Blog Customer FeedbackCustomer Feedback Strategy for SaaS in 6 Easy Steps

Customer Feedback Strategy for SaaS in 6 Easy Steps

A solid customer feedback strategy is vital for keeping your SaaS competitive and meeting customer needs. Learn how to build an effective feedback strategy in 6 simple steps, from gathering insights to acting on them, ensuring you always improve and satisfy your customers.

Customer Feedback
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Customer feedback strategy for saas.

A solid customer feedback strategy is crucial for your SaaS to stay competitive and meet customer needs.

Over 70% of customers take their business elsewhere due to poor customer service. This is often because businesses fail to understand their customers' needs, which can happen without a structured feedback strategy.

In this guide, we’ll explore six straightforward steps to develop the perfect feedback strategy, ensuring you don't miss out on valuable insights and always build the right things. 👇


TL;DR - Customer feedback strategy

  • Customer feedback strategy is a structured plan for collecting, analyzing, and using customer feedback to improve your product or service.
  • It helps you use feedback effectively to understand customer needs, boost satisfaction, and drive product innovation.
  • Here are 6 easy steps to build a successful feedback strategy:
    • Define your goals: Set clear, measurable objectives aligned with your business aims.
    • Identify your feedback channels: Choose the most effective channels for gathering feedback.
    • Collect feedback: Encourage customer participation and utilize feedback tools.
    • Analyze your feedback: Organize and categorize feedback to identify trends and actionable insights.
    • Act on feedback: Prioritize and implement changes based on the feedback received.
    • Close the feedback loop: Communicate updates to customers to build trust and engagement.
Featurebase helps you collect feedback with in-app forms, run surveys, and prioritize ideas by customer revenue →

What is a customer feedback strategy?

A customer feedback strategy is a plan for collecting, analyzing, and using customer feedback to improve your product or service. It helps you gather feedback in a systematic way and take action based on what you learn.

This feedback can be suggestions, feature requests, bug reports, or even basic comments. It helps you understand what your customers like, what they don’t, and what they want to see improved.

A.F.C.A customer feedback loop inforgraphic
A.F.C.A customer feedback loop

Why is a customer feedback strategy important?

Having a clear customer feedback strategy helps you make the most of the feedback you receive, using a clear process for your team and users.

It ensures that feedback is used effectively to improve your product and increase customer satisfaction.

  1. It helps improve customer satisfaction.
    Happy customers = booming business. A feedback strategy helps you properly listen to your customers and implement things they actually want to see.
  2. It enables you to identify product issues.
    Regular feedback helps you spot and fix problems before they become bigger issues.
  3. It helps you boost customer loyalty.
    Showing customers that you value their opinions builds trust and keeps them coming back.
  4. It makes your product innovative.
    User feedback can inspire new features and improvements that keep your product competitive.
  5. It helps you make informed decisions.
    A clear strategy provides the data you need to make better business decisions.

Spending time with your team to develop a structured strategy can have huge long-term benefits for your product. Without it, you might miss valuable insights and lose touch with what your customers actually want.

Screenshot of happy customer interaction.
For example, here's the feedback we've gotten for our responsiveness at Featurebase.

In the rest of this article, we will explore six key steps for crafting such a feedback strategy. 👇


Building a customer feedback strategy in 6 simple steps

1. Define your goals

You can’t develop a SaaS customer feedback strategy without defining your goals. This boils down to two phases: defining your goals and setting clear objectives.

1.1. Define your goals

The first step is understanding what you want to achieve.

For example, you might want to improve specific features in your product. Maybe your page load times need improving, or your app lacks support for certain popular languages.

Align your feedback goals with your overall business objectives. If your business aims to boost customer loyalty, your feedback goal might be understanding why customers stay or leave. This way, the customer feedback will support your broader business aims.

1.2. Set clear, measurable objectives

Without setting clear and measurable objectives, you’ll find it difficult to structure your feedback strategy.

Use SMART goals to make it easier to track progress and evaluate the impact of your efforts.

The SMART goal framework inforgraphic.

Examples of converting basic objectives into a SMART goal:

  • Increase customer satisfaction: "Raise customer satisfaction scores by 15% within six months."
  • Improve product features: "Implement three new customer-requested features by Q4."
  • Boost response rate: "Increase feedback survey response rate to 40% by the end of the year."

Having clear goals and objectives is super important for tracking the success of your strategy in the future.

2. Identify your feedback channels

Before collecting customer feedback, you need to identify and rely on the right channels. 

Focusing on the key channels ensures you reach customers where they are most active and willing to share their thoughts.

Some popular feedback channels are:

  • Feedback portals: A central hub for customers to leave feedback
    • Pros: Centralized and easy to manage
    • Cons: Requires users to visit the portal
  • Widgets: In-app widgets that let users submit feedback without leaving your product
    • Pros: Convenient and immediate
    • Cons: Can be intrusive if not designed well
  • Surveys: Email or web-based surveys for structured feedback
    • Pros: Structured and can target specific questions
    • Cons: Lower response rates if too long
  • Emails: Direct communication via emails for more detailed responses
    • Pros: Personal and detailed
    • Cons: Can be time-consuming to manage
  • Customer Support: Gathering feedback during customer service interactions.
    • Pros: Direct interaction with customers
    • Cons: Hard to categorize and organize for a full picture
Featurebase's embeddable feedback widget.
In-app feedback widgets let customers voice their opinions without leaving your app.

Find your most valuable channels and prioritize them. Over time, you’ll learn where the best feedback comes from.

A feedback tool like Featurebase (👋 that's us) can help you centralize multiple channels, such as in-app widgets, customer support chats, and a feedback portal, so you can easily analyze all your feedback in one place.

3. Collect feedback (+ tools)

Once you know the channels, it's time to collect feedback. Here’s how to engage customers and utilize modern feedback tools.

3.1. Encourage customer participation

Motivating customers to provide feedback can be challenging. But it's essential for gaining valuable insights. Here are some tips to encourage participation:

  • Offer incentives: Provide rewards such as discounts, gift cards, or a free month for completing surveys. This can significantly increase response rates, and companies like Shopify use it effectively.
  • Make it easy: Use simple, user-friendly forms that are quick to fill out. Avoid long, tiresome surveys with abstract questions.
  • Be transparent: Mention why you’re collecting feedback and how it will be used. If you implement their feedback, definitely communicate updates to users - this shows them you listen and ensures further engagement.
  • Personalize requests: Address customers by name and reference their recent interactions with your product. Personalized requests feel more genuine and can result in higher engagement.

3.2. Use customer feedback tools

Using a feedback tool can save u significant time both in collecting and also analyzing feedback. Look for tools that offer:

  • Widgets: In-app or website widgets that make it easy for customers to submit feedback without leaving your platform.
  • Customer segmentation: Tools that allow you to segment your customers and analyze feedback from specific groups of customers separately.
  • Customization: The ability to customize feedback forms and surveys to fit your brand and specific needs.
  • Integrations: Tools that integrate with your existing stack so you can bring feedback into your product management workflow, for example.

Featurebase offers in-app widgets and voting boards and integrates with your favorite tools to make feedback collection effortless. 👇

Featurebase's feedback forum.
Start collecting & managing feedback with Featurebase for free →

3.3. Gather quality feedback

The quality of the feedback you collect is just as important as the quantity. Here's how to ensure the feedback is useful for you:

  • Ask the right questions. Your questions should be clear, specific, and designed to bring out useful information.
  • Use open-ended questions: This prompts customers to provide more detailed feedback in their own words.
  • Measure experience & satisfaction: Rating scales like NPS can provide quantitative data that is easy to analyze.
  • Focus on key areas: Direct your questions to focus on the most critical aspects of your product or service. This helps you get the most specific and actionable feedback.
Customer satisfaction surveys in Featurebase.
You can run a variety of surveys, including NPS, in Featurebase.

4. Analyze your feedback

When dealing with a large volume of feedback, organizing and analyzing it is crucial. The hallmark of a great feedback collection tool is that it handles both of these tasks for you!

4.1. Organize and categorize feedback

With different types of customer feedback pouring in, you’ll have to organize it to the best of your ability.

The simplest and most effective method is to categorize feature requests, bug reports, and general feedback into separate groups.

Thankfully, it doesn’t have to be a manual task. Featurebase uses AI to categorize feedback based on its content automatically for you.

Featurebase's automatic AI board suggestion feature.
Featurebase’s AI categorizes feedback for you automatically.

You can also manually select categories and assign private tags to feedback based on metrics like product area, user segment, etc.

Once you’ve organized the feedback, you can analyze it. Not all feedback will hold genuine value for you, and turning down some of it is okay (Learn to say 'NO' to feature requests →).

Your main goal in this step is to determine the value of customer feedback.

An effective method is to look at a feature request's popularity. If a majority of your customers are saying the same thing, it makes sense to pay attention to it. With Featurebase, you can use feature voting to quickly identify popular feedback.

Prioritize by feature voting and follow-up questions illustration
Prioritize your customers’ feedback with upvotes.

4.3. Prioritize feedback

Prioritizing feedback ensures that you focus on the most impactful changes first. 

One way to rank your feedback is by looking at your most valuable customers. You can do this using an Excel sheet if you don't have many customers.

But with a bigger customer base, Featurebase can save you a lot of time. It allows you to filter feedback by user segments and metrics like customer revenue.

Illustration of sorting feedback by uvpoter revenue contribution in Featurebase.
Sorting feature requests & bug reports by upvoters' revenue contribution.

You can also use prioritization frameworks like MoSCoW and RICE to help determine the potential value of feedback to your product.

This is super convenient for team brainstorming sessions as you can visualize ideas on a simple matrix like this one:

Featurebase's value/effort prioritization matrix.
Value/Effort Prioritization Matrix in Featurebase

These options allow you to sift through the noise and hone in on the most impactful feedback.

5. Act on feedback

Collecting and analyzing feedback is only the beginning. To truly benefit from it, you need to act on the feedback you receive:

  • Break down the feedback. Divide feedback into specific, actionable tasks. Each task should have a clear objective and expected outcome.
  • Assign responsibilities. Assign tasks to the appropriate team members. Ensure everyone understands their role in implementing the changes.
  • Set deadlines. Establish realistic timelines for completing each task. This keeps the process on track and ensures timely improvements.

Most feedback tools like Featurebase offer integrations with popular task management tools such as Jira, Clickup, and Linear.

So, if you decide to implement a certain feature request you can simply send it to the developer backlog in your issue management tool straight from Featurebase.

What's cool is that thanks to Featurebase, users who submitted the idea will automatically receive notifications about the status of its development.

Featurebase's automated product update email to users.
Featurebase's automated product update email to users.

This brings us to the last point. 👇

6. Close the feedback loop

Closing the feedback loop is important for encouraging customer loyalty. By communicating any and all updates to your customers, you keep them in the loop.

This is a great way to keep them engaged and makes it easier for them to trust you as a business. Here’s how to effectively share changes and improvements:

  • Regular updates: Send emails or newsletters detailing the changes made based on customer feedback.
  • Public announcements: Use your website, blog, or social media to announce larger updates and improvements.
  • In-app notifications: Notify users directly within your app about updates and new features. This ensures they see the changes as they use your product.

Featurebase automates this process with status updates and changelogs.

Featurebase's changelog.
Public changelog page with all of your product updates.

After implementing many smaller or one large feature, you can publish a public changelog about it to your users, which will also automatically be sent via email.

This is an effective way to communicate product updates one-to-many and increase new feature adoption among your users.

You can also use widgets to bring release notes into your app so users can see them without ever leaving your platform. It's synced with the changelog page, so no extra work is required.

Featurebase's in-app changelog popup.
In-app changelog popup with new updates that you've made.
Collect feedback & communicate product updates with Featurebase for free →

7. Internal feedback (bonus step)

Finally, you need to think about the other big stakeholder in your product’s success: your team!

With internal feedback from employees, you can identify issues that may not be obvious to your customers.

Benefits of internal feedback include:

  • Product improvement. Employees often have firsthand knowledge of product limitations and potential enhancements.
  • Process optimization. Internal feedback can reveal inefficiencies and suggest ways to optimize operations.

Encourage employees to provide honest feedback by:

  • Creating a safe environment. Encourage a feedback-friendly culture and highlight that there are no negative consequences for honest input.
  • Anonymous surveys. Use anonymous surveys to gather candid feedback from your employees.
  • Regular check-ins. Schedule regular one-on-one meetings to discuss feedback and suggestions.
Private board feature in Featurebase for employee feedback.
With Featurebase, you can create private boards for employee feedback.

Final thoughts

There you have it – a comprehensive six-step customer feedback strategy for your product. By following these steps, you can improve your product and boost customer satisfaction.

Featurebase simplifies this process, offering tools to collect, manage, and act on feedback effectively. You can collect in-app feedback, run surveys, prioritize ideas by customer revenue, and much more.

The onboarding is amazingly quick, and it comes with a Free plan, so there's no downside to trying it.

Featurebase's feedback portal with voting boards and roadmaps.

Start collecting & managing customer feedback with Featurebase for free →