{"id":1498,"date":"2019-06-12T11:54:02","date_gmt":"2019-06-12T15:54:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog3.canny.io\/wordpress\/?p=1498"},"modified":"2022-10-04T16:43:11","modified_gmt":"2022-10-04T20:43:11","slug":"managing-customer-expectations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canny.io\/blog\/managing-customer-expectations\/","title":{"rendered":"Managing customer expectations for new feature requests"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you\u2019ve worked in a customer-facing role at a SaaS company, then you\u2019ve received feature requests before. Loads of them. You’ve also probably thought about how to manage your customers’ expectations when it comes to these requests.<\/p>\n

The typical company responds to a feature request by saying \u201cThanks for your feedback, we\u2019ve passed it on to the team.\u201d<\/p>\n

More times than not, the user never hears back again about their idea. They\u2019re left to assume it was promptly forwarded to a room to be printed and fed to a paper shredder.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Or fed it to a cat.<\/p>\n

We can do so much better.<\/h2>\n

At the end of the day, you grow your SaaS business by A) getting more customers, or B) delivering more value. A is the primary responsibility of the sales & marketing orgs, and B is owned by the product org.<\/p>\n

How does the product org deliver more value? We all know this: by listening to your users.<\/p>\n

So why then, when our users give us brilliant ideas on how we can deliver more value, improving our business and theirs, do we respond with the paper shredder reply?<\/p>\n

This is one of the reasons we started Canny<\/a> in the first place. Giving feedback to companies today is a bad experience. As a result, users are left feeling unheard and unloved, and companies are missing out on loads of valuable insight.<\/p>\n

How can we do better?<\/p>\n

People want transparency<\/h2>\n

When someone shares an idea with you, they really want to know two things. Are you going to build the feature I care about? If so, when? If not, why not?<\/p>\n

By answering these two simple questions, people will be super impressed. This helps you stand out from every other SaaS company out there.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

But how do we answer those questions? That\u2019s the tricky part, and why most companies don\u2019t bother.<\/p>\n

When you\u2019re a 1-2 person company, you\u2019re likely a founder and therefore responsible for support, sales, and product. You already know if you\u2019re going to build feature X, and when \/ why not. You can just tell them.<\/p>\n

Customers will still be impressed, and this will help you stand out from your larger competitors.<\/p>\n

Being transparent gets harder as you grow<\/h2>\n

But as team size grows, the customer-facing team and product org becomes more and more siloed. The support\/sales person talking to the customer isn\u2019t necessarily familiar with the product roadmap, and the decisions behind it.<\/p>\n

For a 5 to 50 person company, the answer is usually just a quick conversation away. Modern messaging tools like Intercom make it really easy to loop in your colleagues from the product org, to get the info you need. A bit more friction, but still not bad.<\/p>\n

For teams of hundreds or thousands people, transparency gets challenging. It might not be clear who the person is with the information you\u2019re looking for. You might have to check-in with the marketing\/PR team, to make sure you aren\u2019t leaking a big, splashy launch.<\/p>\n

A great way to solve this problem is to maintain internal product roadmaps<\/a>. This way, your whole team can easily stay in touch with the improvements your product team is making.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

This is why big companies are so bad at responding to user feedback. Because it\u2019s a hard problem.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a problem worth solving<\/h2>\n

Whether you\u2019re a small team or a big team, it\u2019s worth spending the extra effort to deliver a transparent response. It\u2019ll impress your customers, which will pay dividends in brand loyalty and satisfaction.<\/p>\n

\n

The real moat in SaaS is brand<\/p>\n

Almost every market leader has a really, really good competitor or 2 or even 3<\/p>\n

That would honestly do the job just as well<\/p>\n

— Jason \u2728\ud83d\udc7eSaaStr.Ai\u2728 Lemkin (@jasonlk) June 5, 2019<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n