One of the best ways to do that is through product announcements. There are a few different types of them.

A release note is a document that outlines the changes made to a product. Release notes update your users, teammates, and stakeholders on your product development progress.

Changelogs are more technical documents that dive deeper into the changes. They’re primarily for developers to keep track of progress.

We’ll cover different types of product release notes and changelogs, their importance, and best practices. We’ll also showcase some examples and templates, discuss changelog management tools, and help you get the most out of your feature announcements.

If you’ve never published release notes or want to improve your product documentation, follow along. 

Release notes vs changelogs

First off, let’s go over some definitions.

What are release notes?

As mentioned, release notes are basically your product announcements. The target audience is users, so release notes explain changes in plain language, omitting the technical jargon and details. The main purpose is to explain the effect on the user.

A changelog is a file, an article, or a webpage that lists all notable changes to your app, site, etc. Changelogs focus on the technical aspects of the changes, such as new features, bug fixes, code refactoring, and API modifications. They often contain references to specific commits or code changes in the version control system.

Historically, changelogs were for developers. Here’s a typical changelog entry from Facebook on GitHub.

Some people refer to changelogs as release notes. And others make a distinction between these two terms.

Canny’s Changelog tool blurs the lines between release notes and changelogs.

“Coming from the product development world, we saw the need for better product announcements. Users want to know what’s new and improved in your product. And we needed an easy tool that helps us do that. So we created our own tool – for us and other SaaS companies out there. It brings customer feedback and product announcements together.”

Andrew Rasmussen, co-founder at Canny

Whatever you call your product announcements, it’s important to have them. Here’s why.

Why do you need product announcements?

Changelogs and release notes are important for:

• Documenting your work
• Educating your customers
• Keeping your products updated
• Positioning yourself as transparent

Here’s more about each of those reasons.

They document your work

At its core, release notes help your team stay organized. When you have release notes, you can quickly reference them to see what was changed in the past and how.

You’ll also minimize the back and forth with your team through release notes. 

Not every project involves all team members. So, release notes are a great way to keep uninvolved teams informed. They’ll learn about changes as soon as you publish your release notes.

They educate your users

New feature adoption is a common problem for a product manager. Many users crave efficiency but are still hesitant to try new things.

Release notes help push them in that direction. They break down the new feature, guide users through it, and remind them how your tool works. A good release note is a free teacher.

Release notes are also an opportunity to link to additional help docs and remind users where they can find support resources.

They make the product feel fresh

When people use a product, they like to see it evolve. Right now, for example, AI is all the rage. Many tools are adding AI components to their software. And at this point, users are almost expecting it.

If you decide to add AI to your tool, you’d want your users to know about it, right? There’s no point in putting in all the hard work if no one notices. You want your users to know and use these new features.

Especially if your product uses a subscription model, people want to see it updated. Consumer demands change, and your product needs to measure up.

From minor design improvements to major feature enhancements, your tool will go through many iterations. So let your users know about it. Show your progress and invite your users to join you on this journey.

Release notes are a great way to do that.

They help you be transparent

Similar to the previous point, release notes help you keep your customers around. Here’s how.

1. A user submits a feature request
2. That feature idea makes it to the product roadmap
3. They automatically subscribe to the progress of that feature
4. You build that feature and publish a release notes entry
5. They get an auto-notification about it (if you’re using Canny’s Changelog)

Bonus: they can see other updates in your release notes too.

This shows that you listen to your users. That’ll help them trust that you’re improving your product.

People love seeing the “behind the scenes” and “how it’s done” content. Release notes can shed light on your “backstage” software release processes.

Types of product announcements entries

Overall, release notes are pretty standard and straightforward. Depending on the nature of your new release, you can borrow certain parts from each release note entry (which is what we did with Canny’s Changelog).

There are a few types of posts you’d add to your release notes. Let’s discuss each one.

Major update announcements

Intended audience: users, leads, team members, shareholders

When you’re adding a major new feature, make sure to give this announcement the attention it deserves.

These release notes can be longer and include more details, such as:

• Before and after screenshots and screen recordings
• Clear explanation of the change

Note: Give users some time to get used to the change too. Many tools keep the old (legacy) version available for some time for this exact reason.

Non-major update announcement

Intended audience: current users, team members

You can keep it simple when adding or fixing something less groundbreaking. Make sure to explain why you did it( we often show how many upvotes we got on our Canny board, for example).

Explain what changed, but don’t go too deep into the technical details. Instead, link out to help guides and additional resources.

Bug fixes

Intended audience: developers, current users

Bug fixes are a great example of non-major feature enhancements. You don’t want to draw too much attention to the fact that you had bugs. But let’s be real – every software has them. And showing that you’re working on them makes you look transparent and trustworthy.

Security updates

Intended audience: current users

While very important, security updates fall under the category of non-major updates. They showcase your organization as responsible and reliable.

Very few people want to read lengthy descriptions of your security updates. So it’s even more important to keep these short. 

Changelogs

Intended audience: developers

A standard changelog is detailed and technical. It usually includes:

• Version number
• Release date
• Description of the latest release or a fixed bug
• Compatibility with previous versions
• User impact
• Manual for future use
• Screenshots and links

Developers use changelogs to schedule upgrades, troubleshoot issues, and stay updated about the latest software developments.

Version control system logs

Intended audience: developers

There are a few terms that people use interchangeably to describe these updates: 

• Version control system logs 
• Commit logs
• Revision history

These are records that keep track of changes made to a project or set of files over time in a version control system (VCS).

A common example is GitHub. Developers use it to share code, work on projects together, and manage and track code changes.

Github logs are visible to the public. This is a space where developers can collaborate and share ideas – kind of like social media for coding.

Version control system logs usually include the following information:

• Commit ID: a unique identifier for each change or commit made in the VCS. Typically, it’s a hexadecimal string, such as a SHA-1 hash.
• Author
• Date and time
• Commit message: a descriptive message that summarizes the purpose or nature of the changes made in the commit
• Changes: a detailed listing of the modified, added, or deleted files in the commit + specific changes made to each file. This may include line-by-line differences or a unified diff format.
• Branch or tag. Branches are different lines of development. Tags indicate specific points in the version history – releases or milestones for instance.
• Merge information: if the commit involves merging changes from multiple branches, the log will contain information about the branches involved.

A project’s version control logs are crucial to tracking and understanding its history.

Developers can:

• Find the record of all changes
• Review and revert to previous versions
• Figure out who made specific changes
• Understand the evolution of the codebase over time
• Coordinate work and collaborate
• Resolve conflicts when merging changes from multiple sources

If you’re looking for more inspiration and ideas, BroadInstitute provides great sample changelogs. Check them out here.

Product update formats

Different companies use different formats for their product announcements. Depending on your product and audience, you can pick a format that works best for you. It’s important to choose a format and stick with it. We’ll explain why consistency is so important later in the article. First, let’s walk through the various formats.

Text file

This is the simplest and most common format for a software release note. You can simply create a text document that lists the changes in reverse chronological order (put the newest releases at the top).

Each entry should include the version number, a brief description of the change, and any relevant details.

This format is easy to create and read for most users.

Changelog format

If you prefer a more technical approach, you can follow a typical changelog format. You can include categories like:

• Added
• Changed
• Fixed
• Removed

This format is particularly useful for developers and technical users who want a quick overview of the changes in each category.

With a changelog tool, you can also create HTML files for example.

Markdown

Markdown is a lightweight markup language that helps you format text quickly and easily. You can write release notes in Markdown and easily convert them into HTML or other formats.

If you’re hosting your updates on a platform like GitHub, you’ll likely use the Markdown format.

HTML

HTML provides a bit more flexibility with styling and layout. You can include links, images, and other multimedia elements, making your release notes more visually appealing.

PDF

PDF is a good option if you need to share your updates with external stakeholders or use them in official statements. The layout and formatting stay consistent, and it looks presentable. 

PDF is easy to read, print, and share across teams.

What to include

Depending on the format you choose, consider including the following elements to make your announcements more engaging.

Bullet-points

You can create a series of bullet points, each bullet representing a specific product change or a feature.

If you’re looking for a concise and skimmable format, this is it. It gets straight to the point.

Visuals

We recommend combining some written descriptions with visuals like screenshots and GIFs. They break up the text, help visual learners, and tell a story better than words can.

With screenshots, we recommend drawing readers’ attention to the part that you’re talking about. You can add boxes around the most important parts and/or blur the irrelevant parts of the page. Here’s an example.

Videos

Creating a quick video walkthrough can make your updates even easier to understand. Some people are visual learners, so they’d enjoy seeing rather than reading.

Generating release notes

There are a number of ways to generate release notes.

1. Version Control System (VCS) history

Version control systems like Git allow you to generate release notes based on commit histories. For instance, you can extract commit information using the git log command with specific formatting options, such as dates, authors, and changes.

2. Commit messages

Encourage your developers to write clear and informative commit messages describing each commit’s changes. Following a consistent format, such as the changelog format, can be helpful.

3. Integration with issue tracking systems

You can automatically create release notes by connecting issues and pull requests to versions or milestones in your issue tracker. You can use tools like Jira or GitHub for that.

4. Manual changelog

You can manually keep track of the changes you make to each version. You’d need to maintain a separate file where you add entries for each release, including the added features, changes, and bug fixes.

5. Automated tools

You can generate a structured and formatted changelog with these tools. They analyze your commit history, tags, and metadata. Some popular changelog generation tools include:

• Conventional commits

This tool follows the conventional commit message format and generates changelogs.

• GitHub Changelog Generator

This tool is designed to generate changelogs for GitHub repositories.

• Keep a Changelog

This project provides guidelines and a tool-agnostic format for writing changelogs. It also offers a Python library called towncrier for generating changelogs.

6. Canny’s Changelog

Canny’s Changelog is different. It’s designed so that everyone, even non-developers, can:

• Add entries
• Easily understand it
• Quickly find what they’re looking for
• Sort the entries
• Find more information

It’s much more visual and concise than most other changelogs. And it looks like a newsfeed, not a developer portal.

Canny’s Changelog is available on all plans! Here’s what our clients say about it.

[insert a GiveButter case study clip about the changelog]

Our changelog lets you easily tie your feature requests with product updates and notify your users.

Best practices for release notes

Here are a few more guidelines to make sure you publish engaging release notes. Follow these tips if you’d like your release notes to be an asset instead of a burden.

Make them clear & concise

It takes time to find the time, energy, and motivation to read long texts. It’s even more true when it comes to technical language.

If you want your release notes to be a truly useful source of information, make them as straightforward as possible. Answer the following questions:

• What was the problem?
• What changed?
• Why does it matter?
• How does it affect the user?
• Where can they learn more?

Simplify your language, keep sentences short, and break up the long paragraphs.

As a general rule, stick to only relevant information. It’s easy to get very involved and start describing the whole history of your tool. But leave that for another day.

Remember: even if your product is technical, you might have non-technical users. So try to make it interesting and valuable for them as well.

Post consistently

Some changes might be more significant than others. Still, try to publish most of your updates as release notes. People appreciate your updates – they’ll feel like they’re with you on your journey. They also get a sense that you’re constantly improving.

This will also keep you accountable. Knowing your users expect consistent updates will make you hit your deadlines more often.

Format consistently

Also, keep the format of your release notes consistent. Here’s an example from Keepachangelog:

• Added new features
• Changed for changes in existing functionality
• Deprecated for soon-to-be-removed features
• Removed for now removed features
• Fixed for any bug fixes
• Security in case of vulnerabilities

Use a variety of formatting to make your release notes entries even easier on the eye.

Headings help break down the text and logically group the changes. So does white space.

Text formatting (bold, underlined, italics) highlights the most essential parts and helps readers skim the text. Bulleted and numbered lists have a similar effect.

Follow reverse chronological order

Always publish the latest changes at the top – that’s the most relevant information for your users. They can scroll down to see your historical progress too.

Use visuals

Often, it’s easier to show than to describe something. Visuals like screenshots, GIFs, and videos can help here. Moreover, they’ll familiarize your users with the new features quicker. Next time they log in, they’ll remember the visual and know how to use the new feature.

Visuals also break up the text and make reading easier and more enjoyable.

Insert links

We keep repeating that release notes need to be short. But what if you’ve released a major change and need to explain it in detail?

That’s where you insert links to in-depth help articles and additional documentation.

You can also use your release notes to keep your users engaged. While they’re hooked, don’t let them get away. Link to related resources and keep them on your site longer!

Avoid confusion

We can’t stress this enough: make it simple. Here are some tips to help you do that:

• Stay away from confusing date formats (we recommend sticking to YYYY-MM-DD format)
• List deprecations, removals, and any breaking changes
• Document only noteworthy differences
• Don’t list commit log diffs

Involve other departments

If you’re using Canny for your product announcements, your users will get automatic notifications when a new changelog is published.

Still, you can amplify the message further. Involve your product marketing team – they can help spread the word.

Release notes and changelog examples

Now that you know what makes good release notes and changelogs, let’s illustrate it with examples.

Many of our clients use Canny’s Changelog tool. They find it easy to keep users up-to-date in one central location.

“When we built our Changelog, we wanted it to be more than your typical list of changes. We created a tool that helps you close your feedback loop.”

Sarah Hum, co-founder at Canny

When a new changelog entry is published, everyone who submitted, upvoted, or commented on this request gets an automatic notification. That includes current users and prospects. And this really makes the sales job easier.

Imagine this: a lead previously requested a feature and didn’t convert because it didn’t exist. Now they’re getting a notification that this feature is shipped. If that feature was a real dealbreaker to them, they might reconsider buying from you now.

Your current users will also find out about the new feature right away and will be able to try it out.

Canny’s changelog empowers you to follow our advice above, including custom formatting.

Here’s what it looks like.

AgencyAnalytics keeps their updates brief and to the point. When they introduce new features, they include visuals to keep it engaging and break up the text. See some examples of great release notes below.

We love ClickUp’s use of emojis and links – it keeps the readers engaged and curious to learn more. Notice how they link out to release notes and more information. They don’t clutter their changelog entry with it.

CommentSold’s changelog entries are typically longer, but they’re still easy to read and understand. It’s a great example of a more detailed but still digestible changelog. They walk you through the steps you need to take, and text styling (bold text in this instance) makes it easier to read.

Hive is great at telling a story in their changelog. Here’s what wasn’t working, how we fixed it, and how it works now. We love how they show a screenshot of a feature request that led to the development of this feature.

Respond.io is another example of a short and highly visual changelog.

GitHub’s changelog is another great example. They also have a separate Twitter account and an RSS feed for users to follow along the journey. It’s important to be where your users are!

We use our own changelog too!

Sometimes, it’s still hard to get going. That’s why we’ve prepared some templates – check out the next section.

Release notes and changelog templates

If you’re inspired to get started or amplify your changelog (and we hope you are!), check out these templates. They’ll give you prompts for your release notes, changelog entries, and some examples to spark that initial motivation.

Here is a release notes template for a bug fix.

And another release notes template to announce a new feature.

To get these + more editable templates, download our free Changelog templates right here!

Why product announcements are important

There’s no better way to keep all your stakeholders involved, engaged, and updated than through release notes.

Product update announcements don’t need to be a hassle. With a changelog tool like Canny, you can keep track of all your progress and delight your customers at the same time.

Book a free Canny demo and see how easy it is!

Maria Vasserman

Maria loves all things creative – writing, photography, movies and beyond When she's not creating content to tell the world about Canny, she's either photographing a wedding, jumping at a rock concert, camping, travelling, snowboarding, or walking her dog

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The post Why do you need release notes? (featuring great examples and templates) first appeared on Canny Blog.

The post Why do you need release notes? (featuring great examples and templates) appeared first on Canny Blog.

But how do you get there? How do you move past being “another SaaS tool” and become a tool people rave about?

We’ve found that the best way is to ask our users. It sounds simple, and it is when you have the proper setup.

After you ask, make sure to listen to the response. It’s easy to skip this step!

Let’s dive into the customer feedback strategy to help you maximize this valuable resource.

What is customer feedback?

People love submitting reviews. You probably love doing it too, especially when something goes wrong. There’s something cathartic about putting your thoughts and opinions out there.

What can you do about customers’ online reviews? And especially negative feedback? Well, you can start by controlling the narrative.

Reviews are just one form of feedback, but they illustrate the point well.

Customer feedback is any commentary your users share about your product and their customer experience. Feedback can come from:

• Reviews
• Feature requests
• Bug reports
• Social posts
• Chatbot inquiries
• Sales calls
• Emails
• Customer survey responses
• And more

To make sense of all the feedback, product managers create a strategy and utilize customer feedback programs.

Customer feedback strategy

Here’s what we recommend to make sure your customer feedback strategy is sound and beneficial.

Set clear goals

Ask yourself:

• Why do you want to collect and manage feedback?
• Do you have clear intentions to act on it?
• Is everyone in your team aligned?

Collect feedback, but do it for the right reasons. That’ll set you up for success.

Choose the right channels

How do you know which feedback channel to focus on?

Think about where you currently communicate with your customers. And, more importantly, where do you tend to get the most engagement? This can vary from customer to customer. 

If your users never check their emails but are very active in a chatbot, send an invitation to leave feedback there.

If some users love talking about your tool on Twitter, join those conversations and ask for feedback there (you can make the conversation private).

Think about not just your current users, but also potential customers. And try to be where they are. It’s the best way to really connect with them and discover their needs.

For example, potential customers (or leads) can mention something during sales calls. So take note of those ideas.

You also won’t know until you try. So test out several channels to determine what’s right for your audience.

Get all data in one place

Whatever you choose, keep all the data in one place. You can start with a spreadsheet, an idea board, or a feedback board like Canny. But avoid having all feedback in different places. It’ll get too complex very quickly. Plus, you won’t be able to quantify how many people request similar features.

With a system like Canny, you can invite your users to submit ideas and add votes to existing ones. You can also vote on behalf of your users and prospects.

Pick a feedback management system

Collecting, organizing, and making sense of feedback is easy when you have a proper setup. You won’t need to scramble to get feedback into one place or struggle to understand and derive any valuable insight from it. Canny helps you do all that.

Listen, respond, and engage

One of the things people hate the most is being ignored. An unhappy customer is often the one who doesn’t receive enough attention. That’s where lots of customer churn happens!

So, when you collect feedback, don’t ghost your users. Really listen to their opinions, ask for clarification where needed, engage in a conversation, and show that you care. In other words, close that customer feedback loop.

Analyze

Take time to make sense of all the data. Here’s what you can do:

• Look for patterns and common themes
• Use qualitative and quantitative analysis techniques to gain meaningful insights
• Perform feedback analysis
• Check which ideas are the most popular
• Segment your users to understand what your priority groups want
• Develop a prioritization formula to score ideas objectively
• Determine which products will delight your customers and prospects the most

Here’s an example of how segmentation works in Canny. When you segment your users, you’ll quickly see how you can best serve your most valuable customers.

Take action

Involve other team members. Share your findings, decide what to implement, and keep everyone in the loop. Once you start building something, let the world know! Add it to a public roadmap your customers can see.

You’ll motivate your users to continue leaving feedback. They’ll see that it matters and makes a difference.

Iterate and improve

Always assess what’s working and what’s not. Don’t be afraid to rethink your strategy. That’s what this guide is for! Go back to the drawing board, try different approaches and techniques, and see what happens. You won’t know until you try.

Now that we’ve covered feedback strategy, let’s dig a little deeper and discuss customer feedback programs and systems.

Customer feedback programs

A customer feedback program comes from your overall strategy (check the previous section) for obtaining and using customer feedback. It’s sometimes called the voice of the customer (VoC) program.

Your program should include clear intentions and goals for managing user feedback. That includes how you’ll collect, organize, prioritize, and act on that feedback. You must also define where, when, and how to gather feedback.

Once you’re ready to outline precisely how to collect that feedback, you can move on to building your customer feedback systems.

Customer feedback systems

Remember how we mentioned that you need the right setup? This is what we mean.

Customer feedback will only work in your favor if you know how to manage, analyze, and make decisions based on it. Just reviewing it won’t really move the needle. And that’s why you need customer feedback systems.

These systems help you collect, analyze, and act on customer feedback and opinions.

But what are some of those systems?

Start by collecting feedback. You can do that through:

1. Customer feedback survey – asking your users for their opinions directly

• NPS (net promoter score), CES (customer effort score), CSAT (customer satisfaction score), etc. – popular ways to measure customer satisfaction

2. Feedback form – requesting feedback after a specific action or conversation
3. Social media monitoring – watching what people say about you on social media
4. Online review platform – monitoring sites like G2 and Capterra
5. Customer support and customer success interactions – answering questions and asking users to rate the conversation
6. Idea board/feedback management portal – a tool like Canny is great for that

As you can see, there are lots of sources of feedback. To analyze it all better, it’s best to bring it all in one place first. And that’s what Canny allows you to do!

Once you’ve set up a way to receive feedback, you can start digging into your users’ real feelings toward your product.

Customer insights will help you figure out what features to build next and how to increase loyalty. That’s why feedback analysis is so important.

In short, you need to look for patterns, determine your main goal with feedback, and show your customers that you care.

Why does it all matter?

Now all this may seem like a lot of work. Not just collecting, but also processing and making sense of all that feedback? That’s a handful.

The truth is, you’ll end up with more work on your hands if you don’t have a customer feedback program. That’s because people will speak up no matter what. So you, as a product manager, have to manage that feedback anyway.

And if you don’t, you mind end up building features no one cares about. 

When you set up a system to collect all that feedback in one place, managing it will become easier. You can even automate certain aspects of it!

While working with that feedback, you’ll uncover valuable insights and customer sentiment. You’ll know what to work on next, relate to your customers on a deeper level, and build a better product as a result!

Now that we’ve covered the importance of customer feedback programs, let’s explore them a little more.

How to ask for feedback

After you’ve decided to build a customer feedback management program, it’s time to collect that feedback. Rather than trying to catch all the ideas that fly at you from every direction, you can set up a system to help you manage it all.

We mentioned a few ways to collect feedback in the systems section. Our favorite, of course, is using a feedback management tool (like Canny!). It shouldn’t be the only way you gather feedback, but we recommend making it central to your system.

Your feedback management system should house all your feedback. Having all feedback in a central spot makes managing and analyzing it a snap. 

Here’s how to invite users to submit feedback in your idea portal.

Where to ask for feedback

We’re big proponents of having a feedback button prominently displayed at all times. This will minimize frustration, give users an outlet, and position you as transparent and open.

Other ways of collecting feedback include:

• Survey: NPS, CES, and CSAT are the most popular ones
• Email: distribute a survey, link to your feedback board, and more
• Social media: ask for ideas, redirect to your feedback portal
• Customer support: use chatbots or reach out to customers directly
• Customer review sites: let your customers know they can leave feedback there
• Sales calls: note any feedback or ideas that prospects bring up during sales calls

Let’s illustrate with some examples.

How tech companies collect and action user feedback

Here’s how Missive integrates Canny within their tool. Users can check out their roadmap and submit feedback without leaving Missive. It’s a very seamless experience for their users.

Similarly, Taskade embeds Canny into their site.

ClickUp has a button within their tool that redirects users to their Canny board.

Giving your users an easy way to give feedback will make them much more likely to share their opinions.

Here’s an example of a survey invite from LinkedIn. It quickly explains why this survey is important, how long it’ll take, and where the feedback data will be used.

Now let’s discuss the best time to ask for feedback.

When to ask for feedback

The most common advice is – ask a happy customer for feedback.

However, we believe you can learn even more from unsatisfied customers. Sure, public reviews are better when coming from happy clients. But, if you’re interested in improving, ask someone who’s not 100% satisfied.

You can set up triggers that automatically ask for their feedback after they perform a certain action. For example, they’ve just interacted with your customer support agent. Now you can ask them to review the conversation.

Another idea: ask for feedback on an anniversary of using your product. You can also make it a big deal and congratulate your users! Make them feel special, and then ask for something.

If you’ve just introduced a new feature, you can collect feedback after someone uses it. It’ll help you determine whether it’s a successful feature or not. It can also guide you towards improving it.

Now let’s discuss what you can ask to get the most useful type of feedback.

What to ask

Here are some common questions for you to consider. We use many of these during case studies, check-up calls, renewal calls, and so on.

Whenever and wherever you ask for feedback, think of your primary goal, and try to phrase your request very clearly.

Don’t use all of these questions at once though! Pick the ones that matter the most to you right now.

“When planning your customer feedback interviews, be sure to document internal assumptions and biases, as these can often turn into leading questions. When you write down assumptions, you’re reminded to validate them, not reinforce them by influencing customers to answer in a specific way.”

Eileen Licitra, Product Marketing Strategist at Insight Out Marketing

Open-ended questions:

• What are you trying to achieve by using our product?
• What challenges led you to try our product?
• How did you find our registration process?
  • Is there anything you would change?
• Is there anything that prevents you from using our product? 
• What aspects of our product do you like? 
• What aspects of our product would you change? 
• What improvements would you suggest?
• How is your overall experience with our company?
• Is there anything else you would like to share?

“Pick one option” questions:

• How satisfied are you with our product? (CSAT survey question)
  • Very satisfied
  • Satisfied
  • Neutral
  • Dissatisfied
  • Very dissatisfied
• How easy or difficult is it for you to solve your issue with the help of our product? (CES survey question)
  • Very easy
  • Easy
  • Neutral
  • Difficult
  • Very difficult
• How likely are you to recommend our product to others? (NPS survey question)

• How responsive are our customer service representatives?
  • Very responsive
  • Responsive
  • Neutral
  • Unresponsive
  • Very unresponsive

Remember only to pick the questions that help you achieve your immediate goals.

With Canny, you can create an open invitation for feedback. You won’t need to send out separate surveys and think about what to ask. Your users will submit their opinion when they have something to share. That feedback can come from your chatbot, your sales rep, your support conversations, and more.

Tips for managing and organizing feedback

Collecting feedback is a lot of work. But the real work begins when you start processing it.

Once you receive feedback, it’s easy to get overwhelmed. Especially if you’ve implemented a few of the systems we mentioned above.

Suddenly, you might feel like there’s too much feedback, and it’s coming at you from all directions.

It’s true – managing feedback can be a challenge. But it doesn’t have to be.

You need to set up a feedback management system. Ideally, all feedback is in one place, and you can quickly identify patterns. A good system will help you manage duplicate feedback and track how many customers voted for it. 

With Canny, you can do exactly that.

Canny connects to many different tools and helps you with gathering customer feedback.

You can also invite your users to submit feedback directly in Canny, upvote existing ideas, comment, and discuss with each other.

Then, you can see which feedback’s getting traction and focus on that.

To make it even better, you can prioritize your feedback based on custom criteria and select the winning ideas.

Things to avoid

Making false promises

Sometimes, customers get their hopes up. If you’ve done a good job, they know you listen to their feedback and genuinely care. However, that doesn’t mean you’ll build every feature they request.

Make that clear from the get-go. Explain that you prioritize the most essential features for your business at this time. Ensure them that their opinion matters and that you’ll consider their ideas later. But don’t make promises you can’t keep.

Asking too often

Yes, there’s such a thing as “overcommunicating.” Customers get tired of emails and feedback requests. So, instead of burdening them with those, make your feedback board available to them at all times.

Be strategic with your communications and walk them through how easy it is to leave feedback. This way, they’ll want to do it without reminders.

Close the feedback loop

Remember: managing user feedback is an ongoing process. It’s never set and done. Your product, users, and the environment around you constantly change. So you need to evolve too.

By listening to user feedback and implementing customer feedback programs, you can drastically improve your customer experience.

A happy customer also often makes a loyal customer.

So use the power of customer feedback! And start building better products today. Canny can help you get there. Check out what it can do for you, and book a free demo here.

Maria Vasserman

Maria loves all things creative – writing, photography, movies and beyond When she's not creating content to tell the world about Canny, she's either photographing a wedding, jumping at a rock concert, camping, travelling, snowboarding, or walking her dog

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The post Why customer feedback is essential: the ultimate guide to effective feedback programs first appeared on Canny Blog.

The post Why customer feedback is essential: the ultimate guide to effective feedback programs appeared first on Canny Blog.

Especially when the economy is unstable, prioritizing the most impactful projects is key. Optimizing resources really comes down to feature prioritization as well.

But what exactly is product feature prioritization and how do you approach it? We’re breaking it down in this blog post – keep reading! 

What is product prioritization?

Product prioritization is the process of deciding which features to develop first. Usually, a product manager assesses the potential impact on the user and the business when prioritizing. 

They consider factors such as:

• Customer need
• Market demand
• Technical feasibility
• Resource constraints
• Potential benefits versus the costs

The goal is to determine the most valuable and achievable features to build. Essentially, it’s deciding what to work on first to ensure the most significant benefits.

We recently held a webinar around resource optimization and prioritization. Product experts from Salesforce, Google and Mastercard joined us to talk about it. Check out the recording.

Why product prioritization matters

When you don’t prioritize, you essentially rely on your intuition. You might think that you know your product and your customers best. You may also have a very specific product vision. And you might be getting ideas from lots of different sources.

Ultimately, it doesn’t matter where you get your ideas. What’s important is prioritizing (aka picking the best) ideas. In other words, you need to have an objective way of determining which features are the most important.

Here are a few reasons to prioritize: 

• It helps your product team focus on developing the most valuable and impactful features from the product backlog
• It saves time and resources by avoiding wasted effort on low-value features
• It can help ensure that user needs are met, leading to higher customer satisfaction and retention
• You can stay competitive by delivering features that meet market demand
• You can prioritize features that generate the most revenue or cost savings

All in all, there’s no reason not to prioritize. But how exactly do you do that? Well, there are many different ways. And we’re going to break down the most popular and effective ones.

Models/frameworks

Most product managers rely on a specific framework to prioritize. These systems essentially help you make sense of the mess that idea management could become. Without a working system, it’s easy to get overwhelmed, miss important requests, and lose alignment with the team.

When you adopt one, or a few, of these prioritization methods, you can see the value of each idea. This, in turn, helps you plan and prioritize your overall roadmap.

Let’s go over some prioritization frameworks and models to help you prioritize product features.

Keep in mind your overarching product strategy when selecting a model. You’ll likely find that certain models fit better with your workflow.

RICE

Intercom introduced the RICE model, which is now one of the most popular ones. It uses four main factors to rate any project or idea: 

• Reach – how many stakeholders will this affect?
• Impact – how important is this feature to your customers? (low, medium, or high)
• Confidence – how sure are you that your reach and impact estimates are correct? (%)
• Effort – how many people need to be involved? How many days, weeks, or months will this take? 

After you’ve estimated all of these numbers, you can calculate the score using this formula.

 RICE = (Reach x Impact x Confidence) / Effort

Example

Let’s walk through an example.

Reach: How many users will this feature affect?

Score: 6 (the feature will affect a significant portion of your user base, but not everyone)

Impact: How much will this feature affect the key metric you’re trying to improve?

Score: 9 (the feature has the potential to significantly increase revenue)

Confidence: How confident are you in your estimates of reach and impact?

Score: 7 (you’re fairly confident in your estimates, but there’s still some uncertainty)

Effort: How much effort will it take to build this feature?

Score: 4 (the feature is fairly complex and will require a significant amount of development time)

To calculate the RICE score for this feature, you simply multiply the scores for each factor together:

RICE score = 6 * 9 * 7 / 4 = 94.5

Based on this RICE score, you might decide to prioritize this feature over others with lower scores. However, you would also want to take into account other factors, such as strategic alignment and resource availability, before making a final decision.

Remember: you can determine what each of these factors means to you.

For example, “reach” can be the number of new customers you expect to get after shipping a new feature. Or maybe it’s the number of new leads that will come.

Same with effort – some choose to focus on the hours it’ll take. Others focus on how many people need to be involved. And some combine these two to get a “person-months” number. Choose what makes the most sense to you.

Pros: Bird’s eye view. This framework helps you see the product from different perspectives.

Cons: Time – this framework is time-consuming. It’s also not 100% accurate since it relies on estimates.

Best suited for: established products. You need existing data to make future projections with this model.

ICE metric

If you liked the previous framework, but want something a bit simpler, ICE might be the model for you.

This scoring method ranks the impact, confidence, and ease of building a particular feature.

ICE score = impact * confidence * ease

Pros: quick and simple

Cons: subjective

Best suited for: time-sensitive projects, picking a winner out of a few already shortlisted options

Example

Imagine you’re considering three ideas:

1. Billing system improvements
2. Adding a community tab
3. Updating receipt design

Here’s how you could use ICE to score these ideas.

Community tab is the clear winner here.

Impact–Effort matrix

Aka effort-impact or a 2×2 matrix. It’s also sometimes called value vs. complexity/effort/impact matrix. It works particularly well for visual thinkers (marketers or designers for example). This matrix shows how the value (impact) of a feature relates to the complexity of development (effort). Here’s how it works. 

1. The product manager starts with a hypothesis and outlines all the required features
2. Product teams that will work on this project (product, engineering, design, etc) vote on where to place each feature on the impact and effort dimensions

 Every feature ends up in one of the four quadrants: 

• Quick win – low effort and high impact
• Big bet – high effort and high impact
• Fill-in – low effort and low impact
• Money pit – high effort and low impact

Example

Let’s say you are a product manager for a mobile app. You have these four potential features to prioritize:

• Add search functionality
• Create a new onboarding flow
• Allows users to save items to a wishlist
• Redesign the homepage

Rate the impact and effort: For each feature, you need to rate the potential impact on your app’s success. You also have to rate the required effort. You can use a scale from 1 to 10. It’ll look like this:

Then, to make it even more visual, you can create a 2×2 matrix like this.

Based on this matrix, you’ll prioritize search functions, followed by the new onboarding flow. And, thanks to this exercise, you can tell that a wishlist feature isn’t the best idea right now. Homepage redesign might be nice, but it’s not worth the effort right now either.

Pros: easy to use and understand. It’s visual and intuitive.

Cons: limiting with a high emphasis on impact. Not every good idea will have a high impact.

Best suited for: projects with only a few features. Otherwise, it can get pretty confusing.

When you have many features in each quadrant, you need to somehow score them further. For example, you can use the next prioritization method.

Feasibility, Desirability, and Viability (FDV) scorecard

Using this method, you score each feature idea from 1 to 10 and try to assess whether it’s feasible, desirable, and viable. Here’s what it all means:

• Feasibility – do we have enough resources, skills, time, tools, storage, people, etc to build this?
• Desirability – do our users really want this feature? Does it solve their problem? Viability – will our users pay for the feature? Will it bring significant ROI?

 To use this scorecard, create a simple spreadsheet or a table and assign a score to each potential feature. Then add them all together. Have an open discussion with everyone who’ll be involved in the development.

Example

Let’s walk through an example of four potential features that an ecommerce company might want to prioritize.

In this scenario, the mobile app wins.

Pros: puts customers in the center and considers potential risks.

Cons: relies heavily on qualitative data.

Best suited for: high-level discussions.

If you don’t have enough customer feedback, it might be challenging to accurately assess desirability and viability, though.

Weighted score

In this model, you give each feature a score based on two things: its importance, and how well it meets the needs of the user. Then you multiply the scores by the weight. This helps you rank the features in order of priority (higher scores = greater value to the customer).

Pros: Flexible, objective and comprehensive

Cons: Complex to set up; omits qualitative data

Best suited for: teams that have time and resources to set it up and adjust along the way

Example

What we love about this approach is that we can select our own criteria. Here’s how we made it work for us.

We took the factors that mattered the most to us and assigned a score to each of them (up to 100%). For example, we weigh more urgent items (priority) higher than design readiness.

That’s because urgent means it will no longer be relevant if we miss the window. Other projects may suffer, and we might need to reallocate resources to make this one happen fast. But, based on our calculations, it’ll be worth it in the end. 

We add these factors to our prioritization formula in Canny. It then scores ideas for us and tells us what the biggest priority should be. From there, it’s easy to add the winning ideas to the product roadmap and get to work.

We feel like this particular system gives us and our clients a good idea of what matters most at any given time.

You can also adjust the criteria and the weight as you progress and your priorities change. Each team and project might have different criteria, and this method allows for that flexibility.

It could be difficult to assign weight to each impact factor, though. So discuss it with your team to get alignment from the very beginning.

Cost of delay

“Cost of delay is a way to communicate the impact of time on the outcomes the company wishes to achieve.”

Joshua Arnold, CPO at Apex Group

Cost of delay framework helps you assess the cost of not finishing a project or feature. Maybe you choose to postpone, but you’d like to understand what it will cost you. If so, this is the model for you.

Here’s the formula and how to use it:

1. Estimate revenue per unit of time (how much additional revenue can you expect every month if you had that feature)
2. Estimate the time it will take to develop that specific feature
3. Divide the estimated revenue by the estimated time = cost of delay

Cost of delay = Estimated revenue / estimated time

Pros: focuses on money

Cons: subjective without accurate metrics

Best suited for: new product launches and other time-sensitive projects

Example

Your competitor releases a cool new feature and is luring in your clients. You need to react and build a similar feature or at least offer an alternative.

Your sales team also hears about this feature from prospects. You work together to estimate how much money you’re losing to competitors. At the same time, you can calculate how much additional MRR you could make if you had this feature.

Then you estimate that your engineering team would need about 5 weeks to develop a similar feature.

Finally, you divide the potential MRR by those 5 weeks and get your cost of delay.

Keep in mind: estimating ‌monetary value is effective, but also subjective. Talk to your sales team and invite them into the conversation. They can help you understand the associated deal value.

Weighted shortest job first

Weighted shortest job first is a part of the SAFe Lean-Agile framework. It uses the cost of delay from the previous section. With this framework, you’d divide the cost of delay by job duration. This framework is similar to value vs complexity, but is a bit more detailed. Here’s the formula.

WSJF = CoD/Job duration

Pros: Focused on ROI, consistent

Cons: Time-consuming to calculate

Best suited for: minimum marketable features

Example

Let’s illustrate with an example using three ideas.

Based on the calculated WSJF scores, you would prioritize the tasks in descending order of their scores:

Idea 3: WSJF = 480,000

Idea 2: WSJF = 80,000

Idea 1: WSJF = 50,000

MoSCoW method

This product prioritization framework is great because it’s also fairly simple. The idea is to use plain language and categorize all ideas into:

• Must have – features that make or break your product
• Should have – important but not vital features
• Could have – nice to have ideas
• Will not have – think back to the money pit examples from the Impact-effort matrix

Pros: flexible, collaborative, simple and quick

Cons: subjective, lacks big picture perspective

Best suited for: mature products

Example

Here’s how we would categorize our Canny features using this method. 

This analysis is especially useful if less technical team members are involved in a project. Be careful though: it’s easy to end up with too many must-have features.

Kano model

This model helps you figure out what features are most likely to satisfy customers. Then you weigh that against the investment to build the feature. It helps you determine which features are the most important to your customers. Knowing that you can truly build the right features that improve the customer experience.

Using the Kano model, you can group potential features into categories. For example, the categories could be:

• Delight customers
• Satisfy customers
• Disappoint customers

This model, unlike others, doesn’t have a specific formula. Instead, it utilizes a two-dimensional graph to plot customer satisfaction against the presence or absence of a particular feature. The results are then categorized into the five Kano categories: delighters, performance, basics, satisfied, and dissatisfied.

Pros: puts customers first

Cons: time-consuming and biased

Best suited for: startups striving to generate user feedback

Example

A product manager is working on a new feature: playlist recommendations in the music streaming app. Here’s how they’d use the Kano model.

1. Interview customers about this potential feature
2. Plot customer sentiment on a chart like the above

This way you can prioritize and focus on developing features that fall into the delighters and performance categories to maximize customer satisfaction.

Eisenhower matrix

This matrix helps separate ideas based on their importance and urgency.

“I have two kinds of problems: the urgent and the important. The urgent are not important, and the important are never urgent” 

Dwight D. Eisenhower, US President

You can visually plot ideas on a 4-section diagram.

The outcome of this exercise would be:

• High priority: very important and very urgent
• Medium priority: important but not urgent
• Medium priority: urgent but not important
• Low priority: not urgent and not important

Pros: plain, open, and business-targeted

Cons: lacks the technical aspect, a bit oversimplified

Best suited for: more stable environments

Example

Let’s illustrate with these four example tasks:

Idea 1: Fix critical security vulnerability

Idea 2: Implement new feature requested by a key customer

Idea 3: Review and update documentation

Idea 4: Organize team meeting to discuss future roadmap

Here’s how you’d plot them.

Source

Walking skeleton

The walking skeleton method is common when developing MVPs. It helps to define which ones are absolutely critical for the product to work.

The walking skeleton represents a small implementation of the system with only a small end2end feature. It does not use the final architecture yet. At the point of production, it has the first connection with all the architectural components of the system. Later, the architecture and functionality evolve and grow together. This method is also the proof of concept.

Pros: fast prioritization and market validation

Cons: limited functionality

Best suited for: MVPs (minimum viable products)

Example

Here’s how you can use the walking skeleton method.

1. Define product scope: get clear on the overall vision and goals of the product. Identify the core features and functionalities.
2. Identify key user journeys: determine the critical user journeys that the product needs support. These are typically the most important paths that users would take to achieve their goals.
3. Prioritize minimum functionality: prioritize the essential features and functionalities. Focus on building the absolute minimum set of features necessary to create a working product.
4. Create the walking skeleton: create a functional end-to-end system that supports the core user journeys. It’s OK if it lacks additional features or polished interfaces.
5. Gather and validate feedback: validate your skeleton with users, stakeholders, or early adopters. Gather feedback on the usability, performance, and overall experience of the core product. This feedback will help shape future development and prioritize additional features.
6. Iterate and expand: Based on the feedback, iterate and expand upon the walking skeleton. Gradually add more features and functionalities. And don’t forget to address any technical challenges or usability issues you discovered during the initial implementation.

Story mapping

Story mapping technique starts with the product backlog and takes it to the next level. Through story mapping you can determine your next product iteration.

The product team maps out users’ interaction and usage of the product. They focus on the significant steps first, but also break them down into individual stories for each customer cluster. Here’s how:

• Horizontal axis: create a series of sequential categories that represent each stage of the user’s journey
• Vertical axis: prioritize these tasks from top to bottom

With the story map, you’ll get a visual and logical sequence of the user experience. This will help you determine which stories are a high priority.

Pros: you can quickly identify an MVP, collaborate with your team, and put your customers’ experience first

Cons: avoids external factors like complexity

Best suited for: MVPs

Example

Here are the detailed steps you’d take to create a story map:

1. Define the user journey(s).
2. Break it down into detailed steps and plot them on the horizontal axis.
3. Add user stories and plot them on the vertical axis. When thinking of user stories, try to answer this question: what feature or functionality can support this step?
4. Prioritize user stories. Consider factors like customer value, business goals, technical feasibility, and dependencies.
5. Plot stories in order of priority: higher priority – top, lower priority – bottom.
6. Get to work: focus on the high-priority user stories at the top of each column.
7. Reiterate: keep adding to the story map, and reprioritize as needed.

Opportunity scoring

This method is also known as opportunity analysis or gap analysis. It comes from Anthony Ulwick’s concept called outcome-driven innovation.

In short, Ulwick says that customers buy things to get certain jobs done. He goes on by saying that customers aren’t very good at coming up with ‌solutions to their problems. Still, their feedback is very important. And we agree!

So you can use this feedback to list ideal outcomes. And after that you survey your customers, asking them:

• How important is this outcome or feature?
• How satisfied is the customer with the existing solutions?

Then, you can apply the numbers to the following formula:

Importance + (Importance – Satisfaction) = Opportunity

You can now rank different ideas or opportunities based on potential satisfaction and importance. To make it easier, you can plot the answers along the chart.

At this point, you should be able to see the features that matter the most to the customers but have low satisfaction scores within your product. This is a clear indicator to prioritize these features.

Pros: easy to visualize, categorize, and quickly identify innovative solutions

Cons: biased based on survey results

Best suited for: products with lots of potential features and a large and engaged existing customer base

Example

1. Define opportunities

 Identify a list of potential opportunities or features to evaluate and prioritize. For this example:

• Opportunity 1: improve search functionality
• Opportunity 2: enhance mobile app performance
• Opportunity 3: build a new integration

2. Assign importance and satisfaction ratings

Rate each opportunity on a scale of 1-10

• Importance (or potential value of the opportunity)
• Satisfaction (current level of satisfaction or fulfillment of the opportunity) 

Let’s assume the following ratings:

• Opportunity 1: Importance = 9, Satisfaction = 3
• Opportunity 2: Importance = 7, Satisfaction = 5
• Opportunity 3: Importance = 8, Satisfaction = 2

3. Use the formula

• Opportunity 1: 9 + (9 – 3) = 15
• Opportunity 2: 7 + (7 – 5) = 9
• Opportunity 3: 8 + (8 – 2) = 14

4. Prioritize opportunities based on the scores

• Opportunity 1 (15)
• Opportunity 3 (14)
• Opportunity 2 (9)

Product tree

This is a highly visual way of prioritizing. The goal is to “prune” the tree. Here’s how.

1. Draw a tree
2. Add existing product features to the trunk of the tree
3. Add coming soon features to the closest branches
4. Add the rest of the ideas to the further branches
5. Involve your team and customers; add their ideas as the leaves of the tree

Once you’re done, you’ll see which branches have the most ideas. This should give you a clearer direction as to where to take your product.

Pros: highly collaborative and visual

Cons: not quantitive

Best suited for: organizations with a large portfolio of products

Example

Buy a feature

This approach involves inviting your customers and other stakeholders to play a game. Here’s how it goes:

1. Create a list of features you might want to build
2. Assign a monetary value to each (based on effort, costs, time, etc)
3. Get a group of people together and give each a set amount of “money” to spend
4. Invite them to “buy” features and watch what happens
5. Organize and prioritize your features based on which ones were purchased the most

Quick trick: purposefully place some features out of people’s price range. Encourage them to team up and put their funds together if they have to. If that happens, that’s an awesome indicator that a particular feature is super valuable and desirable.

Pros: fun and collaborative

Cons: won’t work for early-stage ideas 

Best suited for: polished and ready-to-go features

Jobs-to-be-done framework (JTBD)

This framework encourages product managers to take a step back and dig deeper into customers’ motivations. It originated from Anthony Ulwick’s opportunity scoring that we discussed above. And it’s a bit similar to user story mapping.

A common example is this:

1. Someone says they need a drill
2. You discover that they actually need to drill a hole in their wall
3. As you keep digging, you realize that they want to hang a picture on their wall
4. Now you can offer them alternative solutions (double-sided stickers, hooks, etc) and explain that they don’t actually need a drill

To use this framework, you need to develop a job statement. Here’s the formula:

[Verb] + [Object] + [Context]

Check out this episode of Lenny’s podcast featuring a co-creator of this framework (Bob Moesta).

Pros: provides a deep understanding of customers’ motivations and needs

Cons: might get too abstract and high-level

Best suited for: complex or high-involvement products

Example

If you’re building a fitness app, a job statement might be “improve physical health and get stronger”.

You’d collaborate with your team to define how your product can get that job done for a customer. You’d also list some desired outcomes for your customers. Then you’d assess potential importance and satisfaction and prioritize from there.

Priority poker

Here’s another collaborative and fun way of prioritizing feature requests. And here’s how you can use it.

1. Shortlist some ideas
2. Get some stakeholders together
3. Give each of them 20 cards – 2 sets of numbers of 1 to 10
4. Introduce the first idea
5. Ask the team to lay down a card that represents how valuable this idea seems to them (1 = not valuable, 10 = very valuable)
6. Reveal the cards and break people down into smaller groups; let them discuss
7. Now ask them to lay down a card that represents estimation (1 = easy task, 10 = very difficult)
8. Reveal the cards and break people down into smaller groups; let them discuss
9. Add up valuation scores for each idea
10. Add up estimation scores for each idea
11. Divide the average valuation score by the estimation score
12. Repeat for each idea

Pros: fun and interactive

Cons: time-consuming

Best suited for: products with a short list of ideas and lots of resources

KJ method

This method is also known as the sorting method, the matrix method, or the paired comparison method. Here’s how you can use it:

1. Brainstorm a list of features
2. Gather a few stakeholders
3. Write each feature on a separate card or piece of paper
4. Shuffle all the pieces of paper
5. Ask each person to pick two random cards
6. Now this person needs to pick one out of those two features and explain why they chose it
7. Repeat

Pros: collaborative and fun

Cons: subjective as only one person makes the decision

Best suited for: products with a short list of already good ideas

Constraints framework

Many methods we’ve described share a similar drawback: they ignore the external environment. Lots of ideas can seem good on paper and rank very high when prioritized. But there are outside factors that can make building this feature very complicated.

That’s why the constraints framework (also known as theory of constraints) exists. It focuses specifically on constraints. Here’s how:

1. Identify any constraints you currently face or may encounter in the future  – time, budget, resources
2. Rank them – either assign numbers to each, or use a weighted ranking system we discussed above 
3. Compare the constraints’ scores to the features you prioritized

Pros: includes the external environment

Cons: limited scope lack of precision

Best suited for: choosing the basic features for an MVP

How to choose a prioritization model

As you’ve read through these prioritization models, maybe some particular ones jumped out at you. If not, don’t worry – we’ll help you choose!

To select the right prioritization model or framework for your business, consider the following factors: 

1. The nature of the tasks you need to prioritize
2. The goals you want to achieve through prioritization
3. The resources and constraints you have available
4. The team or individuals who will be involved in the prioritization process
5. The level of complexity involved in your project or task

For example, if your number one goal this quarter is to retain current customers, maybe the Kano model is right for you. After all, it focuses on delighting existing customers.

Keep in mind: you don’t have to only to pick one. There are so many frameworks for a reason. And different projects, teams and timelines require a different approach. So keep this guide handy and refer back to it when you’re trying to prioritize new ideas.

You can also combine a few of these methods to find what works for you.

Prioritization in action: examples

Here’s how we prioritize at Canny. As we mentioned, we use the weighted scoring model.

First, we outlined the factors that matter to us: 

• Votes from users
• Does this feature help to retain current customers?
• Does it help to generate new business?
• Is the idea coming from engaged companies?
• Is it a high priority?
• Is it ready for design?
• Will it help win new business for open opportunities?
• Is the vote coming from a paying customer?
• Does it improve our product roadmap?
• How does it affect our MRR?
• How many employees does this affect?

Here’s what it looks like.

As you can see, you can be as detailed or high-level as you’d like. Typically, companies start high level and then discover what they need to add along the way.

Gathering supporting data

Integrating with other tools makes prioritizing even easier. You know, the tools you already know and love:

• Project management tools: ClickUp, Jira, Monday
• CRMs: Hubspot, Salesforce
• Customer support tools: Intercom, Drift, Zendesk

You can also feed ideas and feedback from these tools to Canny – a user feedback and product management tool. That eliminates a lot of unnecessary work.

For example:

During a sales call, a prospect mentions a specific feature you don’t currently have.

Without leaving Hubspot or Salesforce, your sales rep can log in that feature request and make a note that this deal will help you win new business.

They can also note how much potential MRR this deal can bring.

This is exactly what we do at Canny. 

When you’re ready to work on that feature, you can import all the info directly into your project management tool – ClickUp, Jira, Monday, or others.

Key to building a killer product

Product prioritization will help you truly delight your customers. When you prioritize the right projects, you’ll innovate, win new business, and retain existing clients.

 There are many ways of prioritizing. You can certainly find a method that works for you. And don’t be afraid to try a few different ones. You’ll only know when you give it a try.

To make it all easier, try a product management tool. Canny will help you streamline all your feature requests and prioritization.

Give it a try for free and see how easy prioritization can be.

Maria Vasserman

Maria loves all things creative – writing, photography, movies and beyond When she's not creating content to tell the world about Canny, she's either photographing a wedding, jumping at a rock concert, camping, travelling, snowboarding, or walking her dog

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The post The 2023 guide to product prioritization + the best frameworks first appeared on Canny Blog.

The post The 2023 guide to product prioritization + the best frameworks appeared first on Canny Blog.

One powerful tool that can really help is Canny. And in this blog post, we’ll explain how.

We’ll also explore how Canny can help your business thrive, especially in the B2B context. Keep reading!

What is Canny?

Canny is a product management tool focused on user feedback. It’s designed specifically for businesses. It helps companies to collect, manage, and analyze customer feedback effectively.

When you harness the power of customer input through Canny, you can make informed decisions. That helps you improve your products and services.

Understanding the B2B environment

Before we dive into how Canny can assist in growing a B2B business, let’s take a moment to understand what B2B actually is.

In B2B (business-to-business) transactions, companies sell their products or services to other businesses. In contrast, B2C is business to consumer. These relationships are typically long-term and involve larger purchase volumes. Building strong and lasting relationships with clients is vital in this space.

Canny can help you keep, improve, and build more B2B relationships in the following ways.

1. Collecting customer feedback

Canny allows you to gather valuable feedback directly from your clients. Our feedback portal invites your customers to voice their opinions, suggestions, and concerns. This feedback is invaluable in understanding your customers’ needs and expectations.

2. Prioritizing feature requests

Canny enables you to categorize and prioritize feature requests. By analyzing the feedback and identifying patterns, you’ll know exactly what to build. You can focus on developing features that align with what your customers need. This helps to create a more customer-centric product and streamline your business.

3. Enhancing customer engagement

Canny can help improve your communication and engagement with your clients. How?

You can respond to customers’ feedback and update them on feature developments. This level of interaction fosters a sense of partnership and builds trust.

4. Driving product development

You can use the insights from customer feedback in Canny and decide where to take your product. You can also identify:

• Areas for improvement
• New features to incorporate
• Potential product enhancements

This process ensures that your offerings align with your customers’ evolving needs. 

5. Demonstrating transparency and trust

With Canny, you can become more transparent.

When you showcase the feedback you’re getting and how you action it, customers start trusting you more. They feel that their opinion matters and that you actually care.

This transparency can become your powerful differentiating factor in the competitive B2B landscape.

Listening to your customers and adapting to their needs is essential for growth and success. Canny offers a comprehensive solution to collect, manage, and analyze customer feedback. These insights you get from user feedback can drive your business forward.

By implementing Canny in your B2B operations, you can:

• Enhance customer engagement
• Prioritize feature development
• Build strong client relationships

So start embracing this customer-centric approach today. It’ll position your business at the forefront of your industry, fueling its growth and profitability.

Get started with Canny for free today!

Canny

Canny is a user feedback tool. We help software companies track user feedback to build better products.

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The post Canny for B2B companies first appeared on Canny Blog.

The post Canny for B2B companies appeared first on Canny Blog.

We had the following experts join us:

• Ross Dixon, Director of Sales at OnCall Health
• Jesse Saldana, Director of Product at Givebutter
• Alice Wong, Head of Sales at Canny

Here are the key points from this discussion.

• Feedback comes from many places: customers, marketing, sales, and product teams
• It helps tailor the sales process and improve the product
• It also helps both product and sales understand the customers better
• If you can attach a deal value to a feature request, you can then prioritize feature development with higher revenue impact and align sales and product teams
• Customer feedback can help you uncover gaps in your product
• You can also find upsell opportunities when you build the feature a prospect requested in the past
• Feedback-driven improvements in product features can help prevent customer churn and win back closed lost deals

If you’d like to dive deeper into this topic, watch the full recording here.

Spoiler alert: you’ll hear some really insightful stories and examples, so don’t miss it!

Stay tuned for our next webinar! We’ll be announcing it on our social channels, so make sure to follow us.

Ready to boost your sales with customer feedback management? Canny can help!

Maria Vasserman

Maria loves all things creative – writing, photography, movies and beyond When she's not creating content to tell the world about Canny, she's either photographing a wedding, jumping at a rock concert, camping, travelling, snowboarding, or walking her dog

All Posts - Website · Twitter - Facebook - LinkedIn

The post Webinar recap: how to sell more and delight customers through feedback management first appeared on Canny Blog.

The post Webinar recap: how to sell more and delight customers through feedback management appeared first on Canny Blog.

We’re pumped to announce that our Canny + Asana integration is now live!

Now you can link Canny posts with Asana tasks. This way you can associate customer feedback data with project management data. Here’s how it works:

1. You receive a feature request in Canny
2. You prioritize that feature request and decide to build it
3. You link that post to Asana
   • In the Roadmap view, under the Push column, click on the Asana logo.
4. You manage this project in Asana, assigning roles, deadlines, dependencies, etc
5. You link statuses on Canny and Asana, so everything is updated automatically
   • When your Canny posts and Asana tasks are linked, changes and updates are synced between the two. So you don’t need to manually update statutes in both tools.

You can also link existing Asana projects to Canny posts.

The best part? The Asana integration is available on all plans!

Learn more about this integration here and start saving time today.

P.S. Wanna see how we built it? Here’s a quick behind-the-scenes video. And it’s not what you think.  

Maria Vasserman

Maria loves all things creative – writing, photography, movies and beyond When she's not creating content to tell the world about Canny, she's either photographing a wedding, jumping at a rock concert, camping, travelling, snowboarding, or walking her dog

All Posts - Website · Twitter - Facebook - LinkedIn

The post Introducing Canny + Asana first appeared on Canny Blog.

The post Introducing Canny + Asana appeared first on Canny Blog.

Customer support teams are on the front lines of user interactions. So it’s important to make sure that customers feel seen and heard. This builds relationships, creates loyal customers, and boosts engagement.

But how do you take loads of user feedback, prioritize the requests, get them to your product team, and put them into action?

This is where Canny comes in. It’s a platform that can help you manage and prioritize customer feedback. Ultimately, this will allow you to create a world-class support organization.

In this blog post, we explore how your customer support team can use Canny. This will help you create a stellar customer experience through user feedback management! Not to mention – help your support team a ton!

1. Collect feedback

The first step to using Canny for your customer support team is to collect feedback from your users. With Canny, you can create a board for your product or service and invite your users to submit their feedback. This creates a centralized place for all feedback coming from various channels. Your users can voice their opinions, suggest new features or improvements, and report bugs.

To make it easy for your users to submit their ideas, you can embed a Canny widget on your website or add a link to your support portal. We also have an integration with Intercom, so you can log customer inquiries in real time. This is an awesome way to make interacting with your platform easy.

Don’t want all your feedback public? Is your support team collecting feedback from high-level clients and you’d like to keep that separate from your general requests? No problem! Using Canny, you can create public or invite-only private boards too.

2. Prioritize requests

Once you have collected feedback, you need to prioritize requests to determine which ones to action. This is the first step in moving an idea to your product team. This way, they can build features based on customer queries. At Canny, we believe that feedback shouldn’t only be collected. It has to be prioritized as well.

Canny provides several features that can help you with this task. The first and most valuable feature would be user votes. This is an awesome way to understand what is most desired by your users.

Once you know that, you can start building features they actually want. From the support perspective, Canny helps you give people what they want! And you can increase customer retention that way too!

Another useful feature is the ability to categorize requests. You can create categories such as “bug,” “feature request,” or “general feedback” to help you organize and prioritize requests. You can also use Canny’s filtering and sorting options to quickly find requests that require your attention.

Once you’ve collected a decent amount of feedback, you can start adding that to a customer-facing roadmap. This helps with organization and communicates to your users that you are listening to their requests and are building what they want. This leads to a much better support experience and an increase in MRR. Win-win!

3. Communicate with users

Canny’s built-in commenting system allows you to communicate with your users directly. When a customer submits a request or leaves a comment, you can respond and keep them updated on the status of their request. This is a great way to build a relationship with your users and show them that you care about their feedback.

It’s important to keep your users updated on the status of their requests. As mentioned in the previous section, the roadmap is the perfect way to do this. You can use Canny’s status tags to indicate whether a request is “in progress,” “completed,” or “declined.” This helps your users understand what’s happening with their requests.

4. Track progress

Canny provides a dashboard that allows you to track the progress of your requests. You can see how many requests are open, how many are in progress, and how many have been completed. This is a great way to monitor the performance of your support team and ensure that all requests are being handled in a timely manner.

You can also use Canny’s analytics to gain insights into your users’ feedback. You can see which requests are:

• The most popular
• Have the highest satisfaction rate
• Causing the most frustration

This can help you decide which requests to prioritize, and how to improve your product or service.

5. Integrate with other tools

Canny integrates with a wide range of other tools: Slack, Zapier, Intercom, and others. When you integrate Canny with your existing tools, you can streamline your workflow and improve efficiency. For example, you can set up notifications in Slack so that your team gets an alert when a new request comes in. You can also use an Intercom integration. With that, you can email and live chat with your users and track feedback on their behalf. At the same time, you can track feedback in Canny directly from the app.

Streamline support with user feedback

In conclusion, Canny is a powerful tool that can help you manage and prioritize customer feedback. Oftentimes, your support team is on the front lines with your users. Canny can elevate your customer experience to the next level. This empowers your success team to champion customer requests and work seamlessly with the product team.

With Canny, you can improve the quality of your support, build better relationships with your users, and grow your business. Whether you’re a small startup or a large enterprise, Canny can help you stay on top of your customer feedback. Your users will get great customer support in the meantime!

If you have any questions about our features, pricing, or plans we’re here to help! You can find answers to some common questions here. Start using Canny for free today and see how it can boost your customer support!

Austin Boyd

Supporter of customers. Austin has supported users at Squarespace, ReCharge, and Shogun. Music lover and philosophy enthusiast. Beagle dad. Austin loves helping customers succeed. Not a fan of Kale.

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The post Canny for support first appeared on Canny Blog.

The post Canny for support appeared first on Canny Blog.

This article will give you an in-depth look at how to report your customer experience ROI. It will provide you with the best practices for measuring this important metric.

Why is customer experience ROI hard to prove

Customer experience management and measuring CX ROI are difficult. This is because it involves intangible elements like customer satisfaction, loyalty, and trust. On top of that, improving your CX can call for a significant investment of your time and money.

These investments can take time to show results, so it can be difficult to measure your ROI in the short term.

This is because it’s not always easy to link customer experiences to business outcomes. For example, increased revenue, reduced costs, or improved customer satisfaction are good indicators. Yet, it’s hard to link them to a single CX program.

How to report your customer experience ROI 

How exactly do you start measuring ROI on CX investment?

Here are the steps you can take to learn how your CX investments are helping your business.

Gather operational and experience data 

Before you can measure customer experience ROI, you need to start gathering data. You’ll need operational data (like financial data). One place you can go for this data is your accounting software. You can access the necessary data through advanced reporting features.

You’ll also need customer experience data (such as customer feedback surveys). To access this customer data speak to your marketing and sales teams. Also, refer to your CMS system to gain insights into the customer experience you provide. You can then analyze the data to determine the impact of CX initiatives on your business.

Understand the formula for CX ROI

The formula for CX ROI is pretty straightforward.

You can classify many different things as the benefits of your CX initiative. For example:

• How improved customer satisfaction has affected your revenue growth
• Cross-sell and upsell rates
• Customer retention
• Cost-to-serve rate.

Your investments will include:

• Operating costs
• Employee training
• Cost of any new tools or technology

Calculate the benefits and value of your program

To measure the benefits of your CX program, you’ll need to consider its short and long-term impacts.

Short-term benefits could be direct revenue or improved CSAT scores. Long-term benefits mean factors like increased customer loyalty, reduced customer churn, etc.

You’ll then need a way to link these factors to your CX initiatives. The most common option is to track metrics like CSAT, CLV, etc., over a set period. Some projects will take longer than others to show results, so you’ll have to use your best judgment.

Calculate the operating costs of your program

Think about all the direct and indirect costs associated with the initiative. Direct costs could be employee salaries, software or technology costs, or training expenses. Indirect costs are things like rent, cost of utilities, or general office expenses.

Include future predictions and trends in your report

When reporting customer experience ROI, you should also consider future predictions and trends. This will give you better insight into the long-term impact of your CX initiatives. This is where tools like ecommerce accounting software can come in useful. It offers features such as inventory management and real-time views of your cash flow. These help with forecasting and understanding the future implications of your CX program.

Customer experience ROI metrics

These are the most popular metrics for measuring customer experience ROI:

Customer lifetime value

CLV is a measure of the total value a customer will bring to your business over their customer journey. To work out CLV, use this formula:

You can extract the data you need to calculate CLV by using your retail accounting software. You can gain an overview of all customer transactions. You can also calculate the average purchase value and the number of purchases per year. This makes it a lot easier to identify your CLV.

CLV gives you a better understanding of the value a customer brings to your business. This works well with your customer acquisition cost. They will give you a clear picture of your available investment margin for CX programs.

Cost per conversion

Cost per conversion measures the cost of acquiring a new customer. Conversion means a customer taking a specific action. And you can define conversion however you’d like in your organization. Just make sure that everyone’s aligned with your definition of a conversion.

This can be anything from buying something to filling out a contact form.

Use this formula to work it out:

Cost per conversion is a popular metric. It helps you track your outgoings and begin to understand how much you spend to get new customers.

This information can help you make informed decisions about your pricing.

Cost per interaction

This measures the cost of each customer interaction, from a phone call, to an email, to a chat session. Here’s the cost per interaction formula:

It’s an important metric to consider when evaluating your ROI. That’s because it gives you a clear picture of the cost of each interaction. This helps you decide how much you want to spend on customer support and experience.

First contact resolution

FCR measures the percentage of customer issues you solve the first time they contact you. It’s a useful metric because it gives you an idea of how well your customer service process works.

A high FCR rate tells you that customers are getting the support they need straight away. A low FCR rate tells you that customers are having to reach out many times to get their issues resolved. You can work it out with this formula:

Improving your FCR rate reduces the cost of customer support. It also improves customer experience.

Churn rate

Churn rate is the percentage of your customers who leave or stop using your product. A high churn rate can have a significant impact on your revenue growth. It means you are losing customers and potential revenue. 

The formula to calculate churn rate is:

Measure your churn rate when evaluating the ROI of your customer experience program. It will give you insight into your customer satisfaction and how it trends over time. 

Getting started with CX reporting

Measuring your customer experience ROI isn’t easy. Yet, with the right analytics, you can get a good idea of the return on your CX investments. Use the data and customer experience metrics we talked about above to get off to the right start. You can perfect your customer experience strategy and gain more satisfied customers.

Maria Vasserman

Maria loves all things creative – writing, photography, movies and beyond When she's not creating content to tell the world about Canny, she's either photographing a wedding, jumping at a rock concert, camping, travelling, snowboarding, or walking her dog

All Posts - Website · Twitter - Facebook - LinkedIn

The post How to report your customer experience ROI first appeared on Canny Blog.

The post How to report your customer experience ROI appeared first on Canny Blog.

In challenging times, it’s important to capitalize on all available resources and put the limited ones to best use.

We’ve gathered some great resource optimization strategies here for you. So here’s how to effectively optimize your resources.

TL;DR: you mostly want to make sure that:

1. Your team is focusing on building and promoting the highest-priority features
2. You’re using software to its full potential and without redundancies

Now let’s break this down.

What’s resource optimization?

But where do you start?

First, let’s define “resources”. In the SaaS world, this refers to anything that helps you deliver your products and services to customers. This may include:

• Hardware
• Software
• SaaS tools
• Storage
• People, their hours/bandwidth

Optimizing those resources means finding a way to use them most efficiently. It’s also about putting your resources towards the most impactful and highest priority projects.

There are many techniques when it comes to resource optimization. Here are some techniques you can use to optimize your teams’ time:

• Resource levelling – adjusting the start and finish dates of high-priority projects
• Resource smoothing – prioritizing a certain task to meet a deadline
• Reverse resource allocation – start with the most critical task and work your way
• backward

Whichever technique you choose, you need to start with the basics. Here’s a quick gameplan:

1. Prioritization – the foundation of resource optimization
2. Set and adjust product goals – understand what resources you need to achieve them
3. Evaluate what you have (resources)
4. Understand resource usage
5. Reallocate when needed
6. Streamline operations through user feedback

And now let’s break down each step.

Priorization – the foundation of resource optimization

Prioritization is crucial if you want to focus on the most impactful projects. Start by exploring different models and choosing the one that makes the most sense for your team.

Prioritization models

There are many models and frameworks that you might’ve heard of:

• The RICE framework
• The MoSCoW method
• Value vs. Complexity Quadrant 
• Weighted Scoring Prioritization
• The Kano Model
• ICE Scoring Model
• Opportunity Scoring

At Canny, we use the weighted scoring method. You can start with a basic method like this and then add a framework like RICE on top of it for more detail.

Factors that maximize impact

When developing your prioritization formula, you need to decide which factors are most important to your business. That could include:

1. Revenue impact
2. Associated deal value
3. User feedback
4. Strategic value
5. Supporting product vision
6. Level of effort / time needed
7. Urgency

All of these factors could be important. It depends a lot on your business and its goals. At Canny, we put a huge emphasis on user feedback when prioritizing. We recommend collecting as much feedback as possible. 

Prioritizing based on the right factors will give you a good idea of what you should pay attention to.

User feedback

Smart product teams use feedback management systems to collect feedback from their users. After they’ve gathered feedback, they use it to optimize resources and prioritize projects.

Managing user feedback is easy with these systems (like Canny). They let you:

• Collect user feedback where your users are
• Respond to customer feedback in real-time 
• Analyze your feedback and sort by your prioritization criteria
• Dig into customer insights
• Adjust resources to meet customer needs

What do product managers get from collecting & managing feedback?

✓ Improved customer satisfaction

✓ Increased team efficiency

✓ Better use of resources

✓ Smarter prioritization

✓ Better alignment across the organization

“Many agile teams are using feedback management to prioritize resources and focus on the most critical tasks and initiatives. By understanding what customers and employees are saying, teams can make data-driven decisions. From there, they can make better resource allocation decisions. They can also ensure that they are being used in the most effective way possible.”

Jon Morgan, CEO of VentureSmarter

Now let’s look at defining prioritization criteria.

Typical prioritization criteria

You need to decide what prioritization criteria are most important for your model. They can be unique to each team and project, or could be universal across the board. Check out the list in the earlier section for some of the most common ones.

Once you set your criteria, you’ll see which projects are high priority. Here’s the scoring criteria we use at Canny.

And here’s what our roadmap looks like as a result.

When you start scoring based on your priorities, you’ll be able to dedicate more time to projects that will bring you a greater return. But only after you identify what those projects are.

Then you can stop wasting time (arguably the most valuable resource) on projects that bring little value and focus on the ones that will have the greatest impact.

When it comes to prioritization, a tool like Canny can be extremely useful, so check it out!

Set & adjust product goals

Before you set product goals, look closely at ideas from your community. If you’re gathering feedback already, your users are probably submitting ideas. You also get input from your teams. And, of course, certain projects come from company-wide goals.

Once you have all that, you need to prioritize those projects (just like we explained in the previous section).

And then you can set product goals, putting emphasis on the highest-impact ideas and projects.

You can’t achieve your desired outcome if you haven’t clarified it from the beginning. So take the time to figure out what you’re trying to achieve with your resources. Break it down into yearly, quarterly and monthly goals.

You might already have some goals set for the year, but look at them from a resource optimization point of view. Turn your attention to prioritizing features to build and the resources you need.

Make sure you:

• Get as specific as possible
• Quantify your goals
• Have enough people to do the job
• Distribute the work
• Set aside enough time
• Can reasonably achieve them
• Align organization-wide goals with product goals

A SMART goal framework is popular for a reason. Go through each letter (specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and timely) and ask yourself – do my goals match each of these?

Different teams prefer different goal management systems. Here are some of the most popular ones:

• OKRs – objective and key responsibilities
• EOS – entrepreneurial operating system
• NCTs – narrative, commitments, tasks
• Impact maps

Your resource optimization strategy will really vary depending on your goal. If you’re trying to cut costs, you’ll engage in very different activities versus if you’re looking to expand. It will differ by industry too.

So be honest with yourself and your teammates. Share your goals transparently with the team and make sure that everyone’s on the same page from the start. Then, build a critical path to achieve those goals. With the critical path approach, you’ll set clear deadlines, but will also identify some potential flexibility. This is where your product management and project management efforts intersect.

Tip: use a product mangement tool that integrates with your project management system! 

Think early on about the resources you need to achieve those goals. Write them out and quantify them. This will help you in the long run.

Evaluate what you have (resources)

You’ve now prioritized the projects you could work on within the context of your product goals. Now examine the resources you already have. Do a thorough audit to get a clear picture of your current resource situation. Refer back to all the resources we named above.

Non-human: hardware, software, tools and storage

You may be surprised here. Chances are, you have much more than you think.

Beyond free tools out there, you’re likely paying for some services that you’re hardly using. No need to make any decisions just yet – first spend time digging deep into what you already have. You’ll choose what to keep later.

Check your usage patterns across teams. See if one tool can serve multiple purposes. Understand how different tools are connected and work together.

See if any hardware is outdated. You might be losing money on amortization. Investing in new hardware can actually be a cost-saving activity, even though it requires an initial investment.

Human: people and bandwidth

Everyone loves to talk about productivity. There are countless articles about boosting it, working smarter, increasing efficiency, and so on. But how often do you actually assess it within your team?

This doesn’t have to be about tracking every minute of your employees’ days. No need to micromanage! Instead, look at it from the lens of “what can I do to help my teams work smarter and achieve more?” Ask yourself these questions:

• How many team members do I have for each project?
• What functions can they perform?
• How many hours per week does each of them work?

Do your best to understand the requirements of your project based on each function.

Often, this goes hand in hand with the tools (from the previous section). Is your current tech stack empowering or limiting your team? If you don’t know, the best way to find out is to ask (more on that later).

In general, try to assess if anyone is overworked. Take the load off of them. And see who’s available for new projects. If you’ve gone through layoffs in your organization recently (like many have), your people resources could be stretched especially thin.

You’ve identified the most important projects. Now line them up with the available resources. Is there a gap? Do you see a potential issue with meeting the deadline?

Consider outsourcing certain projects. Or prioritizing hiring for certain roles that are vital for your organization’s success.

Understand resource usage

Now it’s time to dig deeper into those resource usage metrics from the “Evaluate what you have (resources)” section:

• Are you using available resources to their full potential? Or maybe you’re just scratching the surface?
• Can some tools bring you more value if you learned more about them?
• Are there more ways to use certain resources?
• Are you prioritizing the projects that will bring you the most value?
• Is anything duplicated? 

The last point is very common. Let’s say that one team loves Google Drive and keeps all of their files there. And another team prefers Dropbox. So you end up paying for two services that essentially provide the exact same service – data storage. Here’s an easy resource optimization idea – eliminate this duplicated service.

Reallocate

Now’s the time to make some changes. 

Some things might not be working for you, not serving your team, and not helping you reach your goals. Maybe you found some tools that you can remove.

Perhaps there’s a scheduled project that really isn’t a huge priority.

Maybe you could free up your team’s time by getting a new tool.

Also, make sure you understand your human resources and how they align with your projects. Here’s how to do that and more.

Tips for reallocating resources

Here are some ideas from Shawn Rubel, founder and CEO of Vecteezy:

“Process

Our managers have a series of communication and meeting rhythms. This helps to avoid wasting time and optimize workload as best we can. Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday we have a morning Huddle that lasts about 15 min. Each manager gives a quick update on critical tasks. This also gives an opportunity for anyone to discuss any constraint, capacity, or ask for help. We’re staying on top of project management this way.

Cash

Once a month, my two business partners and I meet with our finance team to discuss the previous month’s financials and the upcoming cash on hand for the next 3-6 months. We decide on any changes or investments that need to be made and make a plan for the next meeting date.

People

Our people are the #1 resource we have. We are currently a team of 91. In terms of optimizing them, we use a “Start, Stop, Keep” framework with their managers to talk about what they need to start doing, stop doing, and keep doing. This helps them increase efficiency, improve productivity and process to ensure they’re working on the right task.”

Jon Morgan, CEO of VentureSmarter, also focuses heavily on his team and their internal feedback.

“Gather regular feedback not just from customers, but also from the employees. They can really help you identify where resources are getting wasted. For example, some employees could be consistently reporting that a particular process is taking up too much time. You can then brainstorm ways to improve and streamline that process.”

Jon Morgan, CEO of VentureSmarter

In short, assess your prioritization criteria and usage patterns from the previous steps. Then, see how you’re currently using your resources. Is this the most effective way? If not, move some resources over to the more impactful projects.

Improve usage

You’ve identified usage patterns. You see the gaps. And maybe your team even told you what’s working and what isn’t. Now it’s time to take action.

Outline some ideas to improve usage. For example:

• Set up a retraining phone call with customer success to refresh product knowledge and find new ways of using a specific tool
• Watch video tutorials that some tools provide (Hubspot, ClickUp and Canny, for example)

The most impactful changes will come from improving your employees’ efficiency.

Maximize your team’s time

Help your people become more productive. Cancel unnecessary meetings, equip them with whatever they need, give them projects they actually enjoy, and make sure they have enough time to complete them. Assess how many people each project needs and don’t compromise on that. Make sure they’re working on the highest priority projects.

Try not to force your teams to use ‌tools they don’t like either. This happens often. You might’ve gotten a great deal on a particular resource (a certain tool, for example). Or maybe you even got it for free as a package deal! But, if your team hates it, there’s no point in keeping it.

You might think that this is indeed “resource optimization”. Because you’re saving money, right?

But you’re sacrificing other resources – time and people. If that tool isn’t efficient, makes your teams waste money, and irritates them, this is definitely not a good idea.

Streamline operations through resource optimization

Understanding what resources you have and how they’re being used is critical, especially in uncertain times. Perhaps some of them are underutilized. And others are stretched thin.

The most important outcome is this: prioritize the most impactful projects. You can figure out what those are with the help of feedback, prioritization frameworks, clear goal setting, proper resource allocation, and more. Tools like Canny can help you prioritize what’s most important. Start tracking feedback and prioritizing for free – give Canny a try!

Maria Vasserman

Maria loves all things creative – writing, photography, movies and beyond When she's not creating content to tell the world about Canny, she's either photographing a wedding, jumping at a rock concert, camping, travelling, snowboarding, or walking her dog

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The post Why resource optimization is critical for product teams in 2023 first appeared on Canny Blog.

The post Why resource optimization is critical for product teams in 2023 appeared first on Canny Blog.