Adapting to Customer Feedback

"Feedback is a gift. It's an opportunity to learn and grow" At Google, we believe in the power of feedback to drive improvement. Sometimes feedback can be tough to hear. But taking the time to unpack it, understand the perspective, and reflect on it is crucial. Why feedback matters: - It reveals blind spots we cannot see ourselves - It accelerates learning by shortcutting trial and error - It demonstrates that others are invested in your success - It creates alignment between perception and reality How to receive feedback effectively: 1. Approach with curiosity, not defensiveness When receiving feedback, your first reaction might be to justify or explain. Instead, listen deeply and ask clarifying questions: "Can you give me a specific example?" or "What would success look like to you?" 2. Separate intention from impact Remember that well-intentioned actions can still have unintended consequences. Focus on understanding the impact rather than defending your intentions. 3. Look for patterns across multiple sources Individual feedback may reflect personal preferences, but patterns across multiple sources often reveal genuine opportunities for growth. 4. Prioritize actionable insights Not all feedback requires action. Evaluate which points will have the greatest impact on your effectiveness and focus your energy there. 5. Follow up and close the loop Demonstrate your commitment by acknowledging the feedback, sharing your action plan, and following up on your progress. Creating a feedback-rich environment: - Model vulnerability by asking for feedback yourself - Recognize and celebrate when people implement feedback successfully - Make it routine through structured check-ins rather than waiting for formal reviews At Google, we've learned that organizations with robust feedback cultures innovate faster, adapt more quickly to market changes, and build more inclusive workplaces. Let's commit to seeing feedback not as criticism but as a valuable investment in our collective future. The discomfort is temporary, but the growth is lasting. #motivation #productivity #mindset

Do you sometimes feel frustration, as you are building a product to get the management off your back, rather than address the users? Here are 6 ways to become user-centric again: 1) Prioritize in a transparent way This is a great place to start. If your backlog is prioritized based on data and potential opportunity, risk, and cost, it will be easier to put forth user-centric initiatives ahead of those that came from upstairs. At the very least, you will have a good basis for an educated discussion. 2) Utilize users' perspective using user stories and personas If your team understands the users and their problems, it will be easier to craft something great that will later appeal to the same users. Just keep up the empathy of creating something by people for other people, and not get some metric magically go up! 3) Understand user problems If everyone in the company can see the themes that come from user feedback, it will be way harder to ignore it in favor of some corporate nonsense. Let those voices be heard by everyone! What if there are 100,000s of voices? Here is where this post's partner comes in: Productboard , and their new release: Productboard Pulse. It's a powerful new tool you can use either as a standalone solution or to elevate your work within an existing Productboard product management suite. This new AI will help you make sense of all the feedback and comments, quickly transforming them into actionable, user-centric tasks. Check out the comments for more details :) Now, back to the post: 4) Have the NPS and user ratings at the forefront The same goes for a single metric representing the general product sentiment. If the number is low or, worse, is going down and everyone can see that, the responsible Product Manager has to react. 5) Focus on your product goals Now, upstairs mandates might not be the only distraction you face when trying to improve your product. To survive them all, focus on one thing: your product goals. This will allow you to demonstrate you are doing what you are asked for and you can use user feedback and points 1-4 to pursue those goals. Thus, it's like killing 2 birds with 1 stone. However, you can also simply: 6) Have the confidence to say "No" Not all company/legal/management requests can be ignored. Sometimes changing the law or a wider company initiative will require you to comply and that is OK! However, there will also be times when someone will try to force your compliance. This is where you need to be confident, and exercise your Product Manager's independence, especially when there is no data to support a specific request. There you go! My 6 ways you can become a user-centric Product Manager. Do you put your users first in your product? Sound off in the comments! #productmanagement #productmanager #usercentricity

Ever left a one-star review and wondered if it even matters? I’m a huge South-Indian-food fan, so I was excited when The Filter Coffee opened in Koramangala. It stayed packed for first few weeks until the footfall started declining. Out of curiosity, I ended up checking their Google reviews. Ratings were dipping. Reason? People were upset about self-service, overpriced meals, and food served on plastic trays and not banana leaves (one of their core experiences). This, according to them, was not the experience they expected. Yesterday I dropped in again after a month, and everything had changed. Table service is back, food now arrives on banana leaves, and no one was running around with coupons asking for dosa, vada, or coffee anymore. Now what changed? Brands need to realise that customers don’t just consume your product. They feel your brand and its overall experience. And when that feeling breaks, they talk loudly. And brands that listen? They bounce back. Next time your footfall drops, don’t run ads. Read the reviews. Your customers have already written the turnaround plan.

Turned down $2M in feature requests last quarter. Here’s why: It’s tempting to cave when big customers make demands. I learned that the hard way at my first startup. We said yes to everything. Never made it past $60k ARR. At Recall.ai, we do the opposite. Every feature request gets the same two questions: 1. Why do you want this feature? 2. What are you actually trying to accomplish? Our largest customer threatened to leave if we didn’t build a custom integration. Instead of jumping to say yes, we dug deeper. Turns out, they didn’t need a custom integration. They needed faster data processing. We solved the real problem. Not only did they stay, usage went up by 40%. Customers hire you because you’re the expert. Your job isn’t to build what they ask for. It’s to solve what they actually need. What “no” paid off for you?

At 50 million users, we spend 80% of our time listening to customers. At 100 users, we spent 80% of our time ignoring what customers asked for. Both strategies were right. — When we started Gamma, 80% of our effort went into one radical idea: "What if creating presentations felt effortless? Type your thoughts, skip the design entirely." The other 20%? Table stakes. Present mode. Share button. Just enough to technically qualify as a presentation tool. We were solving a universal pain point: that blank slide staring back at you, demanding design skills you don't have. As users started signing up, then churning, we shifted to 50/50: Half pushing the AI forward. Half understanding why people left. Turns out when someone can't change fonts or upload their logo, they don't stick around. Even if your AI is magic. Then we hit an inflection point: More users signing up than we knew what to do with. The 80/20 flipped completely. Today, 80% of our roadmap comes from our community and user requests. When the same friction point appears fifty times, we fix it. We listen ruthlessly. The other 20% stays reserved for bets they'd never ask for — like building websites when they asked for better slides. Most product advice says pick a lane: visionary or customer-obsessed. That's backwards. You need both. The mix just evolves: - Pre-product market fit → 80% paradigm shifts, 20% basics - Approaching PMF → 50/50 balance attack - True inflection → 80% customer pulls, 20% future bets We've built to 50 million users this way. Not by choosing between vision and feedback. By knowing when to weigh each one. Nobody asked for content-first presentations … they asked for prettier templates. Sometimes the best answer isn't giving customers what they request. It's solving the problem they didn't know how to articulate.

NEVER ignore customer feedback... NEVER hit delete on a negative comment or review. News flash: Your product or service will never be perfect, you need that feedback. Growth has a funny way of pulling you away from the front line. The bigger you get, the easier it is to hide behind reports, dashboards and meetings. Im here to tell you, DON'T do that. Some of the most valuable insights I’ve ever received didn’t come from a boardroom. They came from standing in store, from picking up the phone and from asking one simple question: “How are we really doing?” Complaints aren’t attacks. They’re proof someone cares enough to speak up. That is GOLD. Ten honest conversations with customers will teach you more than ten internal meetings guessing what they think and the small issues you ignore today? They’re the ones that quietly cost you sales tomorrow. If you want to build a business that lasts, get out of your office. Go where your customers are. Ask better questions and actually use the answers.

When the Head of Product drives strategy top-down, PMs get frustrated. But when PMs drive bottom-up planning...execs get nervous. And when they don’t talk? Roadmaps fall apart. The best product planning lives in the middle. You need top down planning and bottom-up discovery Too often, orgs pick just one side: 🧠 Top-down: Execs set bold bets. PMs execute — even when the data says “this won’t land.” 👟 Bottom-up: PMs chase user needs. Strategy gets lost in the backlog. Here’s what works: strategy as a loop, not a broadcast. 1️⃣ Set Strategic Guardrails Top-down strategy should provide the North Star. Not a list of features. But a set of outcomes: → What problems are we trying to solve at the business level? → What does success look like 12–24 months out? Think: revenue targets, market positioning, platform investments. PMs need these boundaries to prioritize with purpose. 2️⃣ Run Bottom-Up Discovery This is how we understand customer value. → Who is the core customer? → Where's the true pain point? → What patterns are emerging across segments? Not just voice-of-customer — real behavior, real usage. PMs should synthesize signal, not just collect noise. 3️⃣ Drive the Planning Loop Now comes the hard part: translation. → Which bottom-up signals align with strategic goals? → Where do they challenge the current direction? This is where planning becomes strategic. You’re not just slotting features into a timeline — you’re shaping the roadmap based on live feedback. Push for course-correction before commitments solidify. 4️⃣ Package for Executive Buy-In Insights only drive action when they’re communicated in the right language. → Use exec framing: risk, revenue, roadmap. → Use BLUF and the 5-slide rule. → Show tradeoffs, not just problems. This is where influence happens — not just up, but across product, design, eng, marketing. Final thought: The best strategy lives at the intersection of business value and customer value. Not just vision. Not just feedback. Real planning that connects the two. -- 👋 I’m Ron Yang, a product leader and advisor. Follow me for insights on product leadership & strategy.

This is the fastest way to burn out as a data professional: (And it's so common that it scares me) Being an order taker. Someone asks for a dashboard... You say, "Sure." Someone asks for a report... You say, "Okay." Someone tells you, "I need this by Friday..." You say, "No problem." Eventually, you've built a backlog of dashboards that nobody uses. ... a ton of metrics that don't tie to any useful decisions. And worst of all, a reputation as a "BI help desk." Why is this such a big deal? Because you're setting the standard for how you want to be treated. Most data teams fall into this trap. And this is why most data teams are exhausted, undervalued, and lost. They’ve turned themselves into order processors instead of problem solvers. There's only one way to fix this problem: Learn to say, "No." Not a hard “no” that shuts the door... But a strategic no that redirects the conversation to what matters. A "No" that allows you to investigate: • What decision is stuck right now? • How will this be used once it’s built? • Is a dashboard even the right tool?    Here’s the takeaway: The best analytics teams are the slowest to say “yes” to ad-hoc requests. Why? Because everything must tie back to ROI. ♻️ Share this to help someone in your team avoid the order-taker trap. Follow me for more pragmatic takes on how to make analytics drive outcomes.

Getting the right feedback will transform your job as a PM. More scalability, better user engagement, and growth. But most PMs don’t know how to do it right. Here’s the Feedback Engine I’ve used to ship highly engaging products at unicorns & large organizations: — Right feedback can literally transform your product and company. At Apollo, we launched a contact enrichment feature. Feedback showed users loved its accuracy, but... They needed bulk processing. We shipped it and had a 40% increase in user engagement. Here’s how to get it right: — 𝗦𝘁𝗮𝗴𝗲 𝟭: 𝗖𝗼𝗹𝗹𝗲𝗰𝘁 𝗙𝗲𝗲𝗱𝗯𝗮𝗰𝗸 Most PMs get this wrong. They collect feedback randomly with no system or strategy. But remember: your output is only as good as your input. And if your input is messy, it will only lead you astray. Here’s how to collect feedback strategically: → Diversify your sources: customer interviews, support tickets, sales calls, social media & community forums, etc. → Be systematic: track feedback across channels consistently. → Close the loop: confirm your understanding with users to avoid misinterpretation. — 𝗦𝘁𝗮𝗴𝗲 𝟮: 𝗔𝗻𝗮𝗹𝘆𝘇𝗲 𝗜𝗻𝘀𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁𝘀 Analyzing feedback is like building the foundation of a skyscraper. If it’s shaky, your decisions will crumble. So don’t rush through it. Dive deep to identify patterns that will guide your actions in the right direction. Here’s how: Aggregate feedback → pull data from all sources into one place. Spot themes → look for recurring pain points, feature requests, or frustrations. Quantify impact → how often does an issue occur? Map risks → classify issues by severity and potential business impact. — 𝗦𝘁𝗮𝗴𝗲 𝟯: 𝗔𝗰𝘁 𝗼𝗻 𝗖𝗵𝗮𝗻𝗴𝗲𝘀 Now comes the exciting part: turning insights into action. Execution here can make or break everything. Do it right, and you’ll ship features users love. Mess it up, and you’ll waste time, effort, and resources. Here’s how to execute effectively: Prioritize ruthlessly → focus on high-impact, low-effort changes first. Assign ownership → make sure every action has a responsible owner. Set validation loops → build mechanisms to test and validate changes. Stay agile → be ready to pivot if feedback reveals new priorities. — 𝗦𝘁𝗮𝗴𝗲 𝟰: 𝗠𝗲𝗮𝘀𝘂𝗿𝗲 𝗜𝗺𝗽𝗮𝗰𝘁 What can’t be measured, can’t be improved. If your metrics don’t move, something went wrong. Either the feedback was flawed, or your solution didn’t land. Here’s how to measure: → Set KPIs for success, like user engagement, adoption rates, or risk reduction. → Track metrics post-launch to catch issues early. → Iterate quickly and keep on improving on feedback. — In a nutshell... It creates a cycle that drives growth and reduces risk: → Collect feedback strategically. → Analyze it deeply for actionable insights. → Act on it with precision. → Measure its impact and iterate. — P.S. How do you collect and implement feedback?