Why and How User Feedback Will Make Your Product Better

Launching your SaaS product is just the beginning—the entire idea of creating a SaaS brand relies on generating recurrent value for your customers and routinely improving the platform. But how can you do it and make sure that the software changes are 100% aligned with your customers’ needs?You could run market studies and conduct extensive research to learn more about the things people want and expect from your product. You could also design the roadmap by yourself and guess what features to add and updates to make.But there’s nothing more helpful for improving your product than simply listening to your customers. Gathering user feedback may be the smartest move you make to keep people engaged and interested in your SaaS product.

Gathering user feedback users will make your product better

To ensure you have a top-notch SaaS product, you’ll want to see the entire roadmap as a co-creative effort that involves your existing and paying users. Here’s why:

You can’t know all the challenges your users have

Although you’ve mapped out your ideal customers and you can list a big part of the problems they’re experiencing, you’ll still lack crucial information. You can’t know exactly what struggles your customers have and how your product can help them overcome these struggles. So by gathering their feedback, you’ll further your knowledge and understanding regarding your customers’ profile and their challenges, along with how you can solve them.

Your customers know your product better than you do

Let’s say that you’ve launched an SaaS product that helps remote teams collaborate and accomplish their tasks. To make these teams work more efficiently, you’ve added an in-app video chat to recreate the office environment when someone pops up behind the door with a question. However, you didn’t add a feature that allows people to turn on a “do not disturb” sign for the video chat when they want to focus on something uninterrupted.You didn’t realize that people might want this feature so they didn’t receive calls or other interruptions out of the blue because they were trying to focus on their work. If you had gathered users’ feedback, you’d have known what to change and improve about your SaaS product.

You’ll show that you care

The easiest thing is to put together a product roadmap and just go with it without caring about the things your customers have to say. However, to win over the people who’ve paid for your SaaS product, take a different approach and show them how much you value their opinion. There’s no other better way to do that than by encouraging them to leave their feedback.

You’ll have two-way communication with your users

People aren’t just passive consumers anymore—they want to be actively involved in the process and contribute. By collecting user feedback, you’ll have two-way communication, stay in touch, and develop meaningful business connections with them. This may subsequently lead to stronger relationships and even brand advocacy.

You’ll gain access to a pool of free ideas on how to make your product stronger

Who can come up with better ideas to improve your product than the people who use it? Considering that they’ve made a financial investment in your product, they’ll want you to succeed and carry on adding value. So it’s worth listening to what they have to say.But how can you develop a well-designed feedback process, in which you’re taking note of your users’ feedback and comments? It’s actually pretty easy to collect users’ feedback. Check out these tips below to help you get started:

Tip 1. Let your users know that you welcome their feedback

As you probably know, not all SaaS companies involve their users in the process of product improvement, so people still aren’t used to the fact that their opinion or input may be valuable for the company. But if you want to stand out and involve your users, let them know that you’re counting on their feedback. Add feedback boxes in the lower part of the dashboard and ask users to give you some suggestions and ideas on how to make a specific part of the product better.

Tip 2. Make it easy for users to leave their feedback

Think about how people report software bugs. Can they do it inside the platform? Or do they have to leave your software and send you an email, or go to your product forum, write the bug report, then go back to work? You see, the second option adds so much friction that it’s very likely fewer users will bother to report bugs or give you any feedback. So make sure they can do that inside the platform.

Tip 3. Access the crowd wisdom through the voting option

What should you do if you’ve collected a lot of feedback? After all, you can’t include everything on the roadmap. How can you weed out the bad advice and leave the crucial feedback? One answer: voting. Think about all those times that you checked out the voting rate of a book before buying it or of a movie before watching it. So invite your users to connect with your platform not only by leaving their feedback, but by taking an active part in the design of the roadmap and voting on the most important updates.

Tip 4. Incorporate the user feedback into your roadmap

The next step is to incorporate your user feedback into the roadmap. You want to be careful, however. Apart from relying on user feedback, you need a product vision. Then, you can balance the two, making sure you’re creating something that’s both aligned with your initial vision and with your users’ needs. And the best way to do that is by prioritizing the updates people want and selecting the ones that are relevant for your product growth.

Tip 5. Share your progress and communicate updates with your users

Chances are that your users won’t know that you listened to their feedback if you don’t mention it, so make your communication with your users a priority. Announce new updates, features, and bug fixes on a changelog people can visit.Even better, you can have a monthly user newsletter that mentions all the latest product changes. Most people won’t bother to check the changelog periodically, but if you send your users a newsletter with what they should know about the product you’re paying for, you’ll get a better clickthrough rate. Regardless of the communication means you choose, make sure to keep your users in the loop about your product.

Key takeaways

Collecting user feedback is crucial to improving your product. By getting people to share their thoughts and ideas about your product, you’ll gather the necessary insights that will help you keep generating value and making your SaaS platform better and better. So don’t ignore this step, and start treating your users as product co-owners by allowing them to co-create it with you and share in the success.