Grant visitor access to Pendo Feedback so that your end-users can self-serve and free up your teams' time. This article describes how to set up each of the options for adding Feedback to your app if you decide to grant visitor access to Feedback.
If you want more control over your Feedback account, you can expose Feedback to a subset of customers in the Resource Center and prevent them from submitting new requests. For more information, see Launch Feedback with limited customer visibility, below.
If you prefer to reserve Pendo Feedback for internal use only, see Launch Feedback and gather requests internally.
Add Feedback to your app
There are four different ways your users can access Feedback:
- Portal (default). Grant access to a full-screen view of Feedback, accessed with a link or button that you add to your application.
- Widget view. Add a tab to the right-side of your application that users can open to submit a request through a side panel that slides out.
- Pendo Resource Center. Add a Feedback module in your Resource Center, alongside your Support channels, knowledge base, and so on.
- Intercom. Embed Feedback into Intercom messenger, or configure an Answer Bot to send a Feedback link when an end user types a request.
For a description of the end-user experience of these options, see the Customer view of Pendo Feedback article.
Each of these methods requires that your end users are already signed in to your app and being tracked by Pendo. The Javascript code in the Pendo install script (commonly referred to as "the snippet") authenticates the visitor and redirects them to the Feedback app, removing the need for an additional password or authentication. For more information about the Pendo snippet, see the Developer's guide to implementing Pendo using the install script, and the Configure for Feedback.
Portal (full screen view)
The portal (full screen view) is the default option for providing Feedback to your customers. You can find this option in Settings > Product Settings > Visitor View.
Visitors access the full-screen view of Feedback through a link or button (portal) that you add to your application.
To load Feedback on the current page, use the following code for your button or link:
<a href="#" onclick="pendo.feedback.loginAndRedirect()">Suggest Features</a>
To load Feedback in a new tab, use the following code for your button or link:
<a href="#" target="_blank" onclick="pendo.feedback.loginAndRedirect({anchor: this}); return false;">Suggest Features</a>
Widget view
You need Vendor Settings permissions to switch on the Widget View. For more information, see Manage Team: Roles and Permissions in Feedback.
To turn on the widget view for your visitors, navigate to Settings > Product Settings > Visitor View and select Widget (Embed Feedback in your app), followed by Save Changes. This adds a tab to the right-side of your app that says "Suggest a Request".
You’re also given the option to change the location, color, and wording of the tab. Select Custom toggle to use your own link or button to open the widget.
Pendo Resource Center
You might already be using Pendo’s Resource Center to help your end users with product-related questions and communication, making it a good location for visitors to also access Feedback. Using the Resource Center to grant visitor access to Feedback involves the following broad activities:
- Generate a Pendo Feedback authentication token.
- Set the authentication token for your staging and production environments.
- Enable the Feedback integration on the frontend.
- [Optional] Add segmentation to your Feedback module.
Step 1. Generate an authentication token
- Navigate to Settings > Product Settings > Integrations.
- Select the Resource Center option.
- Select Generate New Auth Token.
- Copy the generated token.
Step 2. Set the authentication token
- Go to Pendo Products > Insights and Guidance and then navigate to Settings > Integrations.
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Select the Pendo Feedback panel from the grid. This opens a slide-out panel on the right side of the screen.
- Set the Pendo Feedback Auth Token for your staging environment. Open the Staging Setup tab and paste your Pendo Feedback Auth Token into the Auth Token field. Then, add a title and description for the integration.
- Select a default view for your staging environment.
- Select Request submission form if you want your visitors to land directly on the request form after opening the tab.
- Select Dashboard if you want your visitors to see an overview of requests (their own, other visitors’ requests, and latest requests).
- Save and then set the Pendo Feedback Auth Token for your production environment. Open the Production tab and paste your Pendo Feedback Auth Token into the Auth Token field. Then, add a title and description for the integration.
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Select a default view for your production environment.
- Select Request submission form if you want your visitors to land directly on the request form after opening the tab.
- Select Dashboard if you want your visitors to see an overview of requests (their own, other visitors’ requests, and latest requests).
Step 3. Enable the Feedback integration
To enable the Feedback integration on the frontend:
- Navigate to Guides > Resource Center and select the name of your Resource Center.
- Select Add Module.
- Hover over the Feedback option, then select Select Module and Add Modules.
- When Feedback appears in the Resource Center preview, push to staging, and then to production when you’re ready. You might want to add segmentation first.
Step 4. Add segmentation to your Feedback module
You can optionally create and use segments to target the Feedback module at different user groups. If creating a new segment for the Feedback module rather than using an existing one, follow the instructions in the Segments article first.
To edit the segment of the Feedback module:
- Navigate to Guides > Resource Center from the left-side menu.
- Find and open your Resource Center from the Resource Center list.
- In the Settings tab, hover over the Feedback module and select View Module Details.
- Select Edit in the top-right of the Segment section.
- Choose a segment from the dropdown menu.
- Select Save in the top-right corner.
Intercom
Use the Intercom integration to allow your customers to submit feedback through your conversation. To see what this looks like, see the Customer view of Feedback article.
For the integration to work correctly, the user IDs must be the same for both Feedback and Intercom. The user_id attribute in window.intercomSettings must match the customer's Visitor ID in Feedback.
You can find an example of the window.intercomSettingsobject in Intercom's Javascript API: Attributes & Objects article. You can find your customer's user ID by going to their profile page, either by searching their name or by navigating to Customers > Account Name > User Name.
You provide Feedback with Visitor IDs when you install the Pendo install script (commonly referred to as "the snippet"). You should then supply Intercom with the same IDs. To ensure that your Intercom integration shares the same IDs as Feedback, you can either:
- Integrate Feedback with your application through the Pendo install script (commonly referred to as "the snippet"), which passes the same IDs to Feedback and Intercom.
- Create a visitor in Feedback through the API using the same IDs for Feedback and Intercom.
Set up the Intercom integration
To set up the Intercom integration with Feedback:
1. In Pendo Feedback, navigate to Settings > Product Settings > Integrations.
2. Under Third-party integrations, expand the intercom option and then select Authenticate with Intercom.
3. Authorize access to Pendo Feedback. This redirects you to the Intercom app store listing for Pendo Feedback
You can now use Feedback from within your Intercom chat widget. The next step is to add the Feedback button to your Intercom Messenger home screen or configure the Answer Bot.
Add the Feedback button
To add a Feedback button to your Intercom Messenger home screen:
1. In intercom, go to your Messenger Settings.
2. Select User and then Add an App.
3. Select Feedback and then Ask customer to submit a request.
Configure the Answer Bot
To configure your Intercom Answer Bot automatically reply to messages that sound like requests with a Feedback link:
1. From your Intercom dashboard, navigate to Operator > Answer Bot.
2. Select New Answer and enter the questions or statements your visitors often use when they want to provide you with feedback. Examples might include: "I have an idea...", "I think you should...", and "I have some feedback".
3. Select Insert an app and then select the Ask customer to submit request option.
4. When you're done, select Set Live.
Launch Feedback with limited customer visibility
This section describes additional options for granting visitor access to Feedback, with some extra controls over visibility.
Launch to a subset of customers
If you use the Resource Center integration, you can launch Feedback to a subset of customers by limiting visibility of the Feedback module in the Resource Center.
Follow the instructions on how to expose the Feedback module in the Resource Center to a segment of visitors under Customization options in the Resource Center Overview.
Prevent new customer requests
If you’re concerned about the volume of new requests you receive by granting access to Feedback, you can prevent customers from submitting new requests.
Navigate to Settings > Product Settings > General and select Disable new customer requests.
You can still collect customer votes, priorities, and comments, and use flexible emailing to conduct research and gather use cases. Your team members can also still submit requests on behalf of customers and prospects.
Hide timestamps
If you’re concerned that visible timestamps on requests might result in friction between you and your customers due to dissatisfaction with the amount of time it takes you to respond to a request, you can turn off timestamps. You can then focus on what you are building, rather than worrying about what you aren't.
Navigate to Settings > Product Settings > General and select Hide timestamps from customers.
Gather insights on a smaller group of requests
If you want to limit the requests that your visitors can see, perhaps because you’d rather gather feedback on the projects you know you’re going to build or because you want to research a particular project, you can:
- Prevent visitors from submitting requests and have internal users create private requests by default so that only team members can see them. If you want customers to see any of these requests, you can make them public.
- Turn on Request Moderation in Settings > Product Settings > General. This ensures that new requests are hidden from your end-users until you review them and change their status. For information on how to enable moderation, see Request moderation.
- Use Product Areas to restrict end-user visibility of requests to those that are relevant to a particular area or feature of your app. For more information on Product Areas, see Product Areas in Pendo Feedback.
Using Product Areas to limit visibility of requests involves:
- Assigning relevant requests to a particular Product Area, and then giving your end-users visibility of that Product Area.
- Assigning requests that you want to hide to a particular Product Area, and then make that Product Area available to internal users only.
Email notifications without a login link
Rather than turning email notifications off, you can instead turn off auto-login links.
Auto-login links allow the end user to access the Feedback portal by opening the request URL in the status response email. By disabling the links, you can close the feedback loop and keep customers updated without giving them access to Feedback.
Navigate to Settings > Product Settings > Email and Whitelabel and select Disable auto-login links in visitor emails.
Introduce Pendo Feedback to customers
This section includes some options for introducing Pendo Feedback to your customers and how to talk to them about it.
You can start talking about Pendo Feedback to your customers before you expose it to them, and you can continue promoting your new feedback system long after you've officially launched.
Circulate your Product Feedback Policy
Tell your customers and prospects what Pendo Feedback is, why it's beneficial to them, how to find and use it, and what to expect when they do.
Communicate this information by publishing your full Product Feedback Policy on your knowledge base, and include relevant sections of this policy in your launch announcements.
Create a launch announcement
There are numerous ways you can announce the launch of Pendo Feedback, including in-app notifications and updates with Pendo Guides or Announcements in the Resource Center, and marketing emails.
For example, you could send an email like the following:
A New Way of Handling Feedback
At [company] we take feedback very seriously. We realize the importance of harnessing ideas from you and bringing your voice into projects that we choose to put on our roadmap.
As a result, we'll be using Pendo Feedback. It's software that enables us to easily collect and manage feedback directly from our customers, our prospects, and our employees. And that's where you come in.
We value your ideas and we know that a lot of you are itching to tell us how we can improve our product. Now you have the chance.
You can use Pendo Feedback to submit and prioritize your own ideas, view and vote on other people's ideas, and see the status of requests you're interested in, what we are currently working on,78 and what we have released.
This improves transparency, saves a lot of time and effort, and will ultimately lead to a better product for you!
We've created a new Product Feedback Policy [LINK TO YOUR PRODUCT FEEDBACK POLICY HERE] which explains how to access Pendo Feedback, understand the kind of feedback we're looking for, and what we'll do with your requests.
We look forward to seeing your ideas!
Tip: Anything public-facing can also work as a sales tool to let your prospects know that you take their feedback seriously.
You can even make use of your first Visitor engagement email to introduce customers to Feedback. Some other suggestions include:
- Intercom or in-app chat
- CEO announcement and video
- Blog post
- Social media
- Press release
- Webinar
Examples:
- SS&C Advent Black Diamond's "Great Ideas Overview". Read more about how SS&C Advent launched Pendo Feedback to their customer base in The Feedback Loop.
- TOPDesk Innovation Platform video.
- SciChart's Introduction video.
- Passportal's Blog Post.
- Sitefarm at UC Davis's Blog Post.
- Customer Feedback Portal: Collaborate and Vote on Future Kajabi Updates!
Note: Some of these examples were created before Pendo acquired "Receptive" which is now Pendo Feedback.
Send an engagement email
If you pass your visitor email addresses into Pendo through the Pendo install script (commonly referred to as "the snippet"), you can use your first visitor engagement email as part of your launch. For more information about passing email addresses through the Pendo install script, see the Configure for Feedback.
The visitor engagement email is a personalized email to each of your visitors showing them what their priorities are, updating them on progress for features they’ve requested, and introducing new items to vote on.
The visitor engagement email also links your customer directly to their Pendo dashboard, with no sign-in required. This allows your customers to edit their priorities and view your latest releases without the friction of opening a new browser tab and signing in to Pendo.
Add a brief paragraph at the start of your first visitor engagement email to describe what Pendo Feedback is, why it's important, and how to use it. You should also tell your customers how to access Pendo Feedback through your app.
Tip: Move a few of your latest features to your Release Log before sending an engagement email out for the first time.
Below are two examples of introductory text you can modify to suit your situation and add at the top of your engagement email.
Example 1:
You're receiving this email because we've recently started implementing a service called Pendo. It provides a platform for your feedback, enabling you to submit your own requests and ideas, as well as vote and comment on other customers' ideas.
The platform allows us to be completely transparent and open with you about where we're taking our product, and it allows us to truly listen to what you have to say. We'd love for you to come and take a look around, and maybe even suggest some ideas for us.
You can learn more about the kind of feedback we're looking for, and what we'll do with our ideas in our Product Feedback Policy.
View our policy here: [link to your PFP].
Example 2:
What is Pendo Feedback?
Pendo Feedback is a place for you to submit feedback to [company].Requests can be anything from formatting tweaks to integrations, or ideas you’ve had that would make the software work better for you and your company.Why use Pendo Feedback?Pendo Feedback allows you to have a seat at the table when decisions are being made, and to stay in the loop when your requests are reviewed and updated. You can also view the latest releases.It also allows you to:
- Get timely feedback on requests from product decision makers
- Gain greater insight into upcoming releases
- Increase your impact on feature development
You can learn more about the kind of feedback we're looking for, and what we'll do with our ideas in our Product Feedback Policy.
View our policy here: [Link to your PFP].
For more information on visitor engagement emails, including how to create and send them, see Notification emails in Feedback.