How do you collect, analyze and share your customer feedback?

This is a big question so bear with the long answer!

If you are on the research team, product team, or product marketing team, it is your job to synthesize your research. And, it’s even better if you can consolidate it with, or tie it to, another team’s complementary work (this can be a cross-functional and collaborative effort).

I’ll answer your question two parts, since you’ll need to do both of these things:

Formatting:

Tactically speaking, my personal style is to make a visual deck on the topic of the research findings. Since the research I usually do is tied to an outcome (e.g., developing new corporate messaging and positioning, determining our Ideal Customer Profile (ICP), updating our pricing and packaging strategy, naming products), the deck includes:

• Overview and goals

• Project plan, methodology, key deliverables (list), rollout plan

• The research insights

  • A single slide executive summary

  • A slide for each finding, along with visuals of the data (graphs, charts, word clouds, etc.)

• Key deliverables (the actual deliverables)

• Recommendations and next steps

The work that lies ahead of you is to identify the patterns and insights across all the channels through which you mentioned you’re collecting information (Salesforce, Slack, surveys, spreadsheets) and then to distill the insights holistically, citing the supporting sources  (I’d personally do this in a slide). Then, I’d recommend packaging up your work into a tangible deliverable—like a quarterly “Voice of the Customer Report” and sharing it internally. Which brings me to my next point…

Sharing internally:

I’ve stressed the importance of overcommunication in all of my previous AMAs. One of my favorite expressions is “repetition doesn’t spoil the prayer.” Communicate your work always and often. Don’t assume people know what you’re working on, or that they’ll simply accept it without having had a chance to share their feedback.

• Before you release your quarterly report

  • Bring your stakeholders along for the journey, especially for your first quarterly report. Research cannot be done in a silo, and it’s difficult to properly adopt at a company level if not everybody feels like they can trust the insights/methodology/sources/data. If you’re releasing a report about customer feedback, make sure that your customer-facing teams are 100% aligned with your approach.

  • Set regular check-ins and milestones with key stakeholders so they know what to expect from you, and what you’ll need their help (or buy-in) on. Make sure to communicate what you’re planning to deliver, along with what level of input you’d like from them at the various stages.

• After you release your quarterly report

  • Share it in central places: 

    • Announce it in your key company channels (you mentioned you use Slack - it might even be appropriate to share it in #general). 

    • Make the link easy to find—leverage whatever tech tools you have to do this (e.g., create a go/link, a Guru card, an intranet page, pin it to relevant Slack channels).

    • Print it out and put it in employee lounge areas. This may feel excessive, but how your company listens and incorporates customer feedback should really be required reading for almost all teams so why not make a hard copy that’s easy to pick up.

  • Reference it often:

    • Roadshow it across teams in the company, starting with those who should be referencing it on a regular basis.

    • Get your leadership team to amplify it—everywhere (town halls, all hands, internal emails, etc.)

  • At a much smaller company, information sharing is easier because everyone knows what everyone else is working on. If you can all fit in one room or on one video call, you can probably just do some of these things. If you’re at a mid-sized or larger company, you’ll need to put in the effort to share (overcommunicate) your work.
    
    

Finally, you mentioned needing to do this on an ongoing basis. Each deck/synthesis project is a huge amount of work. The deck can be a living document, but what will likely be significantly more actionable for you and your stakeholders is to commit to a cadence to update it. You could release it internally as a monthly or quarterly “report,” which would give you a timeline to ensure it’s updated with the freshest insights, and give others a reliable sense of when to expect them.

As someone immersed in this problem space for the past six months, the struggle of collecting and synthesizing large and disparate data sets is very real, but there are some promising developments. When trained correctly, generative AI can help uncover key themes in different data types. From summarizing calls and documents to pulling out emergent themes in larger data sets, some exciting new technologies can help make sense of various data sets quicker than any human can.

Full disclosure - Dovetail is laser-focused on solving this problem for organizations of all sizes. If you want to learn how our solution helps you collect, analyze, and share customer insights at scale, check out our website.

Collecting and analyzing structured and unstructured data is indeed one of the hardest things with research. In general, I recommend that you partner up with your UX teams who share this pain and are usually pretty good at it. One of the popular tools in this space is Dovetail but there are many others depending on what you want to do. Website engagement, message testing, regression analysis, max diff insight and more. One of my favorite tools for pre-launch research is conjointly

There are multiple parts to this question so I'll try to address this in 3 parts.

For collecting customer feedback I like to break it into two approaches, one is "always on customer listening" and the other is "project or program related research."
1. Always-on is something PMMs should be doing constantly by talking to sales and CS, listening to Gong calls, attending conferences, running customer surveys etc.
2. Project or program related is when you have a specific goal in mind. It could be developing messaging and positioning for a particular launch, it could be a competitive sprint in which case a targeted win/loss analysis would make sense.

In terms of analyzing the feedback, if it's in the form of surveys of win/loss analysis you get the benefit of the data being analyzed and synthesized for you. However, if it's based on customer calls and talking to the field team you'll have to find a way to jot down notes and observations and pick out key themes and categorize feedback in some way. You could use a tagging system with the following categories: Product, Competitive, Customer Pain Points etc. You can also probably run your interview notes through ChatGPT to analyze and come up with key insights.

For disseminating and sharing customer feedback

1. Ensure clear documentation so anyone can access the feedback

2. Know your audience and tailor the insights accordingly (Product Management, Sales, Marketing, etc) and share the insights in existing syncs.

3. Create a slack channel with cross functional stakeholders and share within the channel

4. Incorporate during planning cycles (both at the business and team level)

Managing scattered customer feedback can indeed be challenging. Thinking about a single account/users to connect the feedback is needed often and systems may not be set up for that. For basics, explore and play with AI - even chatGPT and tools that allow chaining of feedback will enable summary analysis and insight extraction Some approaches that maybe helpful are -

Customer Feedback Platforms:

• Qualtrics - has solutions based on use-cases such as NPS, VoC, CX and EX

• Salesforce - Often under-utilized, salesforce can be a wealth of data not just from sales, but also from integrated customer success teams adding information to your CRM - includes slack integration

Data Integration and Analysis

• Tableau, Looker and other BI tools can offer quick integration into data sources and visualize quant as well as qualitative data including data from Slack

Reporting Tools:

Domo and similar tools can serve as centralized reporting, but TBH, many times an excel does the trick for smaller projects. Sharing the data broadly may need you to extract insights from excel into slides

Ah, the classic “feedback scavenger hunt”! We’ve all been there, trying to piece together customer insights from a labyrinth of surveys, spreadsheets, and snippets in Slack (though I do believe Slack can be used strategically).

Keep in mind, all feedback is good feedback. It's better to have MORE than less!

Of course, the goal is to turn that feedback chaos into a streamlined, insightful narrative. Here’s some best practices I would recommend to collect, analyze, and share customer feedback like a pro:

• Have a single source of truth (but seriously). I use Notion right now and organize the materials by use case or pain point. Here, I add links to EVERYTHING that relates to the main category with a couple bullet points on what has been learned. This includes link to Slack messages, Gong calls, Salesforce notes, etc.

  • If you have a Content Management System like Seismic or Highspot, you can do this as well. Here you can actually see what sales people are engaging with.

• Have a goal in mind. What are you hoping to achieve with this feedback? This will help you consolidate the sources into a compelling narrative.

• Turn that source of truth into an actionable deck based on what you want to DO with that feedback.

  • Examples of things you may want to do with this data:

    • Help prioritize the product roadmap: We heard from x number of customers that want y feature.

    • Win/Loss: Ideally, you would lose a tool like Clozd, but if you're strapped for budget like I am, you can set up Gong filters to pull examples.

  • I recommend doing this quarterly, but if not, then bi-annually and sharing across various teams. Don't keep these GOLD insights in a vacuum!

    • Happy to talk through best practices on how to present this information to various teams (Sales vs. CS vs. Marketing vs. Product, etc.)

• When in doubt, validate the feedback with customers. I've seen the best success in doing this with CAB (Customer Advisory Board) meetings.

  • Get CAB excited to be a part of the journey! I like offering "sneak peeks" of new in-flight product/feature updates.

Some other ways to analyze your various sources:

• Unified Dashboard: Invest in a dashboard tool like Tableau or Looker. These can pull data from various sources (Google Sheets, Salesforce, etc.) and present it in a coherent, visually appealing manner. This will help you spot trends and outliers at a glance.

• Text Analysis: Use text analytics tools like MonkeyLearn or Lexalytics to sift through open-ended responses and social media comments. These tools can categorize feedback, identify common themes, and even detect sentiment.

• Customer Segmentation: Segment your customers based on demographics, purchase history, or behavior. This will allow you to see if certain feedback trends are more prevalent in specific customer groups. Tools like Segment or Amplitude can help with this.

Sharing the insights: the storytelling phase (and my favorite part)

1. Regular Reports: Create a monthly or quarterly feedback report. Keep it concise and visual – think infographics and key takeaways rather than lengthy documents. Tools like Canva or Venngage can make your reports visually appealing. Then I like sharing the updates in a #CustomerFeedback Slack channel, but also saving links to all of those Slack updates in Notion so your teams can easily find any and all historical updates.

2. Feedback Meetings: Hold regular meetings with your team to discuss feedback. Use these sessions to brainstorm solutions and share insights. Keep it interactive – think of it as a mini workshop rather than a dull presentation.

3. Internal Communication Platforms: Use tools like Slack or Microsoft Teams to create dedicated channels for customer feedback. Share highlights, trends, and urgent issues in real-time. Pin important messages and use threads to keep discussions organized.

Pro Tips:

1. Social Engagement is a Goldmine: Sometimes, all it takes is a quick scroll through the community discussions to find the exact insight I need. Or asking a question in a Community Slack channel.

2. Transparency is Key: Let your customers know how their feedback is being utilized to improve the product and enhance their experience. This builds trust and demonstrates your commitment to customer satisfaction.

3. Automation is your friend: Consider automation tools like Zapier or Integromat to create workflows that automatically pull data from your various feedback sources into your dashboard. This way, you’re not manually updating spreadsheets or chasing down data.

4. Make Customer Friends: Want more credibility when sharing POVs based on customer feedback? This is the key. Identify a list of customers, engage with their products/content, build a relationship by writing a fan letter and requesting a brief meeting, gather insights and feedback during the conversation, offer helpful feedback or assistance, maintain ongoing communication, and leverage these relationships for credible, informed input on product or GTM decisions.

5. Foster a culture where feedback is valued and acted upon. Celebrate wins from positive feedback and view criticisms as opportunities to improve. When your team sees feedback as a treasure trove of insights rather than a chore, you’ll find that gathering and using customer feedback becomes a natural part of your workflow.

So there you have it – from scattered feedback to actionable insights, all while keeping it fun and engaging. Now go forth, gather those golden nuggets of customer wisdom, and let them guide your product marketing brilliance! 🚀