How can you effectively incorporate user feedback?
No one likes to build a product, only to not have it used by users. When you have too much feedback from users, you might run into a situation where you need to effectively prioritize the feedback.
Address the low-hanging fruits constantly
While the complex stuff may take longer, addressing the low-effort needs will help users.In parallel, if you also address the low-hanging fruits, your users will get a sense of progress while you get the time to analyze the complex stuff. You can also use the “RICE” technique (Reach-Impact-Confidence-Effort) to start building relationships with customers. Especially when you address the low hanging fruits that have a wide reach, it starts your relationship with those customers.
You aren’t solving ONLY for one customer
There is an “Impact vs Effort” technique, in which you can determine if the effort you ’d spend is going to be worth it. After all, you should be able to sell it to enough customers for it to be worth it! You can run low-tech pilots with a few customers to ensure that you are building the right thing. These customers could belong to different purchasing tiers and so we will get to design user experiences accordingly.
What takes the user away from their core tasks?
Users value when you solve something, which isn’t part of their core tasks but they have to do it. Something, I learnt over time, is that users will pay for and value your brand if you solve their pain points and ease their workflows. For instance, a nurse, who could provide medical advice, was calling patients, who haven’t used their device for over 2 months. This is a task that can be easily automated or doesn’t require a nurse who could read medical charts.
Users always don’t know what they want.
We can provide data-driven feedback to our customers. They might NOT truly know what they want. When we provide them with data related to their organization then they might have better perspectives. You can use various techniques from interviews, surveys (blinded or not blinded) for the same. All of this feedback can also be validated by research papers.
Continuously reevaluate your roadmap.
The market landscape keeps changing. Constantly, keeping a tab on your industry helps with the same. You may not have a “Customer Insights” team but you can certainly read industry standard papers or articles.
Final Thoughts
Regardless of your method, understanding how many users we are impacting by building our product or feature will help you prioritize. Besides, the time savings with your product will also help you decide the pricing and help users do more meaningful work. In the end, the more meaningful work we do, the more motivated we are, to our jobs!