Did you ever release a “game-changing” feature in your eyes, but no one used it? In addition, was it even inconvenient for your customers? We’ve heard the horror stories, and created a few of our own along the way. The one thing missing for your product feature: product feedback! There is no doubt: releasing the right product features is a cornerstone for every SaaS company’s business success. It brings about product-led growth and helps your SaaS scale.
In this post I’m going to show you how we handle product feedback questions and implement new product features. Everything backed by product feedback.
Side note: for all your customer feedback needs, come check out our ultimate guide to customer feedback.
Gathering product and user feedback for your next product feature
In other posts I’ve shown you how we interpret and live up to the “release early, release often” paradigm of software development. With that in mind, managing a newly launched product and thinking about the vision and roadmap of your product isn’t that easy.
We think: The more information you have, the less risky it is. Although, you might have been thinking, Why is product feedback important?
Asking customers about the job which needs to be done
Continuously ask yourself (and others too) about the problem which your product is solving. Ask for that problem. And verify the solution you’re offering through customer interviews. Here’s how we, at Usersnap, conduct our product feedback survey.
The product feature matrix
Our product team basically handles the product roadmap with a so-called feature matrix. To be honest, it isn’t that complicated as it may sound. The feature matrix at Usersnap is a Google spreadsheet which looks like this:
The feature matrix includes every new feature we or any customer or user like to see in our future product. Yes, any user. If a user tells us about certain feature requests we put that in the feature matrix.
We give the request an expressive name (=desired outcome) and a short description (what the feature is about).
We then basically have 3 columns which are important for prioritizing new features. These are:
- Importance: how important is a future feature for our (future) users
- Satisfaction: are your customers satisfied with certain features / use cases
- Amount: How many users will be affected by this new feature
Having drafted a first version of the feature matrix, we then start adding questions and potential interview partners to the matrix.
Again, another Google spreadsheet helps us to keep track of importance and satisfaction on various features from product feedback questionaire. The matrix looks like this:
Those questions which we then ask customers are not generic questions like “What do you think about feature X?” or “Would you like to see feature Y in Usersnap?”. We rather ask if people are working with certain features and for what use cases they are being used.
Outcome-driven innovation & opportunity algorithm
We basically prioritize our features by calculating the opportunity of each new feature. We therefore use the opportunity algorithm developed by Anthony W. Ulwick. Ulwick’s outcome-driven innovation framework helps us a lot to focus on the truly important product features. The algorithm basically includes the following parameters:
- Importance (of a new features)
- Satisfaction (of the user with certain features using the user feedback product development)
- Opportunity (which can be gained through implementing certain features)
Therefore the calculation looks like this:
This algorithm basically measures and ranks new features and product updates regarding their innovation opportunity.
The standard analysis looks at the difference between importance and satisfaction. Ulwick, however, gives twice as much weight to importance than to satisfaction. The higher the opportunity score of a certain feature, the more priority we put on implementing it. And those features are the ones on which we are working.
Recommended reads on utilizing product feedback questions and user testing for your product development process
Summing up building product features with customer feedback
Since resources are a limited good (especially in startups), we focus on the features with the biggest opportunity score. This opportunity algorithm won’t prevent you from failing or working on the “wrong” features, but it will give you a clear outline on what’s important and what’s not.
What’s your way for working on product features and which to focus on?
This article was brought to you by Usersnap – a customer feedback, screen recording, screenshot, and bug tracking tool for ever SaaS company. Try it out for free with your team now, sign up for a 15-day free trial.
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