At Buffer, we’re very lucky to obtain a whole bunch of characteristic requests each month. Our group is keen to assist us enhance, and it’s an absolute blessing.
We’ve experimented with completely different processes for incorporating consumer suggestions and concepts into our product and preserving our group knowledgeable of real-time updates, however it may be difficult to do this properly.
Within the spirit of transparency, it’s necessary to us that we let of us know when their requests are being labored on, whether or not their thought is technically doable, or if there are different issues we have to prioritize.
Immediately, I’m excited to share the subsequent evolution of constructing along with our group, Buffer Recommendations.
Learn on for the backstory of how we obtained right here and why we’re so enthusiastic about our new suggestions hub and clear roadmap.
Our first clear roadmap
Practically eight years in the past, we launched the primary model of our clear product roadmap.
It was a public Trello board with product ideas from customers organized by stage of improvement. Anybody might vote and depart feedback on a suggestion.
To submit a suggestion, you’d should fill out a Typeform that was embedded on our web site.
We related this Typeform to an inside Slack channel in order that we might control all submissions and have discussions about them.
Lastly, if we determined to discover a characteristic request, we might add it to the clear roadmap. Due to the quantity of requests we obtained, solely a really small proportion of requests would make it to the roadmap.
It wasn’t the very best course of
This method of amassing and managing characteristic requests labored pretty properly, however over time we began to establish some flaws.
Duplicate characteristic requests.
As a result of we did not publicly share each characteristic request, we ended up getting the identical request from completely different folks over and over.
Figuring out who requested the characteristic.
When contemplating whether or not to construct a brand new characteristic, it’s useful to know who the characteristic is for. Presently, there was no manner for us to attach a characteristic request to the consumer who shared it, past manually trying up their e-mail tackle in our database.
Maintaining customers knowledgeable.
After submitting a characteristic request, the consumer didn’t obtain any comply with notifications to allow them to know in regards to the standing of the request. Did we see it? Is it being labored on? Has it been declined? With such a lot of requests, it was just about unimaginable to maintain everybody posted on how their request was being dealt with.
A renewed deal with group and a brand new activity pressure
This 12 months, we recognized our group as a precedence for our group.
Why?
We now have a small advertising and marketing price range and no salespeople. Subsequently, we rely closely on folks having constructive experiences with our product and our group after which recommending us to their buddies to others.
Caring for our group and ensuring they really feel related to us helps construct a greater product, develop our model, and it’s additionally simply the precise factor to do.
Our CEO, Joel Gascoigne, is likely one of the leaders behind our renewed group efforts. To get issues rolling, he created a brand new challenge and taskforce to revamp how we gather and work with characteristic requests. The duty pressure included Brandon from our Product group, Adam from our Advocacy group, Sofia from our Design group, and me, from our Advertising and marketing group.
A enjoyable, cross-functional crew!
The challenge concerned figuring out and implementing a brand new, clear, customer-facing device to exchange the makeshift system we’d created utilizing Trello, Typeform, and Slack.
After doing a little analysis, we landed on featureOS.
With featureOS you may centralize, manage, and reply to buyer requests in a single place. There are a selection of different instruments which can be comparable however we selected featureOS as a result of:
- They have been very aware of our suggestions. They even constructed a brand new characteristic for us!
- Their pricing felt cheap for our wants.
- They provide a lot of integrations.
- Their product felt intuitive.
With this new device, we set about creating model 2.0 of our clear product roadmap.
Probably the most thrilling factor about our new clear roadmap is that it’s, properly, much more clear!
You may see each characteristic request that has been submitted by the group. You may vote or remark in your favourite concepts. And, in fact, you may submit your personal. You too can select to get notified when a characteristic goes from being “Deliberate” to “In Progress,” or “In Progress” to “Full.”
And better of all, you should use your Buffer login credentials to do all of it.
Sharing your suggestions and concepts
Anybody can share a suggestion or vote on present ideas by going to ideas.buffer.com. Current ideas are sorted by essentially the most upvotes, so the preferred ideas might be on the high.
You too can kind by recency, product improvement stage, and votes by you.
All new ideas are mechanically categorized as “In Evaluation”. This provides different customers the chance to upvote the request and our group an opportunity to think about if and when so as to add it to our product roadmap!
So as to add your personal suggestion to the board, hit the Recommend a Characteristic button and fill out the shape.
Viewing the product roadmap
You may see how the way forward for Buffer is shaping up by switching to the Roadmap view. On this view, ideas are sorted into Kanban-style columns. You may remark, vote, or subscribe to a publish from this view, too.
Getting notified about our progress
If you submit a suggestion, you’ll mechanically obtain an e-mail each time somebody feedback on the suggestion or its standing adjustments. You too can subscribe to different ideas to remain up-to-date with any adjustments.
Over to you!
What ought to we construct subsequent? We might love so that you can assist us form the way forward for Buffer by including your votes and ideas to our new roadmap. We will not wait to see your concepts!
