What is Customer Feedback Management?

If you've already started collecting customer feedback, you're probably well ahead of your competition. But once you see all of that feedback data in one place, you'll quickly come to realize the next piece of the puzzle: analyzing and managing all of that feedback.

Today, we'll give you all: how to gather feedback, analyze and manage it and then use those insights to provide a superior customer experience. We'll finish it off with some of the best customer feedback management software you can use in 2025 and beyond.

Let's get into it. 👇

What is customer feedback management?

Customer feedback management (CFM) is a structured approach to collecting, analyzing, acting on, and responding to customer feedback to improve their experience and your product.

Instead of merely gathering feedback, you now improve the feedback process by analyzing customer feedback and turning direct feedback into actionable insights. It's the complete circle of customer feedback, from listening to your users to implementing their requests and closing the loop.

Usually, this means having a strong customer feedback system that helps organize and track this process.

Why is customer feedback management important?

Customer feedback management is key to reducing churn, improving your products and services, and boosting revenue. It strengthens customer relationships, which in turn creates a stronger brand.

Over 96% of customers would leave a business because of bad customer service. That's a staggering number!

A solid feedback management system is crucial for providing the expected level of customer service.

To make it even sweeter, customers who have positive experiences are likely to spend 140% more. This alone should motivate any company to create the best possible experience for its customers.

Customer feedback management helps you:

• Prioritize & populate your product roadmap with customers' genuine needs
• Strengthen customer relationships and build loyalty
• Enhance customer satisfaction
• Cut down churn and improve customer loyalty
• Resolve issues proactively and prevent future negative feedback
• Show users their feedback is valued, which helps turn them into brand advocates and refer you to others

In essence, customer feedback management isn't just a nice-to-have... It's a must-have for any business that values customer satisfaction, loyalty, and product-led growth.

Read more about the benefits of customer feedback →

How to manage customer feedback

Customer feedback management is a cyclic process that involves collecting, analyzing, implementing, and communicating users' feedback.

Let's break down the customer feedback management process, step by step.

1. Collecting customer feedback

To track feedback effectively, you should start by gathering it into one place.

The problem is that you're likely getting it from many different channels, including emails, Intercom chats, Slack, etc.

That's where feedback tools come into play. They give your users a dedicated place for requests and allow you to create a customer feedback management system. No matter where the feedback data comes from, it's all pooled into one place for easier management, analysis, and for you to act on it, thanks to integrations.

Feedback forums are also awesome for reducing duplicate ideas, as users already see existing ones.

And for feedback still coming from elsewhere, you can use native integrations to push them together with everything else.

Make sure to also include more quantitative feedback types, like customer satisfaction surveys. There are also loads of different ones, including Net Promoter Score (NPS), Customer Satisfaction (CSAT), and Customer Effort Score (CES).

Bonus points if your feedback tool already supports surveys.

Encourage feedback at multiple touchpoints in the customer journey to pinpoint bottlenecks. Especially after transactions or support interactions, as feedback at these stages might help reduce the highest-cost bottlenecks.

Some good examples of when to collect feedback:

• After a customer has upgraded to a paid plan
• After a customer has canceled their subscriptions
• Survey on your integrations page asking what integrations you’re missing

But you should also always have an open feedback channel. This can be a feedback button, portal, or widget so users can submit requests at any time.

2. Triaging

Triaging is the middle step between the user's request and adding it to your repository. 

It makes sure the feedback is in the proper format, gets assigned to the right team, and helps you identify what needs urgent action. This way, important stuff gets handled right away.

Featurebase helps by automatically sorting feedback and eliminating duplicate requests with AI.

You can also manually merge any related or duplicate ideas.

3. Analysing customer feedback

Having collected all of the feedback in one place, the next step is to analyze and organize it effectively.

The goal of customer feedback analysis is to make sense of all of the ideas and turn them into actionable steps.

This involves categorizing feedback by its urgency, importance, and type. You want to be able to identify trends and more critical issues quickly.

In addition, you can use different prioritization frameworks, like RICE or Value/Effort, to rank feature ideas by assigning them scores.

This allows you to conveniently visualize them on a simple matrix, which can be especially helpful during team brainstorming sessions.

With a well-organized feedback system, planning your next steps becomes data-driven. And more importantly - it becomes aligned with your customer's genuine needs.

P.S. Keep in mind that not all feedback is equal, and not all customer requests should be implemented. It's super important to consider your wider product vision and say "no" if needed.

4. Taking action & closing the loop

Now that you know the most urgent features, it's time to implement them.

With a proper customer feedback tool, you can integrate your issue management tool (Jira, Linear, Clickup, etc.) to convert feature requests into actionable issues there. 

This ensures that when your engineering team starts working on the request or a bug, the upvoted users are automatically notified via email.

However, it's still best to make an official update for the larger changes. This way, all customers can stay informed about the releases.

Public changelogs are excellent for this. They help you maintain a chronological order of all your updates. Changelogs also show you're constantly improving for future customers visiting your website.

Now, rinse and repeat this process.

Customer feedback management channels

You can collect feedback through many channels: public feedback portals, surveys, social media, email, live chat, third-party reviews, etc.

But some channels are better than others. And all channels should be pointed to a single place where all of your feedback can be managed.

Let's cover the most popular channels and how to operate them:

1. Public feedback portals

Public feedback portals are one of the best feedback channels. They are like product forums, where users can submit their feedback, view your roadmap, receive product updates, and more.

They allow users to vote on each others' ideas, helping Product Managers and Owners prioritize which features are in most demand based on the number of votes.

Public portals are a great way to create a community around your product and showcase transparency, as users can see what others are suggesting.

Your feedback portal is a great place to direct all of your other channels, whether through integrations or manually.

2. Feedback widgets

The advantage of in-app feedback widgets is that they provide a frictionless experience for your users when submitting feedback.

They don't have to visit yet another website and can do it all directly from your product or website. It also provides a unique opportunity to capture bug reports right where they happen. 

The best part is that it's not yet 'another feedback channel' since all of that feedback ends up conveniently in your feedback portal.

3. Public roadmaps

Sharing your public product roadmap is not only a good keeping users up to date about what's coming, but also a powerful way to collect and manage feature requests.

The roadmap's format shows your customers that you're already working on other's feature requests, encouraging them to submit their own as well.

And, of course, it helps your team keep track of the status, ETA, and order of different features.

Check out more awesome examples of public roadmaps →

4. Customer support chat

Customer support chat gives instant feedback during or after service chats. They can quickly highlight urgent bugs. Analyze these chats for trends and common issues.

The best part is that you can use integrations to channel feedback from these chats to your feedback portal, so you still have all ideas in one place for a better overview.

Learn to track feature requests with the Intercom integration →

5. Email

Customer feedback emails are a personal way to collect feedback after transactions or service interactions. This enables you to get feedback at key moments in the customer journey, such as after a purchase or service experience.

Email surveys can be embedded directly into messages, increasing the likelihood of customer engagement and response.

However, emails can't be easily integrated with feedback boards. This also means you get many duplicate requests because users won't see what others have already suggested.

So, while emails have their place, it's best to rely on feedback tools such as Featurebase.

Best practices for customer feedback management

Ready to go from feedback collection to feedback management? Here are some of the best practices for managing customer feedback.

1. Choose the right tool for the job

Managing feedback manually is very time- and resource-intensive. With so many different feedback channels and stakeholders, it becomes difficult to track everything. If you don't have the manpower working just on feedback collection and management, things slip through the cracks.

Especially important things such as customer communication, where your customers are left stranded wondering what is happening with a bug report or feature request.

Using a customer feedback management tool automates the bulk of the work. A tool such as Featurebase can help you:

• Collect feedback through various channels (e.g. website feedback forms, emails, social media)
• Store that feedback in a centralized location
• Analyze the feedback to get valuable insights through methods like sentiment analysis
• Prioritize customer feedback data so you only work on the most meaningful feedback items
• Communicate back and forth with customers through email and notifications
• Create changelogs to keep all of your customers informed
• Close the feedback loop and improve the customer experience and loyalty

In short, customer feedback management software makes light work of the most time-consuimg part of feedback management.

2. Centralize customer feedback in one place

You'll get different types of customer feedback from all sides: social media, live chat conversations, customer interactions through the phone, emails, review sites and much more. The only way to have a good customer feedback management process is to organize all of these items in one place.

A centralized feedback repository lets your customers submit their thoughts on any platform of their choice while the feedback items all pool into that location. When it comes to Featurebase, that location is a feedback board.

Besides sending feedback from feedback forms and in-app widgets, Featurebase also allows customers to manually add their feedback directly to the board.

This makes managing and analyzing customer feedback a breeze since all the information is in one place and format.

3. Ask for feedback at the right time, in the right place

Use a dedicated customer feedback management tool to ask questions when you need an answer the most. For example, you can use a website feedback tool to allow customers to submit bug reports as they are on a page, and attach a screenshot with commentary.

Likewise, in-app feedback widgets let you gather feedback as someone is using your tool.

This gives you two things.

One, the feedback is more valuable because customers provide it immediately after interacting with your product or website. There is no delay that would cause them to forget crucial details.

Two, you get context. You know when and where someone provided feedback, and the context in which they gave it, making the feedback even more valuable. You can go through the customer experience without asking them for additional details.

4. Close the feedback loop

If a stranger says "Hi!", it would be plain rude not to answer and leave them hanging. So why is it common for companies to never respond to customer feedback?

Closing the feedback loop is just that: letting customers know what happened with their feedback. It's the basis of effective customer feedback management and the great news is that it can be fully automated with the right customer feedback software.

With tools like Featurebase, you can send automated messages whenever someone leaves a review, bug report, feature request or any feedback item. As you move that piece of feedback through your feedback board and determine what to do with it, customers get automated updates through email.

And once you finally work on the feedback item (or discard it), customers get notified through email about the progress.

Without lifting a finger, you close the loop and create a solid customer feedback management system.

Conclusion

Customer feedback management is key to building a product your users love. By collecting, analyzing, and acting on feedback, you can prioritize your product roadmap, reduce churn, and strengthen customer relationships.

Tools like Featurebase make this process easy with public voting boards, roadmaps, prioritization features, surveys, and much more. It comes with a Free plan that allows for unlimited feedback, so there's no downside to trying it. 👇

✨ Start collecting and managing feedback with Featurebase for free →