Have you built a beta program? What's the best way to get customer feedback -- in-product questions, surveys, live conversations, or other?

I have, a few times! To establish a Beta program, I would work closely with customer success and product as both stakeholders are needed to keep a beta program running smoothly. Define what good looks like between your stakeholders along with ownership areas and key responsibilities. CS should help determine best fit customers/beta participants, product should validate product efficacy/capture feedback to inform performance, and PMM should orchestrate it all - connect the dots and grab authentic ...Read More

Yes, beta programs are critical to successfully bringing products to market. First, they allow you to gather feedback from early users, which can help you identify and address any issues or concerns before the full launch. This is both related to the product completness and usability, but gaining a deeper understanding of value, the messaging, the target audienc, and informing HOW to launch – not just what to launch. Additionally, beta products can help generate excitement and anticipation aroun ...Read More

Generally at Zendesk, we like to do a mix for beta programs. Depending on the size and goal of the beta program, we’ve conducted a mix of surveys through the product + had some live conversations with a select number of customers (or you could even do a focus group by interviewing 2-3 different customers at the same time!) to collect additional qualitative data. During the beta customer feedback process is also a great time to lock in some customer testimonials from happy beta users :) - don’t m ...Read More

Yes! I love this question. Betas are SO important. I think all 3 are great options. It depends what you are looking for. If you're doing a large Beta (50+ customers) I would rely more on surveys so you can get more feedback, faster -- and then hand pick a number (say 10) for deeper dive phone conversations to dig into some of their feedback.  If you're beta is smaller, I would go live conversation all the way. In-app is good too but I think with a beta you need to gently nudge/remind customers t ...Read More

Yes, I was involved in a GenAI product beta programme in one of my previous organisations, and it reinforced one lesson for me: the best customer feedback comes from conversations, not surveys alone. We used a mix of feedback channels, but I found live conversations with beta customers to be the most valuable. Watching customers use the product, asking follow-up questions, and understanding why they behaved a certain way gave us insights that a survey score never could. We also used: In-product ...Read More