Are you looking to improve your product offering? How do you structure an effort to collect feedback and distribute it among your product team?

1. Building a Client-Driven
Product Roadmap
HOW TO COLLECT THE BEST, MOST THOROUGH AND MOST ACCURATE FEEDBACK
FROM EXISTING CUSTOMERS

2. Overview
 This document is intended to propose the most through and objective approach
possible to collecting maximum product feedback from existing customers.
 The fundamental approach is based on commonly accepted best practices in the
collection of customer-centric requirements gathering.
Preparation
Review existing
customer data
Identify Users
Outreach
Official outreach
to each client for
participation
support
Set and manage
expectations
about both
process and
results
DataGathering
Pre-meeting
survey to existing
users
Stakeholder
interviews and
observation
DataSynthesis
Organization of
quantitative data
Organization of
qualitative data
RoadmapDevelopment
Distillation of
requirements
Communication
plan with clients
about future
plans

3. Step #1 – Identify Customers
Review Existing Data
 Review implementation information of
customers to be interviewed
 Product mix
 High-level business practices
 Customizations
 Metrics and analytics
Identify Users
 Which groups/teams within the client
organization are using which product?
 Where are the teams located?
 How big are they?
 What, if any, was their previous solution?

4. Step #2 – Official Outreach
Solicit Support
 Each customer’s support must be solicited
for participation
 Preliminary communication by main
executive relationship-owner from within
product company
 Formal follow-up communication,
including process overview
Set Expectations
 Drive clear expectations with clients about
purpose, process and product
 Purpose: Collect first-hand input from daily
users of system to drive product
enhancement opportunities
 Process: On-site interviews with cross-
functional team members; and unobtrusive
observation of users interacting with the
system
 Product: Client-specific feedback report;
collective feedback report; product
development plans (high-level)

5. Step #3 – Data Gathering
Pre-meeting Survey
 System Users will be sent a short online
survey to help with preliminary data
gathering about their experience and
impressions of the system
Interviews & Observation
 Group and/or individual interviews are
used to collect known issues, limitations or
areas of improvement that users are
actively and consciously aware of within
the system
 Observation of users during their workday
identifies inefficiencies and opportunities
for improvement which would never occur
to users to request

6. Step #4 – Data Synthesis
Quantitative Data
 Distillation of user data/metrics, business
analytics and customer feedback survey
 Capture quantifiable trends from the
interview and observation data
Qualitative Data
 Logical “bucketing” of data collected by:
 Client
 Feature
 Sentiment
 Key observations, quotes, preferences,
limitations and requests

7. Step #5 – Roadmap Development
Final Requirements Analysis
 Internal review with product stakeholders
about customer feedback results
 External-facing customer deliverables
distilling results (specifics TBD)
Roadmap Communication Plan
 Go-forward plan for communicating with
and engaging customers for on-going
feedback and development
 Online portal (a la OneDesk)
 Customer newletters
 Regular customer webinars
 Formal customer advisory board

8. Requirements to Complete Project
 Client-specific implementation data to understand what products the customer is
using, how many people are using it, how long they have been using it, etc.
 Online survey solution for data collection and aggregation
 Engagement of leadership teams at both product company and key customer
locations – including allocation and scheduling of key resources needed to
complete each step
 On-site travel to most appropriate client location(s) for in-person interviews and
observation of hands-on system users by data gathering team

9. Do something worth talking about