The first step to launching Pendo Feedback is to add customers to the platform. Your customers are the end-users of your application, and are identified as “Visitors” in Feedback.
You should add customers to Pendo Feedback even if you only intend to gather requests internally so that your internal users can add requests on behalf of your customers, without giving your customers access to the Feedback platform.
For information on how visitors differ from internal users in Feedback, and why you shouldn’t add internal users as visitors but, rather, add requests on customers’ behalf, see Customers versus internal users in this article. For information on how to add requests on behalf of customers, see Launch Feedback and gather requests internally.
Customers are automatically added to your Feedback account through the Pendo install script (commonly referred to as “the snippet”). Alternatively, you can:
- Create visitors through API.
- Manually create records (recommended only for testing Feedback).
You can also set up SAML SSO for visitors you create through APIs or that you manually create in Feedback. For more information, contact Pendo Support, letting us know the provider you want to use for SAML SSO.
Option 1. Add customers through the Pendo install script
Your customer data is automatically added to Pendo Feedback if you integrate your product with Feedback through the Pendo install script. For instructions, see the Developer’s guide to installing Pendo and the Developer’s guide to installing Feedback.
Once you’ve installed Pendo, Feedback starts to collect data from your visitors. At this point, your teams can create requests, add votes, and set priorities on your visitors’ behalf. For more information, see Launch Feedback and gather requests internally.
You can also allow your customers to sign in to Feedback to create requests, add votes, and set priorities for themselves. For more information, see Grant Feedback access to customers.
Option 2. Create Visitors through our API
If integrating your product with Feedback through the Pendo install script isn’t an option, you can create visitors using our API and the POST/users/invite_end_user command. This can give you more flexibility for where and how your customers sign in to Feedback, and how you update their records.
Option 3. Send manual Invites
You can create visitor records by manually inviting them to Feedback. Your customers can then sign in to Pendo Feedback at https://feedback.pendo.io/app/#/login. This is a short-term solution that can be good for testing Feedback, but has the following limitations:
- Visitors you invite manually must set a username and password to sign in to Feedback. They won’t be able to access Feedback through your application. This process can have a notable negative impact on customer engagement with Feedback.
- Manually created records don’t sync with records created through the Pendo install script. If you do decide to install Pendo through the install script at a later date, any visitor you create manually are duplicated.
- Manually created records aren’t auto-updated with the latest customer data, so you can’t track logins, ARR, and other metadata that are essential to getting valuable data from Feedback reports.
To create users manually:
1. In Pendo Feedback, select Accounts from the left-side navigation.
2. Select New Visitor in the top-right of the page. This opens the Create a Visitor form.
3. Fill in the following information (*Required fields):
- Name*. The full name of the visitor.
- Email*, so that the user can (optionally) receive an invitation to access Feedback.
- Account*. The company name that the visitor belongs to.
- Status. The paying status of the customer. This allows you to split requirements and priorities of paying and free accounts in Feedback's reporting.
- Value. This is the monetary value that the customer pays or will potentially pay each month. This allows you to split requests and priorities of your customers based on Account value (high-value versus low-value).
- Invite by email? Select Yes if you'd like your customer to be notified. Notifications won't be sent if customer notifications are turned off on your settings page. Select No if you'd like to use Feedback on their behalf, without notifying them.
4. Select Create Visitor to continue.
Customers versus internal users
Internal users are team members in your organization that have access to the internal view of Pendo Feedback. There are crucial differences between internal users and your customers, including data visibility and Feedback functionality.
Unless your internal users are your end-users, you shouldn't invite internal users as visitors, or have your internal users submit customer requests through their own accounts. Instead, internal users can add requests on behalf of customers (and prospects), as well as for themselves. This avoids the following limitations.
Functionality
The internal view of Feedback has more functionality than the customer view. If you add your team members as visitors, they can't access the core functionality of Pendo Feedback. They won't be able to access reports, metrics, engagement, or customer insights. This means your organization won't be getting as much value from Pendo Feedback as it could be.
For more information on how the internal view differs from the end-user view, see Take a tour of Pendo Feedback.
Reporting data
Team members, visitors (customers), and prospects are likely to have different priorities, which you can see in your Internal SmartList, Visitor SmartList, and Prospect SmartList, respectively. If you add your team members as Visitors, it's harder to differentiate between feedback from these different stakeholders, and your Product team won't be able to analyze customer priorities.
For information on SmartLists and other reports, see Discovery with Demand Reports.
Accuracy
Allowing internal users to submit feedback from a range of different people as themself skews your data because each team member becomes an aggregate of different customers and prospects. Instead, internal users can submit feedback on a customer or prospect's behalf, making your data more accurate and useful.
For instructions on how to do this, see Launch Feedback and gather requests internally.
Tagging requests
If you add your team members as visitors, they can't add tags to requests. Tags are used to organize requests to make feedback easier to report on and analyze. Your Product team can't garner insights from customer-facing teams if they can't tag requests. This reduces the impact of Pendo Feedback on your product decisions, and gives your Product team more manual work to do.
For more information on tagging, see Tagging in Feedback.
Private requests
Internal users are given the option to hide requests from customers at the bottom of their request form by selecting Hide this from customers. If you add your team members as visitors, they can't create or view private requests, meaning they miss out on internal communication. Private requests are useful for internal requests and project ideas that you don't want to share with your customers.
Frequently Asked Questions
How does Pendo Feedback know which customers are paying / not paying?
You tell Pendo Feedback which customers are paying, and how much, in the initialize method during installation. If changes are made in your application, Pendo Feedback updates the amount. For more information, see the Developer’s guide to installing Feedback.
We don't keep company value in our product. How can we provide Pendo Feedback with this information?
The Company Value data is usually provided with other user information as part of the Feedback integration with your product. For more information, see the Developer’s guide to installing Feedback.
In the event that the Feedback integration can't automatically pull in company value, for example, if you don't store that data in your product, there are three alternative options.
- In Pendo, manually provide the value in Accounts. Find and open the relevant Account and then select Edit to set the monthly value.
- Through the Feedback API. Use the
PUT/accounts/{ID}command to edit the Account. For guidance, see our API documentation. - Through the Salesforce integration. Specify which Salesforce field will populate the Company Value in Feedback. Note that existing Accounts won’t have a Company Value using this method.