Best practices in collecting feature requests

Everyone can agree by now that collecting feedback and feature requests is the first best thing you can do to improve and grow your business.

Here are the eight best practices for collecting customer feedback.

### 1. Make it easy
It is crucial to provide an open feedback form for your users, during their normal workflow in your application. This helps you capture real-time feedback that is more insightful compared to sending periodical surveys and counting on users to share their feedback later on.

2. Prompt reply

Replying to your users' feedback shows them that you are listening to them, that their feedback is welcomed and appreciated, and is what builds trust and customer relationships.

3. Ask for more insights

You want to always ask more questions and to dig deeper. If you don't talk to your customers to fully understand their problems, you risk not really solving them and only treating the symptoms instead of the underlying cause.

4. Thank the user

Taking the time to thank everyone for their feedback nurtures your happy users and helps turn them into advocates. It creates a connection to you and your product and they will be more likely to support it and recommend it.

5. Be honest with your customers

Most often than not, you see companies having a default reply to feature requests and it implies a generic "will look over it/add it to the roadmap". The problem with that is that you are giving your customer false. A better approach is being honest with your customers. If you don't know if the feature will ever take part in the roadmap say that the team will look at it and take consideration of it but you can't make any promises.

6. Follow up

Always get back to your users, let them know you implemented something they suggested and ask for further feedback. The fact that they have a say in your product roadmap makes them more connected to your product and encourages them to participate even more and provide more feedback.

7. Constant improvements

Collecting feedback and feature requests should be more than an annual or quarterly campaign. It should be a constant effort to listen to your customers and act upon their feedback. Users' needs and expectations evolve with time so providing the best customer experience is a forever going task that should become a routine.

8. Welcome negative feedback

Inevitably, you will also get some negative feedback. Don't sweep it under the rug and most definitely don't delete and disregard it. You should be open to it. Ask the user why they feel that way and how they think you could improve in that area. See if there is anything immediate you can do to help/comfort them.

Conclusion

Try to bridge the gap between you and your customers by communicating closer with them and thinking about them as members of your team instead of strangers.

You can find the full article here: https://getacute.io/blog/best-practices-in-collecting-feedback

What practices do you follow when collecting feedback and feature requests?