Buyer Suggestions Repository: Definition, Varieties, Instruments, and How you can Set One Up | by Kareem Mayan | Apr, 2023

A suggestions repository is a central location the place product groups can accumulate and arrange buyer suggestions. It could actually maintain suggestions from numerous sources corresponding to buyer assist tickets, characteristic requests, surveys, evaluations, and social media. By aggregating all of this suggestions in a single place, product groups can acquire a holistic view of buyer wants and ache factors.

Product managers normally select a instrument or piece of software program to behave as a repository, however actually a repository is anyplace you retain suggestions — even when it’s on paper in a drawer.

Why go to the difficulty of establishing a suggestions repository? The identical motive you’d pan rivers in a Yukon stream: to generate gold. Gathering suggestions provides a ton of advantages:

1. Higher decision-making

A centralized location for suggestions offers your product groups the ability to make knowledgeable selections about which options or enhancements to prioritize. They’ll establish tendencies and patterns in buyer suggestions, serving to to information product growth selections.

Positive, they might do that with out a repository, trying individually on the suggestions they obtain from Slack, Typeform, Assist Scout, Gong, Twitter, and all the opposite apps the place suggestions sits. But when the suggestions is siloed, it’s more durable to attract correct and actionable insights to tell their product technique.

It’s significantly better to place all of your consumer suggestions in a single place and take a look at it collectively.

2. Elevated collaboration

A suggestions repository can encourage cross-functional collaboration throughout your organization. Right here’s who could be concerned:

• Product groups normally arrange the suggestions administration system and use the ensuing suggestions knowledge to prioritize options, write characteristic specs, create wireframes, and prototyping.
• Buyer assist and success groups normally accumulate suggestions from clients and shut the suggestions loop when new options are constructed.
• Gross sales groups normally accumulate suggestions from prospects and would possibly shut the loop with prospects and generally even misplaced offers.
• Advertising and marketing groups generally accumulate suggestions from social media, and also can use suggestions to sharpen their Gross sales copy.
• Software program growth groups is perhaps fascinated about seeing buyer suggestions to grasp why they’re constructing one characteristic and never one other.

With all suggestions in a single place, product managers, builders, buyer success managers, salespeople, and designers can work collectively to deal with buyer wants and ache factors.

3. Improved buyer satisfaction

Clients prefer it when their suggestions is heard and acted upon. By gathering and addressing buyer suggestions, product groups can create merchandise that higher meet buyer wants and finally result in elevated buyer satisfaction.

That reduces danger. By addressing consumer expertise suggestions, product groups can reduce unfavorable evaluations, churn, and finally a failed product launch. Addressing buyer wants and ache factors can create a extra optimistic buyer expertise and cut back the probability of shoppers switching to opponents.

In different phrases, making use of insights from consumer suggestions repositories higher retention, and that means greater web income. Plus, while you construct a greater product, it’s simpler to promote (which implies that you additionally get higher gross sales).

4. Higher analytics capabilities

Once you centralize your suggestions in a repository, you’re capable of convey collectively various kinds of knowledge. For instance, you’re capable of enrich the suggestions you get from Slack with buyer plan or income knowledge out of your CRM or buyer assist instrument.

Suggestions that’s structured with buyer knowledge offers you extra highly effective methods to investigate it. You would possibly slice and cube your suggestions by buyer income to seek out the characteristic requests that might have the best influence on income.

![Screenshot of Savio with feature requests ordered by revenue so you can easily see which features have the highest impact]( class=”caption”>Right here, characteristic requests are sorted by MRR so you possibly can shortly see which options have the largest influence.

Or, you would possibly look to see what options your clients on the Enterprise plan need most and prioritize these.

Nevertheless you wish to slice it, suggestions repositories allow you to phase your suggestions so you possibly can construct evidence-based roadmaps and techniques.

The repository can take totally different varieties relying on the wants of the crew. It may be a easy spreadsheet or a extra subtle product administration software program instrument designed particularly for managing buyer suggestions.

Some standard suggestions repository instruments embody spreadsheets, product growth instruments, venture administration instruments, and purpose-built suggestions repository instruments.

Word: Savio helps B2B SaaS Buyer Success, Product, and Gross sales groups arrange and prioritize product suggestions and have requests. Be taught extra about Savio right here.

Spreadsheets

Spreadsheet software program is usually a easy and cost-effective possibility for smaller product groups. Google Sheets, Excel, and Airtable are all generally used to carry buyer suggestions.

Professionals: Spreadsheets are helpful as a result of they’re cost-effective and could be simply shared between totally different crew members. They’re additionally fairly versatile — ​​they are often personalized to swimsuit a crew’s particular wants and could be simply up to date and modified as these wants change.

Cons: However, spreadsheets typically lack a few of the superior performance of devoted suggestions repository instruments, corresponding to simply pulling collectively suggestions and buyer knowledge, or connecting to product roadmapping instruments.

In addition they are tremendous guide — it’s tough to automate your suggestions course of utilizing spreadsheets. And as you scale, the guide nature of spreadsheets turns into an more and more large barrier. In our expertise and based on the product groups we’ve talked to, they incessantly turn into leaky.

Product growth and problem monitoring instruments

Devoted product growth instruments like Jira and Shortcut could be highly effective choices for managing suggestions repositories for SaaS corporations.

Professionals: Product growth instruments are constructed to be collaboration instruments: A number of crew members can collaborate on a single venture. That makes it straightforward to share suggestions and analyze it collectively. It’s additionally a scalable answer — Jira, Shortcut, and different instruments can deal with giant quantities of suggestions and could be scaled up as a crew grows and receives extra suggestions.

Cons: These instruments have steep studying curves. These instruments are additionally usually unable to combine with and centralize suggestions out of your suggestions channels like electronic mail, a characteristic voting board, or your assist instrument. In addition they aren’t in a position to connect with your buyer knowledge or assist you shut the suggestions loop while you construct a characteristic your clients ask for.

Learn extra: Ought to You Monitor Characteristic Requests in Jira (or Any Different Problem Tracker)?

Mission administration instruments

Mission administration instruments, like Asana, ClickUp, or Trello, can be utilized as suggestions repositories by creating a selected board or venture to gather and arrange buyer suggestions.

Professionals: A few of the benefits of those instruments embody that they’re collaborative and that they match into your present workflows. They could supply a wide range of types for protecting suggestions knowledge, corresponding to in an inventory or Kanban board. They usually’re additionally usually straightforward to be taught because you’ll normally select a instrument you’re already utilizing.

Cons: However, venture and process administration instruments are normally severely restricted for gathering suggestions. They don’t allow you to simply pipe suggestions out of your channels into them, or do superior evaluation on the ensuing suggestions knowledge. In addition they normally don’t allow you to construct visible product roadmaps to share with stakeholders or shut the loop with clients.

Objective-built suggestions administration instruments

Lastly, some instruments — together with Savio — are constructed particularly as a repository for suggestions. They’ve options that allow you to accumulate suggestions from anyplace, slice and cube your suggestions knowledge, prioritize options utilizing knowledge, construct and share product roadmaps, and shut the suggestions loop.

Professionals: You may automate suggestions assortment out of your customer-facing groups with integrations to the apps they use. You are able to do highly effective analytics and perceive the voice of your clients. You may shortly discover the highest-impact options and prioritize them. And a few instruments allow you to even ship personalised close-the-loop messages so you will get credit score while you hearken to your clients.

Cons: However, suggestions instruments normally include an extra price (there are some free ones, however they’ve restricted options). It’s another instrument your groups need to be taught. They usually can require important coaching since lots of your frontline staff would possibly use them to gather suggestions.

Here’s a step-by-step information for establishing a suggestions repository:

1. Decide the scope: Outline the scope of your suggestions repository, together with what varieties of suggestions you’ll accumulate and the way you’ll accumulate it. This might embody characteristic requests, buyer assist tickets, surveys, consumer testing, or evaluations.
2. Select a instrument: Select a instrument to handle your suggestions repository. As famous above, there are a number of choices for instruments. Savio is a strong possibility, however listed below are a bunch extra different suggestions administration instruments if you wish to try some alternate options.
3. Decide knowledge fields: Decide what knowledge fields you’ll need to gather, such because the date the suggestions was acquired, the client’s identify or username, and any related product particulars corresponding to the brand new product characteristic being mentioned. We additionally advocate gathering buyer verbatims.
4. Enrich suggestions with buyer knowledge: Add buyer attributes, like MRR, plan, kind of buyer, and extra, to your suggestions. That is optionally available — however strongly advisable — with the intention to phase your knowledge and distill highly effective insights.
5. Arrange classes or tags: Create classes or tags to assist categorize suggestions, making it simpler to go looking and analyze. For instance, you can use tags like “bug,” “characteristic request,” or “usability problem.”
6. Combine with different instruments: Combine your suggestions repository with the instruments your frontline groups use, corresponding to buyer assist software program or survey platforms, to streamline the suggestions assortment course of.
7. Share the repository: Share the repository along with your product managers and different related groups, corresponding to buyer success, assist, or advertising and marketing, in order that they’ll entry the suggestions and contribute to the evaluation.
8. Overview and replace: Repeatedly assessment and replace your suggestions repository to make sure that it stays helpful and related to your product crew.