Why SaaS product managers need feature voting software

With a feature voting tool, your data is automatically organized. You can customize how you want to organize it. Then, it’ll be easy to understand what people are asking for. PMs won’t have to rummage through tons of records and read many conversations.

You’ll get a sense of quantity — i.e., which features are most requested.

You can also dive deeper into qualitative stuff. Things like:

Who is this user?
What business are they in?
How will this feature help their business?

Here are two ways to use qualitative data to better understand user feedback.

Determine top feature requests

B2B product managers are often overwhelmed with feedback. It comes from help desk tickets, live chat conversations, or emails. It takes a lot of work to dig through all that data.

Feature voting tool can help you find top requests in just a few seconds. For example, you can sort requests by the number of votes to see what features are most important to your user base.

You can also use a weighted voting system like we do at Canny.

See which features top customers care most about

Knowing your top feature requests is one thing, but not all votes are created equal.

A feature voting software lets you explore a company profile. You’ll be able to discover precisely what their needs are.

You can:

Keep track of each feature idea
Understand what matters to them
Segment customer feedback to see what your target segment cares about
Prioritize the features that matter the most to your top customers

Knowing which requests are the most impactful helps you make informed product decisions. You can also increase revenue and ARPU by upselling a new feature you know key customers are interested in.

Build a better product roadmap

Feature voting gives the product team an at-a-glance look at popular feature requests. From there, feature prioritization becomes clearer. And then, it’s easier to build a roadmap based on the most important features.

Want to get started with roadmapping? Check out these free templates!

Say “no” faster

Every customer feature request is motivated by a problem. But not every feature should be built.

If you have lots of feature requests, you could try to build everything. After all, you’re trying to satisfy every user, right?

You might end up building features that aren’t right for your business. And you’ll overwhelm your team in the process.

Knowing who wants which features (and why) helps to solve this. You can strategically focus on your target customers and their feature requests. You’ll also have a clearer insight into when it’s okay to say no.

Prioritize what to move forward on your roadmap

Feature voting gives you insight into data that you wouldn’t otherwise have.

Feature voting software can help you quickly identify:

Which company is making the request?
Are they your target user?
Are other target users asking for this same feature?

If so, prioritize these features in your roadmap.

These questions help us focus on what matters to our primary customer base (B2B SaaS companies). It allows us to improve their experiences and grow revenue. Win-win!

Be proactive, not reactive

With a clear picture of which features are the most important to your users, you can prioritize what to dig into.

There are two ways to handle feature requests:

Being reactive: letting your users tell you what to build
Being proactive: identifying and building what your users really need

Being reactive means that you’re distracted by what your users are asking for. Another distraction is what your competitors are building. PMs end up shipping features that don’t enhance user experience or their company’s bottom line.

Being proactive means you’re focused on what users truly need. You investigate first instead of granting every wish. You sort your data, identify the most impactful ideas, and build a roadmap accordingly. You draw insights from your data and make valuable product decisions.

Here’s how you can be proactive with feature voting.

Learn about specific user profiles and their use cases.

Context matters regardless of your data collection tools (Trello, Intercom, Canny 😉). You need compelling reasons to add a suggestion to your roadmap.

When you notice a popular feature, visit the voter’s profile to understand who asks for it.

The profiles provide you with:

The user’s persona
Their company’s profile (i.e., are they an enterprise, an SMB, from a specific industry?)

You can use this information to determine whether the feature request comes from target users.

Understand use cases when you’re building a new feature

Instead of reading through scattered conversations, you can check the feature voting platform. From there, you can see which users or companies asked for a particular feature. Those are the people you can reach out to for further research.

The engineering team is one of a startup’s highest costs. So, they must be focused on what will move the needle most. The best feature voting tool will keep your team focused on shipping the most critical features.

Product decisions will help drive business goals

Build it, and they will come? Don’t we all wish?

With SaaS, it’s more like:

Identify a real problem
Find a solution
Build a feature
Test and optimize it
Market it
Optimize it again
And then you’ll grow

Feature voting software can help you make the right decisions that align with your goals.

Attract new customers

A feature voting tool can show you the top feature requests from trialing users who didn’t convert to paid.

How? Empower your sales team to track those feature ideas in your feedback tool. You can then attach a potential MRR to each feature request. If you determine that building this requested feature can be impactful, prioritize it. Once it’s shipped, follow up with those closed lost contacts. If this feature was a dealbreaker to them, they may now convert.

We track if we ever lose a deal because of a missing feature. We expand our product-market fit and get new opportunities by focusing on these features.

Drive upsells and ARPU

ARPU stands for average revenue per user. It’s what people are paying you on average. By extension, it measures what people are willing to pay you. It shows how much your product is worth to them.

If you make your product more valuable, you’ll drive up ARPU.

Upsells are also crucial for improving ARPU.

Let’s say you’ve got a renewal with a top customer coming up. Using a feature voting tool lets you quickly pull up their feature requests. This will give you an idea of how to make your product more valuable for them.

Improve retention and reduce churn

SaaS is a retention game. A 5% increase in retention can lead to up to 95% increase in revenue.

The happier your customers are with your product, the less likely they are to churn. You can set up a public roadmap and give your users a transparent view of what’s happening. They’ll know which features you’re building and when they’re coming. (Note: feature voting doesn’t have to be public).

This level of transparency is hugely important to customers. It improves retention and positive regard for your product. As a result, it reduces churn. In fact, PixelMe actually increased their NPS with feature voting.

Closing the customer feedback loop also helps reduce churn. When a customer votes or submits a feature request, they want to know where it goes. If you notify them when their requested feature is live, they’ll feel heard and valued. All of this ultimately helps you build a better product.

Don’t let your user feedback go to waste

Whether you track it or not, one thing is for sure: your users will always have feedback. Don’t let this valuable data slip through the cracks.

Of course, we recommend Canny for collecting and managing user feedback. It helps product managers understand what users want. PMs can access that data easily and communicate user needs to the rest of the team.

In addition to Canny’s product feedback board, you can set up a public roadmap. This shows users exactly where a feature is in development. You can use the Canny Changelog to let users know when a feature has shipped and close that feedback loop.

You can try Canny for free or reach out to us to request a demo.