback loop.

1. Work-in-progress updates

When you select an idea, start working on it, or have updates, let your users know. In Canny, you can automatically email everyone who created, upvoted, or commented on a feature request.

Don’t keep your users wondering if you’re listening to their feedback. If they don’t see updates, they typically stop sending requests or hoping to see any changes. In contrast, when they see progress, they know their opinion matters. They are more likely to keep sending you ideas and getting engaged with your product. And when they’re engaged, they become loyal customers.

2. Product announcements

Without a feedback portal, you’ll need to manually collect emails from each person and connect them to every feature request.

If you use a dedicated feedback tool (like Canny), you’ll always know who wanted which feature. Then, you can automatically message each person and notify them about your new feature.

If you want to really boost customer loyalty, always follow up with the users who submitted feedback.

“It’s easy to forget how bad the feedback loop could be sometimes in many SaaS companies. That’s evident from the customer reaction we get. When a user submits feedback, and we respond almost right away, they’re really taken aback. “Wait, someone actually gets and reads this? I was expecting it to go into a black hole and never hear back,” – is a typical client response.”

Joey Muething, product manager at Appcues

Keep your feedback organized to inform product decisions

Collecting feedback is awesome, but it’s only the first step. That feedback becomes valuable only when you organize it well. To organize it, you should first put it all in one place. Then, you can sort, prioritize, and analyze it. Many people segment user feedback based on who submits it. This helps to build an actionable product roadmap.

Don’t forget to close that feedback loop to create trusting and loyal customers. If you follow all these steps, you’ll create winning products in no time!

Maria Vasserman

Maria loves all things creative – writing, photography, movies and beyond 🎥 When she's not creating content to tell the world about Canny, she's either photographing a wedding, jumping at a rock concert, camping, travelling, snowboarding, or walking her dog 🐕‍🦺

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The post How to organize customer feedback easily and effectively first appeared on Canny Blog.

The post How to organize customer feedback easily and effectively appeared first on Canny Blog.

However, managing mountains of feedback is tough, especially when it’s coming from many different sources. That’s why we’re excited to launch Canny Autopilot!

Autopilot is our suite of AI-powered features that automate feedback management and give you back your time.

“AI is exploding. It’s this new unlock in the world. Everybody is thinking—how can we use it to provide value to our customers? For us, there’s this obvious opportunity. Our customers are already tracking feedback. If we can do this for them seamlessly and automatically (and better than they can do it themselves), that’s a huge value-add right there.”

Andrew Rasmussen, co-founder

Autopilot uses AI to handle your manual tasks. It collects and sorts feedback, finds duplicates, replies to users, summarizes long threads, and more. This lets you focus on improving your product based on what users really need.

Our beta users are already saving time and getting better insights.

“I’m really loving the new [Autopilot] beta. It’s been awesome. It makes me engage with your product on a daily rather than every week or two. So, props to your team to developing this feature because it’s made our usage of your product to go up by a crazy amount!”

Keenan Jones, VP of Product at Credit Repair Cloud

Even if it only takes you a minute to capture feedback from a user, that still adds up to hours saved over time.

Let’s explore how Autopilot saves you time and helps you more effectively manage feedback.

What is Autopilot?

Feedback Discovery: automated feedback collection

Connect Autopilot with your favorite tools like Intercom, Help Scout, Zendesk, and Gong. Watch as it sifts through customer chats, detecting valuable feedback and funneling it right into Canny. This automation cuts down on manual sorting and ensures no feedback gets missed.

We’ve thoroughly tested and optimized our AI, and it very accurately extracts customer feedback. Autopilot is able to capture more feedback than humans.

“We don’t just have a single-stage process. We’re not going straight to the API asking, “What is the feedback here?” or “Is there a bug report in this?” Instead, we have a multi-stage process where we ask one small question at a time. This means we have higher fidelity and accuracy than competitors.

We also don’t cheap out on the models we use. No matter which Canny plan you’re on, you’re still getting the same level of accuracy with extraction and deduplication.”

Niall Dickin, engineer

We spent a lot of time building, iterating, and perfecting Autopilot’s feedback discovery. It started as a proof of concept that one of our engineers built. Then, we built an MVP and released it to beta users. After six months of beta, we’re incredibly excited to take it live.

“The rate at which the field is advancing is a little challenging. Lots of things are happening at once. Canny is a small, bootstrapped team, and we have to keep up with other projects as well.

I’ve been the dedicated engineer on this project, so my daily tasks have included keeping up with AI news, benchmarking new models, and using what’s best for our customers.”

Niall

Organize feedback in one place

Autopilot puts all new and detected feature requests in one spot. You can connect various feedback sources and automatically extract feedback from them. Autopilot will also identify duplicates and merge them to keep your feedback tidy.

You can go with full automation and let Autopilot create posts and votes for you. You’ll be able to see a log of all actions and easily undo them if need be.

Autopilot doesn’t just collect feedback. It also connects it back to the users. Even if feedback is collected automatically, we ensure users are connected to their requests. This way, you can still segment and better understand the urgency of requests. They also get updated as you work on their suggestions. This enhances user satisfaction and trust in your product.

Smart duplicate management

Autopilot is great at spotting when the same feature request pops up more than once. It merges these duplicates and upvotes them for your customers. This keeps your feedback boards clear and focused.

“Autopilot will automate and bring home feedback that would otherwise get missed. Support moves quickly. Canny Autopilot can follow behind and pick up those crumbs to help you build a better system. You don’t need to train your teams or customers to do anything new.”

Jacques Reulet, customer support

Engage better and faster with Smart Replies

Autopilot responds to every feedback post with intelligent questions that sound like you. It helps you uncover additional context. This means you can quickly ask for further details without typing everything yourself.

“You can really understand the sentiment of what your customers are asking for. This way, you can thoughtfully take care of their needs.”

Julia Valade, customer success

Save time with Comment Summaries

Autopilot can also summarize the main points from really popular ideas with many comments. This helps you see what matters most without reading through every single comment.

Seamless integrations

It’s simple to connect Autopilot with your favorite customer support tools. Whether you use Intercom, Zendesk, Help Scout, or Gong, setting it up is straightforward. We’re always adding more integrations, too.

If you have a feedback source we don’t support yet, send text in via our API endpoint and Canny will detect feedback there as well.

Why you’ll love Autopilot:

• Never miss feedback again. Be confident that you’re catching nearly all customer feedback.
• Save time. Let Autopilot handle the routine tasks so you can focus on making important decisions.
• Understand your customers better. Get a clear view of what your users really need and want. This will help you choose which features to work on next.

Not just about AI

We want to be very clear—Autopilot was not made to check the AI box. We want to transform how you manage feedback and AI helps us do that. You can count on Autopilot’s reliability and accuracy to many Canny your source of truth for feedback. With Autopilot, you can reach your goals faster.

How Autopilot fits into Canny’s vision

Canny Autopilot aligns perfectly with our vision—building better products through feedback. That’s hard to do at scale and Autopilot solves that.

Autopilot makes capturing feedback easier and more reliable than ever. With its high accuracy, you won’t miss out on valuable insights. This not only saves you time but also ensures that every voice is heard and considered.

“Canny’s Autopilot ensures feature requests never fall through the cracks. We’ve seen an 80% increase in requests logged since introducing Autopilot.”

Owen Doherty, COO, Orca Scan

A more complete and organized feedback collection process helps you better understand your users. It also lets you prioritize the features your users truly care about. This alignment with user needs drives product development forward.

Managing feedback across a growing customer base becomes challenging. Autopilot scales smoothly with your growth. It handles increased volumes of feedback without losing accuracy. This makes it an ideal solution for larger clients who need robust feedback systems to match their scale.

“We are a small, agile, and bootstrapped team. We’re not at all worried about impressing VCs with fancy terminology. Our number one investor is our customer. We aren’t going to ship functionality that doesn’t work.”

Dan Murray, engineer

Bottom line: Autopilot reduces manual work, saves time, and improves performance

Canny Autopilot takes the manual work out of feedback. This lets you focus on building better products. It makes managing feedback realistic for teams at any scale. 

Ready to put your feedback management on Autopilot?

Sarah Hum

Hey there, I'm one of the co-founders of Canny. As a founder, I dabble in pretty much everything but my expertise is in product design. Outside work, I enjoy digital illustration, a cappella, and hanging out with our dog, Emmy.

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The post Put feedback management on Autopilot—introducing our new AI features first appeared on Canny Blog.

The post Put feedback management on Autopilot—introducing our new AI features appeared first on Canny Blog.

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.

Design is more than just the “looks.” It’s a key player in a startup’s success. It shapes how users feel and interact with your product. It can set you apart in a sea of options. That’s where a design founder comes into play.

We created Canny to be easy to use and user-focused. Our design-first approach wasn’t just for show – it guided every choice we made. It helped us win users’ hearts, turning quick visits into lasting relationships.

If you’re curious about building a design-first SaaS, keep reading. I’ll share some design principles we live by that helped us get to where we are today.

Canny’s journey and the role of design

Before starting Canny, I ‌worked on the design team for Facebook Messenger. When we started Canny, I knew I wanted to build a product centered around design.

Since building and designing Canny, we’ve received positive feedback, especially around our design.

“It just works. The UX/UI is simple, people have no questions about using it. It’s the kind of product that I really love.”

Aurélien Georget, CPO at Strapi

My focus on design extended beyond just our product. Other high-level areas I always pay special attention to include

• Landing pages (they create the first impression)
• Pricing page
• Product onboarding

Focusing on design might be tough if you don’t have a background in product design. I still believe a few simple design guidelines can go a long way. It’s all about the mindset.

Pre-design: setting the stage

It’s tempting to start working on your big idea right away, but hold on! There’s groundwork we can’t skip.

1. Know your target audience

Understanding your audience is key.

• Who are they?
• What do they need?
• What do they love?

Dive deep into who benefits most from your product. Explore their lives, wants, and dislikes. The more you know, the better you can serve them.

2. Explore different paths

Each problem often has multiple solutions. It’s tempting to go for one of them. Try to top yourself and think:

• Is the issue just a symptom of something bigger?
• Is there a smarter, simpler fix?

You might not need to do any design work in the end.

3. The power of ‘no’

Here’s a hard truth: you can’t do it all. Trying to please everyone pleases no one. You’ve got to pick your battles.

Choose the ideas that pack the most punch. Sometimes, this means turning down suggestions, even good ones. How? Show your work. Use data to explain why one feature wins over another. It’s not personal; it’s strategic.

Check out this fun video we put together about saying “no” to feature requests.

5. Balance it out

Remember: good design is a balancing act. It’s not just about how things look, but how they work. It’s the harmony between form and function, UI and UX. Keep this in mind, and you’re off to a great start.

Now that you have this foundation, let’s dive into some common design principles.

UI meets UX

Design is a dialogue. UI and UX are our key speakers. They might seem similar, but they play different roles in one crucial conversation: the user’s journey.

UI, or user interface, is all about what meets the eye. It’s the buttons you click, the paths you follow, and the visual cues that guide you. UI design needs to be clear and tell users what’s up at a glance.

UX, or user experience, is the big picture. It’s how all the parts come together to make you feel. Is it easy? Is it enjoyable? Does it make sense? UX controls all that.

When UI and UX work in harmony, they create something special: a user-holistic experience. It’s not just about a nice facade or a single fun feature. It’s about a seamless journey from start to finish.

There’s a concept called “dribbblisation of design.” Typically, “things that look great but don’t work well” fall under this category. Great design aims to fix that and help people actually use the product.

Reaching goals

Users don’t like hurdles. They want to reach their goals with no fuss. That’s why we aim to cut the clutter and keep things smooth. That means removing bumps in the road and making sure each step feels natural.

Simplicity

Ever heard of “drunk user testing“? It’s a cheeky way of saying your design should be so simple that anyone could get it, even after a few too many. It’s a funny idea, but it’s got a point. Simple is sticky. It’s what keeps users coming back.

In the end, great design crafts a journey that feels good every step of the way.

At Canny, our goal is to build a product that is a joy to use. We aim to bring users to their “aha moment” as quickly as possible, with minimal distractions. In other words, we try to make it super simple to use. Our customers seem to resonate with our design approach.

“I love the design and single sign-on solution. I also love the fact that Canny is hosted on our domain. And it’s simple. It just works. There’s no headache. It’s just easy to set up, and it saves time.”

Philippe Lehoux, founder at Missive

Design thinking: beyond the surface

When we dive into the world of design, we’re not just playing with aesthetics. We’re engaging in “design thinking” – a creative, strategic approach that starts with understanding people. It’s a philosophy that doesn’t just seek to decorate but to dive deep, explore, and solve real-world problems in intuitive ways. And this mindset is the heartbeat of everything we do at Canny.

Design as a problem-solver

This approach isn’t about impulsive fixes. It’s about useful solutions. It means stepping into the user’s shoes, feeling their pain points, and using these insights to guide our creativity. It’s not about guesswork; it’s about empathy, understanding, and smart, user-centered decision-making.

Intuition is key

An intuitive tool doesn’t just happen. It’s a result of deep understanding and anticipation of user needs. If you do it right, you can predict their needs before they voice their concerns.

It’s design thinking in action — creating experiences that feel natural, almost like the product is reading your mind.

In essence, design thinking takes us beyond superficial beauty. It’s about crafting solutions that resonate on a deeper level.

Here’s how we applied these principles at Canny.

At first, we had a set of default statuses. The options were enough for most customers. Plus, the experience remained simple. 

Years later we added custom statuses. This design process involved:

• Building a status management feature for admins
• Checking how statuses appear in different views
• Updating integrations that involved using statuses

Also, we now need to consider custom statuses for future features we build. It is very easy for complexity to snowball.

In the beginning, we limited our scope to the essentials. It was the right move. From there, we collected feedback to understand how the custom status feature needs to behave.

How can you apply this strategy?

When you’re building your next feature:

1. Strategy: think about your target persona. What goal are they trying to reach? What’s the most optimal/most obvious route to that goal?
2. Engineering: consider building things that allow you to easily expand functionality later.

Remember: adding functionality later is much easier than stripping things down.

Now that we’ve covered some common design principles, let’s talk about applying them.

Navigating design principles

Embarking on the design journey requires a compass, and that’s where solid design principles come into play. It’s not about wandering aimlessly in the creative woods; it’s about navigating with purpose, guided by user research, simplicity, and strategic thinking.

1. Tuning in to user feedback

Listening is an art, especially when it comes to user feedback. It’s not just about collecting opinions; it’s about diving deep into what clients are saying and what they’re not.

Surveys, interviews, and direct questions are your best friends here. They’re the compass needles pointing to the true North of user needs.

2. MVP: The art of essentialism

In the world of product design, MVP (Minimum Viable Product) isn’t about being minimal; it’s about being essential. It’s asking, “What’s the core value we’re delivering?” and stripping away anything that doesn’t scream “yes!”. It’s about avoiding the allure of complexity and embracing the elegance of simplicity.

3. The Pareto Principle: the 80/20 rule

Ever heard of solving 80% of problems with just 20% of effort? That’s the Pareto Principle, and it’s gold. It’s about identifying the most impactful elements of your design and really, truly honing in on them. It’s not about cutting corners; it’s about maximizing positive impact through smart, strategic choices.

4. Simplicity in navigation

Good design is invisible. It’s the silent guide that leads users where they need to go, effortlessly. It’s about sticking to what’s familiar, reducing friction, and making the journey intuitive. Your website isn’t a treasure map; users shouldn’t need clues to navigate.

5. Removing friction

Friction? That’s just a fancy word for “user annoyance,” and it’s a big no-no. Whether it’s a cluttered checkout page or a confusing sign-up form, any hiccup can turn a user’s experience sour.

The goal? Smooth out those bumps. Make the experience so seamless that users glide through without a second thought.

6. Being prescriptive

Choices are great, but too many can lead to decision paralysis. Sometimes, it’s best to guide users down the clearest, simplest path. It’s not about taking control; it’s about enhancing clarity and reducing confusion. Especially in the early days, speed and simplicity win the race.

In essence, navigating design principles isn’t about following a map, It’s about creating the map as you understand the terrain better. It’s a dynamic, responsive process that puts user experience at the heart of every decision. And remember – the journey matters just as much as the destination.

Let’s break this down further.

Simplifying user choices

Every choice is a crossroad, and too many can lead a user astray. That’s why we trim the extras and keep only what serves our journey’s purpose. It’s about presenting options not as a buffet but as a carefully curated menu, handpicked for the user’s delight.

Guiding users with intention

Our designs aren’t just layouts; they’re signposts. Each element is a subtle guide, a nudge in the right direction. We don’t leave a user alone in the dark. We illuminate their path, making the journey not just easy, but also enjoyable.

Focused simplicity

In the battle between simplicity and options, simplicity reigns supreme. Why? Because your brain is a precious resource. We don’t want to overwhelm it; we want to cater to it. Our designs don’t shout; they whisper, providing just the right amount of information at just the right time.

Prioritizing common actions

Not all actions are created equal. We prioritize based on user needs, bringing the most common actions to the forefront. The rest? They’re there, but they don’t crowd the space. They’re like backstage crew, out of sight, but ready when needed.

Intuitive navigation and discovery

Ever felt the thrill of a seamless sign-up or the ease of a hassle-free checkout? That’s prescriptive design at work.

We lay out features so naturally that users find them before they even realize they’re looking.

Prescriptive design isn’t a set of rules; it’s a philosophy. It’s clarity in the midst of chaos, a beacon for users swamped in a sea of choices. It’s how we turn overwhelming possibilities into focused, delightful experiences. Because in the end, design is not about the creator; it’s about the user – the traveler.

Collaborative design: the path to wholeness

Design isn’t a solitary journey; it’s a collaborative expedition. It thrives on diverse perspectives, thrumming in the space between creativity and practicality. Here’s how collaboration shapes our path at Canny.

1. Embracing feedback and collaboration

Great ideas aren’t born in a vacuum; they’re nurtured through collaboration. We listen — to our team, to our users, to everyone willing to share a piece of their mind. Feedback isn’t criticism; it’s the soil where our ideas grow. It challenges us, pushes us, and molds us into better creators.

Listening to feedback helps us create a community out of our users. When we engage in conversations with them, we start to understand their needs and pain points better. 

2. Creativity meets pragmatism

Creativity is the heart of design, but pragmatism is its compass. One pushes the boundaries; the other sets them. It’s a delicate dance, a give-and-take where wild ideas are tempered by real-world constraints. And in this balance we find our truest, most impactful expressions.

3. Cultivating continuous improvement

Design is never finished. It’s an evolving entity, a story that unfolds with each user interaction. We’re not just builders; we’re gardeners, tending to our creations, pruning here, nurturing there. We embrace change, celebrate adaptation, and strive for improvement.

The advantage of a design-driven co-founder

What is it like – to be a designer and a co-founder? It’s like having a secret sauce for your startup. Our design journey with Canny isn’t just about making things look snazzy. It’s about constantly getting into our users’ shoes, really feeling what they feel, and letting that shape everything we build.

This approach turned complexity on its head. We choose clear, simple, and sanity-saving options that our clients can’t get enough of.

And the collaboration? Gold. Nothing beats the buzz of bouncing ideas around and making something better than you’d imagined.

Remember: your knack for design isn’t just a cool skill; it’s your startup’s ace. It’s about creating experiences, forming real connections, and steering your business in a direction that feels right. Own that superpower, and watch it propel your startup to the stars.

If you’re a founder, but not a designer, I hope you can use these tips and principles and build a better product.

Sarah Hum

Hey there, I'm one of the co-founders of Canny. As a founder, I dabble in pretty much everything but my expertise is in product design. Outside work, I enjoy digital illustration, a cappella, and hanging out with our dog, Emmy.

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A product roadmap guides your efforts and helps you stay focused. It’s the story and plan for your product – all in one. It helps manage product teams, stakeholder expectations, and endless updates. And the best part? You don’t have to start from scratch.

We’re excited to bring these free product roadmap templates to you! That’s right — they’re ready to use, don’t cost a penny, and can be a real boost for your product strategy. 

Why these product roadmap templates are your next big win

If you’re here, you might be on the hunt for a fresh way to sculpt your roadmap. Maybe you need:

• Better organization
• Closer alignment to your goals
• Improved communication with your team

These roadmap templates can help you with all that and more!

• Strategic vision: These templates aren’t just for short-term goals. They help plan for upcoming months and even years. This way, you can always stay one step ahead.
• Efficiency: no need to start from scratch. These templates free up your time for strategic thinking instead of mundane formatting tasks.
• Organization: seamlessly juggle your objectives, deliverables, and timelines. Eliminate chaos and maintain clarity.
• Communication: designed for everyone involved – from teams to stakeholders. They visually articulate your strategy ensuring alignment.
• Flexibility: every product is distinct. Your roadmap should be too. Choose from four varied templates based on your needs.

How to use product roadmap templates

Templates are a starting point, and it’s all about how you use them. Here’s how to make these templates work for you.

• Customize wisely. Begin with your overarching goals and align your roadmap accordingly. Be concise. Prioritize clarity over clutter. And remember – different projects might require different formats. Diversify as needed.
• Collaborate. Share the vision and rationale with stakeholders. Encourage feedback and recognize different viewpoints. This collective approach enriches your roadmap and fosters a sense of ownership among team members.
• Stay updated. Market dynamics shift. Ensure your roadmap is Agile. Celebrate achievements, learn from missteps, and consistently review and refine your approach. Solicit feedback, especially from users – their insights can prove invaluable.
• Stay consistent. A new method might seem daunting initially, but persistence pays off. A tool is only as effective as its consistent application.

Try product roadmap templates today

In product management, a clear roadmap is your guiding star. That’s why our free product roadmap templates are so useful. They simplify complex strategies, save precious time, and enhance team alignment.

Ready to give them a try? Here are your next steps:

• Start now! Download your free templates and embark on a well-defined product journey.
• Check out our post featuring great product roadmap examples.
• Review product roadmapping best practices.
• Share your experience. Your feedback is crucial for our continuous improvement and community learning.
• Level up! Explore our roadmap software with a free Canny account.

Your path to a streamlined product strategy is just a click away.

Maria Vasserman

Maria loves all things creative – writing, photography, movies and beyond 🎥 When she's not creating content to tell the world about Canny, she's either photographing a wedding, jumping at a rock concert, camping, travelling, snowboarding, or walking her dog 🐕‍🦺

All Posts - Website · Twitter - Facebook - LinkedIn

The post Master product planning with these free roadmap templates + examples first appeared on Canny Blog.

The post Master product planning with these free roadmap templates + examples appeared first on Canny Blog.

Self-driving cars, text generation, fraud detection, and more – AI seems to suddenly be everywhere.

So, how can you take advantage of AI, especially in the SaaS industry?

This blog post features several AI SaaS use cases for various departments. We’ll also explore how these AI SaaS solutions can help you get ahead. Hopefully, these examples will inspire you to automate some of your tedious tasks.

Is AI new?

Before diving into examples, let’s briefly explore AI’s journey. How did we even get here?

Before ChatGPT from OpenAI blew up, AI was already prevalent in SaaS. It helped companies:

• Send automated emails
• Respond to frequently asked questions (chatbots)
• Personalize website content, offers, and recommendations
• Screen resumes
• Score leads
• Segment customers
• And much more

In 2022, AI reached a new level. Generative AI (like ChatGPT) appeared seemingly overnight. After that, many AI tools followed. Today, many AI tools are helping practically every SaaS company save time and work faster.

“AI serves as a catalyst for handling those mundane and repetitive tasks. Thanks to AI, I can focus on more strategic aspects of my work.”

Deborah Bittencourt, Product Manager and Product Designer, IBS Consulting

Now, let’s break down the seven ways AI can help you outperform your competition in SaaS.

1. Product development

AI streamlines various aspects of product development, such as:

• Analyzing users
• Generating ideas
• Prototyping
• Testing
• Writing and fixing code
• Detecting anomalies
• Surfacing vulnerabilities
• Managing projects
• Optimizing design and costs

Here are some sample prompts you can use for each of these points.

1. Analyze user data to identify the most engaged customer segments over the last quarter.
2. Generate a list of the top five feature requests from user reviews on our platform.
3. Generate three prototypes for the new dashboard based on current user behavior analytics.
4. Run automated tests focusing on ‌newly deployed features and summarize the results
5. Suggest optimizations for the current code base to improve performance.
6. Scan the system logs for the last week and flag any unusual activity.
7. Perform a vulnerability assessment for the latest build.
8. Predict any potential delays in the current project timeline and suggest mitigating actions.
9. Analyze the cost-efficiency of design alternatives for the new feature set.

There are many AI tools out there that can help. Let’s explore what’s out there (beyond ChatGPT).

TL;DR: it’s now easier to manage product development, thanks to AI.

Feature development

When you’re developing features, there are three main aspects where AI can assist:

1. Predictive analysis: AI can analyze trends to help you understand what features are more likely to be successful.
2. Natural Language Processing (NLP): For text-heavy applications, NLP can help in auto-categorizing user-generated content, summarization, and more.
3. Coding: AI can suggest new lines of code, entire functions, tests, and even complex algorithms.

“GitHub Copilot is already writing 46% of code and helps developers code up to 55% faster. Our R&D team (GitHub Next) has been hard at work to bring GitHub Copilot beyond the editor. Auto-completion is just the starting point.”

Thomas Dohmke, CEO at GitHub

TL;DR: AI can help you develop products and features that your customers will love. It can also save lots of engineering time.

2. Product management

AI enables product managers to automate numerous daily tasks, including:

• Detecting trends in customer sentiments
• Analyzing user feedback
• Brainstorming and prioritizing ideas
• Writing support documentation
• Creating project plans
• Tailoring user experience
• Automating reporting
• Analyzing competition
• Detecting bias

“The integration of AI into product management has been nothing short of transformative. An advanced AI algorithm can sift through vast datasets, deciphering intricate customer behavior and preferences.”

Kamil Rejent, CEO at Survicate

Canny recently released Autopilot – a suite of AI features that save time. Autopilot automatically detects, extracts, and deduplicates feedback from support and sales conversations.

Smart Replies generate automatic replies that uncover more information. And Comment Summaries summarize busy threads and bring key insights to the surface.

All this will save product managers from manual work and will free up their time.

Roadmapping

To create an effective product roadmap, product managers need to:

• Prioritize features
• Evaluate market demand
• Forecast development timelines
• And so much more

AI can assist with these tasks and make the roadmapping process more data-driven and efficient.

ChatGPT is an undeniable leader that can also be very useful in product development.

“I continue to rely on ChatGPT for various tasks, from shaping our product roadmap to engaging with beta test users.”

Deborah Bittencourt, Product Manager and Product Designer, IBS Consulting

Here’s how AI helps Deborah create and manage product roadmaps:

1. Market research and insights
   AI can identify emerging trends, competitor strategies, and customer pain points, which can help determine our product development priorities. I still fact-check everything and bring more data from 2022 on.
2. User feedback analysis
   Depending on the amount and form of feedback I have, I experimented with feeding ChatGPT customer feedback, surveys, or product reviews to analyze and provide more insights. It can summarize common issues, feature requests, and sentiment analysis, doing some bulk work for me.
3. Prioritization (⭐️ my personal favorite)
   AI helps me create scoring models or frameworks to objectively assess and rank potential roadmap items. I like to ask ChatGPT to consider user impact, technical feasibility, and business value.
4. Roadmap documentation
   I use it to draft and refine my product roadmap documents, ensuring they are clear, comprehensive, and well-structured for communication within the team.

TL;DR: AI can help get started with roadmapping: research the market, analyze and prioritize feedback, and draft documentation.

3. Data analysis

There are also AI tools that dive a lot deeper. They can help:

1. Analyze data 
2. Uncover customer insights
3. Predict trends and project outcomes
4. Make more informed product decisions

“Leading SaaS companies utilize various AI tools such as natural language processing (NLP), computer vision, and predictive analytics. Examples include:

• Machine learning
  • TensorFlow
  • PyTorch
  • Scikit-learn
• Computer vision
  • Google Cloud Vision API
  • Amazon Rekognition“

Dennis Brown, lead software engineer, Ling Ltd.

The key is to feed AI your own unique data.

“It isn’t enough for AI to be trained on publicly available data. It must marry that data with internal enterprise data. This includes established product and service data as well as contextual customer interaction data.”

Umesh Sachdev, CEO & co-Founder of Uniphore

TL;DR: AI can assist with data analysis, but it needs unique data to be truly effective.

Looking at AI from this angle, you can’t help but get excited. Let’s explore how other teams can benefit from AI, too.

4. Customer support & success

It’s not just product managers who can benefit from AI.

AI-powered chatbots are probably already on your radar. Zendesk, HelpScout, Intercom,  Lyro AI Chatbot, and others have been using AI to answer customer questions faster.

“Intercom has an AI tool that will summarize a thread in the notes. It is very helpful for longer threads. We also use Fin – their new AI chatbot that can answer complex questions and save us a lot of time.”

Jacques Reulet, head of customer support, Canny

Now, AI’s providing more accurate answers and imitates human conversations much better.

After the conversation is done, AI can process it and uncover insights.

It doesn’t end with chatbots, though. Customer service, customer support, and customer success managers can personalize their user experience through AI. For example, AI now makes individual product recommendations, tailored offers, and useful prompts possible.

TL;DR: AI chatbots have evolved to understand customer sentiment and can escalate issues to human agents when necessary.

ALSO — check out how Canny’s AI can support your customer feedback management system. 

5. Marketing

While marketing remains a creative field, AI can enhance certain aspects. For example, product marketers rely on AI to help them with copywriting and design.

“I use AI as a starting point for some tasks. It’s helpful for tasks requiring data analysis, automation, and content generation.”

Deborah Bittencourt, Product Manager and Product Designer, IBS Consulting

Many marketers are using AI to help specifically with copywriting and editing. While this is a great time saver, try to be a little critical of AI’s outputs.

Note: instead of copying and pasting what AI gives you, use it as guidance and a starting point. AI isn’t always accurate, and its writing rarely fits your style guide perfectly. But, with some human touch, you can produce valuable content. 

You can also create and read through complex documentation faster with AI.

“We’ve started transitioning some of our documentation to Notion. Their AI-powered tools have helped streamline the documentation process and save me time and effort. For design and creative inspiration tasks, I’ve experimented with Firefly by Adobe.”

Deborah Bittencourt, Product Manager and Product Designer, IBS Consulting

Beyond content, AI can help marketers:

• Research audience & competition
• Generate personas
• Evaluate and edit copy
• Create charts and graphs
• Personalize experience for your users

Andy Crestodina from Orbit Media shares some useful ChatGPT and Bing prompts for marketers here. He recommends to:

“Try everything. Never trust it completely. Once you find insights, focus on execution.”

Andy Crestodina, co-founder & CMO, Orbit Media

Similarly, Ross Simmonds from Foundation Inc is using AI to:

• Research the market
• Analyze reports and data
• Create content (written and visual)
• Save money!  

TL;DR: AI can help marketers get started with creative ideas, analyze the market, and personalize user experience.

6. Sales

Sales is another area that requires a human touch to be effective. Still, sales reps can use AI to:

• Transcribe and summarize sales recordings: tl;dv, Otter.ai, rev.com
• Find common pain points: H2O.ai, Gong.io
• Uncover feature requests: Canny
• Score leads: Hubspot
• Assess their own effectiveness: People.ai
• Write or critique email copy: ChatGPT, Collato

Technological progress has been accelerating and bringing us more and more data. More data is useful, but processing it gets complex. That’s why AI is so timely – it can help make sense of that data.

“As selling complexity grows, so does the need for documentation, approvals, and compliance reporting. Generative AI can reverse administrative creep by helping salespeople write emails, respond to proposal requests, organize notes, and automatically update CRM data.”

Prabhakant Sinha, co-founder of ZS

“The future? AI AND Humans working together for a more potent sales force.”

Collin Stewart, CEO, Predictable Revenue

TL;DR: AI can improve sales strategies through lead scoring, call recordings, and data management.

7. Growth

Most businesses need to grow and do it faster than the competition. While others are still figuring out AI, you can start using it to get ahead. For example, you can:

1. Understand how your customers use your product: Mixpanel, Amplitude
2. Find usage gaps: Looker (from Google), Tableau
3. Tie them to churn: Salesforce, Hubspot, Gainsight
4. Fill those gaps and improve retention: Marketo, Dynamic Yield

You can also analyze your own usage patterns. Maybe there are some processes you can optimize?

Growing involves using resources wisely. AI can help with smart resource optimization as well.

Some of these tools (Salesforce, Hubspot) combine a few of these features. Check them out to see if one tool can check more than one box for your teams.

All of those efforts can help your SaaS company grow faster.

“Top SaaS companies are leveraging AI to gain a competitive edge. They implement machine learning algorithms to automate tasks, improve customer experiences, and drive business growth.”

Dennis Brown, lead software engineer, Ling Ltd.

TL;DR: use AI to understand how your customers use your product.

8. Operations

Good operations = efficiency. Especially in startups, the operations department has to do a lot: legal, HR, finance, and more.

AI can automate a lot of that, for example:

• Repetitive workflows
• Insights gathering
• Scenario planning
• Resume scanning
• Budget optimization
• Fraud detection
• Risk assessment
• Compliance monitoring
• Forecasting
• Resource allocation
• Feedback loops

It’s hard to find an AI tool that can do all of that at once. Depending on your organization’s priorities, some of these may work well:

• Oracle’s Enterprise Resource Planning Cloud
• SAP Integrated Business Planning (IBP)
• IBM Watson

“Artificial intelligence is more than a buzzword. AI is rapidly reshaping the fabric of business operations.”

Whitney Vige, SEO Content Writer, Asana

TL;DR: AI tools can help you boost operational efficiency by eliminating repetitive tasks.

Limitations

No tool is perfect. And most AI tools are still fairly new, so they come with some limitations you should be aware of.

Many experts agree that AI raises concerns around:

• Privacy – where is the data going?
• Accuracy – can we trust this information?
• Originality – is this plagiarism?
• Humanity – will our customers get annoyed by AI and miss human interactions?

“My primary concern with AI is how personalized product insights can be. Most AI data is broad and generic information. It doesn’t always perfectly align with specific user needs. As a product manager, it’s my job to go after user research and testing. I need to ensure that AI-driven solutions are aligned with our users’ unique requirements and expectations.”

Deborah Bittencourt, Product Manager and Product Designer, IBS Consulting

Does this mean we should disregard AI and stick to what’s worked in the past? Definitely not.

Instead, we must critically assess all the information AI provides us. We must still use our critical thinking, seek a deeper understanding of our users, and improve what AI gives us.

Because these concerns are common, most AI creators are actively improving their tools.

What’s next in AI?

More and more AI trends and use cases surface every day. Generative AI tools like ChatGPT are only the beginning.

Here’s an example of a conversational AI voice assistant that goes beyond services like Google Home and Amazon Alexa you might be used to.

In our recent blog post, we also highlighted top AI tools for product managers – check it out.

Experts predict AI will get more accurate, process larger amounts of data, and do it all faster.

“In essence, the marriage of AI and SaaS is not just a fleeting trend; it’s the wind beneath the wings of any SaaS firm.”

Kamil Rejent, CEO at Survicate

TL;DR: stay on top of AI trends to work faster and smarter.

AI – the future of SaaS

AI is changing our lives, especially in the SaaS industry. Every part of your organization can benefit from AI.

So, start implementing AI into your daily processes today. You can save time, get ahead of the competition, and enjoy your job more. After all, AI will handle your mundane tasks, and you’ll have more time for deep and creative work.

AI can help you boost customer satisfaction, too. When your users get help and answers faster, they’ll appreciate it.

Introducing AI into your workflow doesn’t necessarily mean spending more money. Check out your existing SaaS tools. Chances are, they’ve added AI components.

“SaaS companies today elevate customer journeys, predict market shifts, and automate tasks seamlessly through AI. We use Salesforce Einstein, Zendesk AI, and HubSpot’s AI functionalities.”

Ranee Zhang, VP at Airgram

Did we miss any cool companies or use cases? Let us know, and we’ll add them!

Want to stay up to date on the latest trends in SaaS and product management? Sign up for our newsletter here!

Make sure to check out our list of the best free SaaS tools now that you’re done here. 

Maria Vasserman

Maria loves all things creative – writing, photography, movies and beyond 🎥 When she's not creating content to tell the world about Canny, she's either photographing a wedding, jumping at a rock concert, camping, travelling, snowboarding, or walking her dog 🐕‍🦺

All Posts - Website · Twitter - Facebook - LinkedIn

The post 8 ways SaaS companies can use AI to get ahead first appeared on Canny Blog.

The post 8 ways SaaS companies can use AI to get ahead appeared first on Canny Blog.

One of the best ways to do that is through product announcements. There are a few different types of them.

A release note is a document that outlines the changes made to a product. Release notes update your users, teammates, and stakeholders on your product development progress.

Changelogs are more technical documents that dive deeper into the changes. They’re primarily for developers to keep track of progress.

We’ll cover different types of product release notes and changelogs, their importance, and best practices. We’ll also showcase some examples and templates, discuss changelog management tools, and help you get the most out of your feature announcements.

If you’ve never published release notes or want to improve your product documentation, follow along. 

Release notes vs changelogs

First off, let’s go over some definitions.

What are release notes?

As mentioned, release notes are basically your product announcements. The target audience is users, so release notes explain changes in plain language, omitting the technical jargon and details. The main purpose is to explain the effect on the user.

A changelog is a file, an article, or a webpage that lists all notable changes to your app, site, etc. Changelogs focus on the technical aspects of the changes, such as new features, bug fixes, code refactoring, and API modifications. They often contain references to specific commits or code changes in the version control system.

Historically, changelogs were for developers. Here’s a typical changelog entry from Facebook on GitHub.

Some people refer to changelogs as release notes. And others make a distinction between these two terms.

Canny’s Changelog tool blurs the lines between release notes and changelogs.

“Coming from the product development world, we saw the need for better product announcements. Users want to know what’s new and improved in your product. And we needed an easy tool that helps us do that. So we created our own tool – for us and other SaaS companies out there. It brings customer feedback and product announcements together.”

Andrew Rasmussen, co-founder at Canny

Whatever you call your product announcements, it’s important to have them. Here’s why.

Why do you need product announcements?

Changelogs and software release notes are important for:

• Documenting your work
• Educating your customers
• Keeping your products updated
• Positioning yourself as transparent

Here’s more about each of those reasons.

They document your work

At its core, release notes help your team stay organized. When you have release notes, you can quickly reference them to see what was changed in the past and how.

You’ll also minimize the back and forth with your team through release notes. 

Not every project involves all team members. So, release notes are a great way to keep uninvolved teams informed. They’ll learn about changes as soon as you publish your release notes.

They educate your users

New feature adoption is a common problem for a product manager. Many users crave efficiency but are still hesitant to try new things.

Release notes help push them in that direction. They break down the new feature, guide users through it, and remind them how your tool works. A good release note is a free teacher.

Release notes are also an opportunity to link to additional help docs and remind users where they can find support resources.

They make the product feel fresh

When people use a product, they like to see it evolve. Right now, for example, AI is all the rage. Many tools are adding AI components to their software. And at this point, users are almost expecting it.

If you decide to add AI to your tool, you’d want your users to know about it, right? There’s no point in putting in all the hard work if no one notices. You want your users to know and use these new features.

Especially if your product uses a subscription model, people want to see it updated. Consumer demands change, and your product needs to measure up.

From minor design improvements to major feature enhancements, your tool will go through many iterations. So let your users know about it. Show your progress and invite your users to join you on this journey.

Release notes are a great way to do that.

They help you be transparent

Similar to the previous point, release notes help you keep your customers around. Here’s how.

1. A user submits a feature request
2. That feature idea makes it to the product roadmap
3. They automatically subscribe to the progress of that feature
4. You build that feature and publish a release notes entry
5. They get an auto-notification about it (if you’re using Canny’s Changelog)

Bonus: they can see other updates in your release notes too.

This shows that you listen to your users. That’ll help them trust that you’re improving your product.

People love seeing the “behind the scenes” and “how it’s done” content. Release notes can shed light on your “backstage” software release processes.

Types of product announcements entries

Overall, release notes are pretty standard and straightforward. Depending on the nature of your new release, you can borrow certain parts from each release note entry (which is what we did with Canny’s Changelog).

There are a few types of posts you’d add to your release notes. Let’s discuss each one.

Major update announcement

Intended audience: users, leads, team members, shareholders

When you’re adding a major new feature, make sure to give this announcement the attention it deserves.

These release notes can be longer and include more details, such as:

• Before and after screenshots and screen recordings
• Clear explanation of the change

Note: Give users some time to get used to the change too. Many tools keep the old (legacy) version available for some time for this exact reason.

Non-major update announcement

Intended audience: current users, team members

You can keep it simple when adding or fixing something less groundbreaking. Make sure to explain why you did it( we often show how many upvotes we got on our Canny board, for example).

Explain what changed, but don’t go too deep into the technical details. Instead, link out to help guides and additional resources.

Bug fixes

Intended audience: developers, current users

Bug fixes are a great example of non-major feature enhancements. You don’t want to draw too much attention to the fact that you had bug reports. But let’s be real – every software has them. And showing that you’re working on them makes you look transparent and trustworthy.

Security updates

Intended audience: current users

While very important, security updates fall under the category of non-major updates. They showcase your organization as responsible and reliable.

Very few people want to read lengthy descriptions of your security updates. So it’s even more important to keep these short. 

Changelogs

Intended audience: developers

A standard changelog is detailed and technical. It usually includes:

• Version number
• Release date
• Description of the latest release or a fixed bug
• Compatibility with previous versions
• User impact
• Manual for future use
• Screenshots and links

Developers use changelogs to schedule upgrades, troubleshoot issues, and stay updated about the latest software developments.

Version control system logs

Intended audience: developers

There are a few terms that people use interchangeably to describe these updates: 

• Version control system logs 
• Commit logs
• Revision history

These are records that keep track of changes made to a project or set of files over time in a version control system (VCS).

A common example is GitHub. Developers use it to share code, work on projects together, and manage and track code changes.

Github logs are visible to the public. This is a space where developers can collaborate and share ideas – kind of like social media for coding.

Version control system logs usually include the following information:

• Commit ID: a unique identifier for each change or commit made in the VCS. Typically, it’s a hexadecimal string, such as a SHA-1 hash.
• Author
• Date and time
• Commit message: a descriptive message that summarizes the purpose or nature of the changes made in the commit
• Changes: a detailed listing of the modified, added, or deleted files in the commit + specific changes made to each file. This may include line-by-line differences or a unified diff format.
• Branch or tag. Branches are different lines of development. Tags indicate specific points in the version history – releases or milestones for instance.
• Merge information: if the commit involves merging changes from multiple branches, the log will contain information about the branches involved.

A project’s version control logs are crucial to tracking and understanding its history.

Developers can:

• Find the record of all changes
• Review and revert to previous versions
• Figure out who made specific changes
• Understand the evolution of the codebase over time
• Coordinate work and collaborate
• Resolve conflicts when merging changes from multiple sources

If you’re looking for more inspiration and ideas, BroadInstitute provides great sample changelogs. Check them out here.

Product update formats

Different companies use different formats for their product announcements. Depending on your product and audience, you can pick a format that works best for you. It’s important to choose a format and stick with it. We’ll explain why consistency is so important later in the article. First, let’s walk through the various formats.

Text files

This is the simplest and most common format for a software release note. You can simply create a text document that lists the changes in reverse chronological order (put the newest releases at the top).

Each entry should include the version number, a brief description of the change, and any relevant details.

This format is easy to create and read for most users.

Changelog format

If you prefer a more technical approach, you can follow a typical changelog format. You can include categories like:

• Added
• Changed
• Fixed
• Removed

This format is particularly useful for developers and technical users who want a quick overview of the changes in each category.

With a changelog tool, you can also create HTML files for example.

Markdown

Markdown is a lightweight markup language that helps you format text quickly and easily. You can write release notes in Markdown and easily convert them into HTML or other formats.

If you’re hosting your updates on a platform like GitHub, you’ll likely use the Markdown format.

HTML

HTML provides a bit more flexibility with styling and layout. You can include links, images, and other multimedia elements, making your release notes more visually appealing.

PDF

PDF is a good option if you need to share your updates with external stakeholders or use them in official statements. The layout and formatting stay consistent, and it looks presentable. 

PDF is easy to read, print, and share across teams.

What to include

Depending on the format you choose, consider including the following elements to make your announcements more engaging.

Bullet points

You can create a series of bullet points, each bullet representing a specific product change or a feature.

If you’re looking for a concise and skimmable format, this is it. It gets straight to the point.

Visuals

We recommend combining some written descriptions with visuals like screenshots and GIFs. They break up the text, help visual learners, and tell a story better than words can.

With screenshots, we recommend drawing readers’ attention to the part that you’re talking about. You can add boxes around the most important parts and/or blur the irrelevant parts of the page. Here’s an example.

Videos

Creating a quick video walkthrough can make your feature update even easier to understand. Some people are visual learners, so they’d enjoy seeing rather than reading.

Generating release notes

There are a number of ways to generate release notes.

1. Version Control System (VCS) history

Version control systems like Git allow you to generate release notes based on commit histories. For instance, you can extract commit information using the git log command with specific formatting options, such as dates, authors, and changes.

2. Commit messages

Encourage your developers to write clear and informative commit messages describing each commit’s changes. Following a consistent format, such as the changelog format, can be helpful.

3. Integration with issue tracking systems

You can automatically create release notes by connecting issues and pull requests to versions or milestones in your issue tracker. You can use tools like Jira or GitHub for that.

4. Manual changelog

You can manually keep track of the changes you make to each version. You’d need to maintain a separate file where you add entries for each release, including the added features, changes, and bug fixes.

5. Automated tools

You can generate a structured and formatted changelog with these tools. They analyze your commit history, tags, and metadata. Some popular changelog generation tools include:

• Conventional commits

This tool follows the conventional commit message format and generates changelogs.

• GitHub Changelog Generator

This tool is designed to generate changelogs for GitHub repositories.

• Keep a Changelog

This project provides guidelines and a tool-agnostic format for writing changelogs. It also offers a Python library called towncrier for generating changelogs.

6. Canny’s Changelog

Canny’s Changelog is different. It’s designed so that everyone, even non-developers, can:

• Add entries
• Easily understand it
• Quickly find what they’re looking for
• Sort the entries
• Find more information

It’s much more visual and concise than most other changelogs. And it looks like a newsfeed, not a developer portal.

Canny’s Changelog is available on all plans! Here’s what our clients say about it.

Our changelog lets you easily tie your feature requests with product updates and notify your users.

Best practices for release notes

Here are a few more guidelines to make sure you publish engaging and effective release notes. Follow these tips if you’d like your release notes to be an asset instead of a burden.

Make them clear & concise

It takes time to find the time, energy, and motivation to read long texts. It’s even more true when it comes to technical language.

If you want your release notes to be a truly useful source of information, make them as straightforward as possible. Answer the following questions:

• What was the problem?
• What changed?
• Why does it matter?
• How does it affect the user?
• Where can they learn more?

Simplify your language, keep sentences short, and break up the long paragraphs.

As a general rule, stick to only relevant information. It’s easy to get very involved and start describing the whole history of your tool. But leave that for another day.

Remember: even if your product is technical, you might have non-technical users. So try to make it interesting and valuable for them as well.

Post consistently

Some changes might be more significant than others. Still, try to publish most of your updates as release notes. People appreciate your updates – they’ll feel like they’re with you on your journey. They also get a sense that you’re constantly improving.

This will also keep you accountable. Knowing your users expect consistent updates will make you hit your deadlines more often.

Format consistently

Also, keep the format of your release notes consistent. Here’s an example from Keepachangelog:

• Added new features
• Changed for changes in existing functionality
• Deprecated for soon-to-be-removed features
• Removed for now removed features
• Fixed for any bug fixes
• Security in case of vulnerabilities

Use a variety of formatting to make your release notes entries even easier on the eye.

Headings help break down the text and logically group the changes. So does white space.

Text formatting (bold, underlined, italics) highlights the most essential parts and helps readers skim the text. Bulleted and numbered lists have a similar effect.

Follow reverse chronological order

Always publish the latest changes at the top – that’s the most relevant information for your users. They can scroll down to see your historical progress too.

Use visuals

Often, it’s easier to show than to describe something. Visuals like screenshots, GIFs, and videos can help here. Moreover, they’ll familiarize your users with the new features quicker. Next time they log in, they’ll remember the visual and know how to use the new feature.

Visuals also break up the text and make reading easier and more enjoyable.

Insert links

We keep repeating that release notes need to be short. But what if you’ve released a major change and need to explain it in detail?

That’s where you insert links to in-depth help articles and additional documentation.

You can also use your release notes to keep your users engaged. While they’re hooked, don’t let them get away. Link to related resources and keep them on your site longer!

Avoid confusion

We can’t stress this enough: make it simple. Here are some tips to help you do that:

• Stay away from confusing date formats (we recommend sticking to YYYY-MM-DD format)
• List deprecations, removals, and any breaking changes
• Document only noteworthy differences
• Don’t list commit log diffs

Involve other departments

If you’re using Canny for your product announcements, your users will get automatic notifications when a new changelog is published.

Still, you can amplify the message further. Involve your product marketing team – they can help spread the word.

Release notes and changelog examples

Now that you know what makes good release notes and changelogs, let’s illustrate it with examples.

Many of our clients use Canny’s Changelog tool. They find it easy to keep users up-to-date in one central location.

“When we built our Changelog, we wanted it to be more than your typical list of changes. We created a tool that helps you close your customer feedback loop.”

Sarah Hum, co-founder at Canny

When a new changelog entry is published, everyone who submitted, upvoted, or commented on this request gets an automatic notification. That includes current users and prospects. And this really makes the sales job easier.

Imagine this: a lead previously requested a feature and didn’t convert because it didn’t exist. Now they’re getting a notification that this feature is shipped. If that feature was a real dealbreaker to them, they might reconsider buying from you now.

Your current users will also find out about the new feature right away and will be able to try it out.

Canny’s changelog empowers you to follow our advice above, including custom formatting.

Here’s what it looks like.

AgencyAnalytics keeps their updates brief and to the point. When they introduce new features, they include visuals to keep it engaging and break up the text. See some examples of great release notes below.

We love ClickUp’s use of emojis and links – it keeps the readers engaged and curious to learn more. Notice how they link out to release notes and more information. They don’t clutter their changelog entry with it.

CommentSold’s changelog entries are typically longer, but they’re still easy to read and understand. It’s a great example of a more detailed but still digestible changelog. They walk you through the steps you need to take, and text styling (bold text in this instance) makes it easier to read.

Hive is great at telling a story in their changelog. Here’s what wasn’t working, how we fixed it, and how it works now. We love how they show a screenshot of a feature request that led to the development of this feature.

Respond.io is another example of a short and highly visual changelog.

GitHub’s changelog is another great example. They also have a separate Twitter account and an RSS feed for users to follow along the journey. It’s important to be where your users are!

We use our own changelog too!

Sometimes, it’s still hard to get going. That’s why we’ve prepared some templates – check out the next section.

Release notes and changelog templates

If you’re inspired to get started or amplify your changelog (and we hope you are!), check out these templates. They’ll give you prompts for your release notes, changelog entries, and some examples to spark that initial motivation.

Here is a release notes template for a bug fix.

And another release notes template to announce a new feature.

To get these + more editable templates, download our free Changelog templates right here!

Why product announcements are important

There’s no better way to keep all your stakeholders involved, engaged, and updated than through release notes.

Product update announcements don’t need to be a hassle. With a changelog tool like Canny, you can keep track of all your progress and delight your customers at the same time.

Book a free Canny demo and see how easy it is!

Maria Vasserman

Maria loves all things creative – writing, photography, movies and beyond 🎥 When she's not creating content to tell the world about Canny, she's either photographing a wedding, jumping at a rock concert, camping, travelling, snowboarding, or walking her dog 🐕‍🦺

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The post Why do you need release notes? (featuring great examples and templates) first appeared on Canny Blog.

The post Why do you need release notes? (featuring great examples and templates) appeared first on Canny Blog.