Listen in: The role of customer feedback in shaping SaaS product roadmaps

As a product marketer, I have worked for various SaaS B2B companies, from start-ups to mid-to-large enterprises. These varied experiences have given me a unique perspective on capturing and using customer feedback. It’s clear that the various approaches for obtaining this feedback, like having a dedicated Customer Success team or investing in product analytics tools, can produce different results. However, no matter how you get your data, knowing what customers want can have a big impact on your product roadmap. 

Let’s dive into how you can build your SaaS product roadmap around customer feedback.

Tried and tested methods for gathering actionable customer feedback

Actionable customer feedback can be collected in a few different ways. Of course, the more data you collect, the better, so don’t be afraid to mix and match these activities. Below are some effective techniques that have consistently proven their worth based on my experience:

• Surveys: You can employ tools like NPS (Net Promoter Score) or CSAT to obtain quantifiable data regarding your customers' satisfaction and dissatisfaction.

• Interviews: Communicating directly with customers can help you understand their challenges and needs. When preparing for a new product launch, discovery calls assist in identifying the most suitable product to sell.

• Product analytics: Tools such as Ortto, Pendo, Mixpanel, or similar may help you understand the usage patterns of certain features and potential challenges users face.

• Embedded forms: Customers can use feedback forms placed within the platform to ask for new features or improvements. In-product forms will offer you a glimpse into what features customers want.

• Customer success stories: Compiling and publishing case studies on your company website and other marketing materials is the social proof you need to establish credibility in the market. The insights collected through the customer success stories can then inform product development.

In my previous role at a large B2B SaaS company focused on payment automation and procurement, we had a well-structured process for gathering and utilizing customer insights. Customer Success Managers (CSMs) played a pivotal role in collecting the feedback while the Product team reviewed and prioritized requests. Here's how it worked:

Feedback collection process

• Product change request (PCR) forms: We embedded a PCR form directly into our platform. Customers could fill out this form to request feature changes, including new features or enhancements to existing functionalities.

• Customer success managers (CSMs): Our CSMs played a crucial role in assisting customers with filling out the PCR forms. This ensured that the feedback we received was detailed and actionable.

The PCR form included key fields such as:

• A summary of the request

• Description of the problem

• The desired outcome

• Proposed solution

Integration into product development

Automatic logging in Jira: Customer requests made in the platform were automatically captured in Jira, our product management tool.

Feasibility evaluation: Product managers regularly reviewed these requests to assess feasibility and prioritize them.

Regular reviews: We held regular review sessions to ensure the product roadmap aligned with customer needs and long-term strategic goals.

This structured approach ensured we could systematically collect, evaluate, and integrate customer feedback into our product development process in a very transparent way.

In my current role at a product-led SaaS B2B company, we take a slightly different approach to gathering and utilizing customer feedback. Here's how we do it:

Feedback collection process

• Customer interviews: We conduct in-depth interviews with customers, especially when scoping new products. These interviews provide important insights into customer pain points, needs, and desired outcomes.

• NPS and Hotjar surveys: We regularly use NPS surveys to assess customer satisfaction and surveys to gather user feedback about the product. These tools help us collect both quantitative and qualitative data and act fast on the feedback when necessary.

Integration into product development

• Feature proposals: Insights from customer interviews are analyzed and transformed into new feature proposals. This helps us ensure that new product developments align with customer needs.

• Product management reviews: Our product management team closely examines the feedback from NPS and Hotjar surveys to fix bugs, identify trends, and prioritize feature development.

By leveraging these methods, we ensure that customer feedback directly informs our product roadmap, allowing us to stay agile and responsive to market demands.

How product marketing fits into this process

Product marketing is pivotal in ensuring a permanent feedback loop exists between customers and product development. As a product marketer, I act as a bridge between what customers want and what our product team can deliver. Here’s how product marketing fits into the process:

• Identifying trends: We analyze customer feedback from various sources to identify trends and common themes that need to be addressed.

• Communicating with customers: Product marketers communicate changes and present new features to customers through various marketing collateral, such as Landing Pages or email campaigns. This ensures customers understand how their feedback has been implemented.

• Aligning with strategy: We work closely with product management. A key part of this alignment is ensuring that customer feedback aligns with the company's overall strategic vision.

• Creating personas: We refine our customer or buyer person based on the customer feedback we collect. This helps tailor marketing efforts and shapes product messaging and positioning.

Balancing customer requests with strategic vision

That said, while customer feedback is invaluable, balancing it with the company's strategic vision is crucial. Over-customizing and/or providing too many and often very different features for individual customers can lead to a fragmented product that is difficult to maintain and scale. 

For instance, early iterations of Myspace became overly customizable, allowing users to heavily personalize their profiles by raw HTML. This resulted in a chaotic user experience and a decline in user engagement as the platform became harder to navigate and less appealing to a broader audience. 

Foursquare's initial success stemmed from its gamified approach to location-based social networking. Users could check in at locations, earn badges, and share their whereabouts with friends, creating a unique social experience. However, this over-personalization eventually backfired. As newer platforms like Instagram and Snapchat emerged, offering more versatile features, Foursquare's user base dwindled. In response, Foursquare pivoted by splitting its services into Swarm for check-ins and Foursquare City Guide for venue recommendations. This shift allowed them to leverage their extensive location data for business insights, ultimately reinventing their business model for a new market​.

Industry experts have widely documented this “over-customization” trap in product management: 

• In "Crossing the Chasm," Geoffrey Moore highlights the danger of focusing too narrowly on niche markets, which can hinder growth and scalability. 

• David H. DeWolf, in "The Product Mindset," builds on this by emphasizing the need to create scalable products that address core customer needs while aligning with business objectives. 

• Marty Cagan’s "Inspired: How to Create Products Customers Love" ties these ideas together, stressing the importance of deeply understanding customer problems to build products that resonate widely. 

Together, these materials underscore the necessity of balancing specific customer requests with a broader strategic vision. The goal is always to create a product that meets everyday needs while supporting long-term goals.

Examples of SaaS companies successfully using customer feedback

Nevertheless, many SaaS companies are doing an excellent job at integrating customer feedback into their product roadmaps without losing their mass appeal. For instance:

• Dropbox: By listening to user feedback, Dropbox introduced new features like advanced sharing options, collaboration, and better file recovery solutions, which became core to their product offering. This focus on user-requested features helped Dropbox evolve from a simple storage solution to a robust collaboration platform.

• Slack: Slack's approach to redesigning its interface is a prime example. They worked closely with customers throughout the design process, utilizing shared channels to gather unfiltered feedback and quickly iterate on designs. This collaborative approach led to a simpler, more intuitive Slack that better meets user needs, highlighting the power of involving customers directly in product development.

Tools for managing and analyzing feedback data

Utilizing the right tools can streamline the feedback management process, making it easier to capture and analyze data. Some helpful tools include:

• Jira: For logging and tracking feature requests and product changes.

• Hotjar: For gathering user feedback through surveys and analyzing user behavior.

• SurveyMonkey: For conducting detailed customer surveys.

• Ortto: For generating feedback through NPS surveys, popups, and forms; engaging in live chat with customers, analyzing user behavior, and setting up workflows for customer support. 

Final word

Listening to your customers' voices is among the most effective ways of steering SaaS product development plans in the right direction. If customer feedback is systematically gathered and analyzed, you have a surefire way of keeping your product relevant and in tune with customer expectations. Just make sure that customer demands do not overtake your long-term planning.