Product teams and product managers (PMs) use Feedback to research user needs and to make decisions about the product roadmap. To these ends, product teams are responsible for:
- Triaging requests. Ensure that the right tasks are assigned to the right people and filter requests for PMs to estimate on with their Engineering colleagues.
- Research and analysis. Analyze the requests you’ve collected, and gather feedback on product iterations using Votes, Effort vs. Value, and ARR Reports.
- Product strategy. Give Engineering the data to back up their development time and process owners the insight into what pieces of development align with business goals.
Triage
Product teams use Pendo Feedback to collect data and contacts that can be used for research projects, and to respond to product requests from internal teams, prospects, and customers from the Feedback platform.
Review requests in the Browse page
You can see the latest requests in the Browse page of Feedback, which you can access in the left-side navigation. For more detailed information, see Managing requests in the Browse page.
If you’re a Product Manager managing your own product or Product Area, you can create saved views of the data you need based on the right filters already applied in the Browse page to speed up your workflow.
If you have multiple products or areas of the product that are managed separately, use the dropdown menus at the top of the Browse page to select the relevant filters.
Bulk add tags
Use the keyword search bar to find requests relating to an area you want to investigate, and bulk add a tag to all the requests in the result.
For more information on tagging and what tags are used for, see Tagging in Feedback.
Bulk respond to new requests
Change the status of any new requests to Awaiting Feedback or whatever language suits your organizational processes, such as "Open for Voting". For more information on status naming, see Customize status names.
If you receive a high volume of requests, you can change the status of multiple requests in bulk. For more information, see Act on a group of requests in the Managing requests in the Browse page article.
We recommend setting up an automatic saved response to help set expectations and keep your users informed. Go to Settings > Product Settings > Custom Responses > Create a Custom Response to create a status message that thanks your users for providing feedback and includes a link to your Product Feedback Policy, which should state that you can’t respond to every request.
Prune requests while you wait
Allow requests to be seen, voted on, prioritized, and commented on by others.
Use this time to prune duplicate, similar, accidental, and irrelevant requests. For instructions on how to do this, see the Deal with similar requests article.
Decline requests that are actually bugs, along with a custom response explaining that the feedback has been passed to Support as a bug report, or with instructions on where your customers should submit bugs instead. You can then delete the request from Feedback. For more information, see Requests for Support in the Customer engagement with Pendo Feedback article.
Research and analysis
Use Feedback’s data to uncover insights and determine priorities. Research is a key part of the Feedback Workflow that helps to ensure that development planning doesn’t start until customer and team research has been conducted and analyzed.
Conduct customer research
By using Pendo Feedback to conduct customer research around the product areas you've decided to improve, you're ensuring that you maintain control of your product while still listening to your customers' requirements.
You can use Feedback to carry out research using the following process:
- Search for requests that are relevant to the theme or features you’re researching. You can do this from the Browse page using the search bar and the Global Filters at the top of the page.
- Send a flexible email to those that have made or voted on a relevant request, or to a segment of visitors and team members. Ask for updated use cases based on the research topic.
For example, if you're working on a project for Enterprise customers, make sure these accounts are tagged and send a flexible email to all accounts with that tag.
If you don’t find any relevant requests in Feedback:
- Create a new request for that project, explaining what you’re hoping to achieve
- Send a flexible email to relevant users asking for any feedback they have and to get a discussion started.
For example, if you're collecting feedback about a new feature, you could send an email that’s similar to the following:
Hi everyone,
We would love to hear your comments and use cases on this request in Feedback. All help is greatly appreciated.
Thank you!
Team Feedback
Use Feedback's reporting features
If your company already has a strategy or vision mapped out, use this to explore the data.
You can create your own filters in the Reports page of Feedback, which you can access in the left-side navigation. Select the Advanced tab on the right side, where you can apply a range of filters to segment the requests you've received. For more information, see Discovery with Feedback Reports.
If, for example, your company strategy is to close more enterprise deals in the financial industry, you could add a filter to select only high-value accounts and another filter to select only those accounts in the financial industry. You would then be able to identify what your current enterprise and financial accounts want the most. Building requests from those companies could also help you to close more deals with similar accounts in the future.
Implement the RICE methodology
RICE is a prioritization model that stands for Reach, Impact, Confidence, and Effort, which are the four factors Intercom uses to evaluate project ideas. These can be combined into a single score to help PMs prioritize items on the product roadmap.
Reach refers to the number of people a feature will impact. To calculate reach, you can:
- Use our SmartLists to see how many customers, prospects, and internal team members want a feature and how important it is to them. For more information, see Discovery with Feedback Reports.
- Use the advanced filters in the Reports page to segment prioritized requests and understand the level of reach for different stakeholder groups, such as large versus small customers, the sales team, leadership, or customers in particular locations.
- Set a custom Reach estimate using tags. For instructions on creating and using tags, see Tagging in Feedback.
Impact refers to how much value a feature will bring to customers. Effort refers to the amount of time and resources a feature will take to build and deliver. You can hover over a request in the Effort vs Value chart to get numeric scores for value (impact) and effort. You can segment this data using the Advanced filters. For more information, see Discovery with Feedback Reports.
Confidence refers to the trust you place in your estimates for reach, impact, and effort. As a tool designed to gather prioritized demand, Feedback helps to increase confidence in your data and your ability to make data-driven decisions.
Product strategy
Define the plan for your product and how your customers should stand to benefit.
Determine development effort
You can set the development effort of requests, which you can then view in a graph showing Value against Effort of the requests you've received. To see this graph, navigate to Reports> Advanced > Value.
The ability to set an effort estimate depends on your Feedback permissions as an internal user. For more information, see Manage Team: Roles and Permissions in Feedback.
To set the effort, select the relevant request and then Edit. Scroll down to the Feature Effort slider, move it to the appropriate point, and select Save.
Meet to discuss the top requests
Work through the highest priority for each SmartList, then the second-highest, the third, and so on. As each item is reviewed, the organizer should update the status of the request in Feedback. Don't let the meeting run over its scheduled time limit. You might not get through all requests in the time, but you can get through your most valuable requests.