Dorie Wallace Leadership

Getting Real with Customer Feedback: A 3-Step Guide to Making It Work! Step 2: Get it Right: Successfully Launching Your Idea Portal

In Step 1, you identified your objectives, made all the necessary decisions, and got the executives on board. How do you ensure you get the ideal participation and engagement, setting you up to achieve your objectives?

As with any project, your plan will include tasks, communications, training, timing, and risks and mitigations. This article includes best practices related to a customer feedback initiative to include in your project plan.

Internal Communications

As with any communication, the most important action is to first define your audience. In Step 1, you defined the “Who” as part of your Operating Model. In this step, identify the WIIFM (What’s In It For Me) for each team and proactively answer questions they may have. The WIIFM is key as it articulates why each team should care about the initiative; how it will impact them. Here are a few examples to get you started.

Once that information is defined, utilize these tactics to increase internal awareness and support.

• Engage Executive Team members in driving internal excitement – ghostwrite an all-employee email for them to send or ask them to participate in announcement videos
• Develop both written and video training materials for everyday users – ensure it is succinct and highly focused on the common use cases
• Consider conducting an internal roadshow to drive excitement and answer questions – leaders, customer-facing teams, or all teams

Your goal is to drive awareness and participation from all your customers, and especially your users. As you are looking for the broadest awareness, you should consider the timing, the vehicles, and the content.

• Timing: With some external announcements, you need to give customers a heads-up about an upcoming event. In cases where this is a net add instead of a change, you can skip the preview and send an announcement on the day of the rollout.
  • Consider giving lighthouse or reference accounts a preview with the opportunity to give feedback and provide quotes to the larger audience.
• Vehicles: There are several options to get the broadest reach; some examples: add a post to your user communities; send an email from the CEO/CPO to all users; have the CSMs send an email to their customers; announce at roadmap webinars and user conferences; add an announcement and link from within your products.
• Content: Similar to the WIIFMs and questions you identified for internal communications, you will repeat that effort for customers and users.

In the internal communications plan, you will include training for everyday users. The training for the primary users – the ones reviewing and responding to ideas – will need to be more extensive. In addition to the standard “how-to” training, you will need to include direction on utilizing customer feedback. Depending on how active your user community is, this could be a significant adjustment for your primary users. So give them some grace and set them up for success. Eliminate every possible barrier they will have to meet the outcomes you’ve defined.

• How often do they need to check the idea management tool? Align this with the “When” from the Operating Model.
• How can they fit this into their already busy days? Help them understand how to prioritize the ideas. Make sure they know how critical it is to stay on top of ideas – if they get behind, catching up will create unnecessary stress. In the long run, this should save them time by enabling communication directly with users and providing transparency internally and externally.
• How should they incorporate customer feedback into their strategic planning? When should they agree to implement the features and when should they not? Hopefully, they understand how to prioritize but this is an opportunity to strengthen their prioritization skills and ensure alignment on the organization’s priorities.
• How specifically should they respond? Provide examples of responses when they are going to ask for more information, when they are sharing samples and asking for feedback, and when they have to say no. Especially when they have to say no – provide several templates they can use with options that are high level (misalignment with strategy), that provide workarounds to address the user’s need, and that are more direct when users are pushing back.
• How should they respond if a user is combative or won’t let go of an issue?
• How candid should they be? For example, should they give target dates for implementation?
• What personality/corporate voice should they use? Formal or informal, 1^st person or 3^rd person, acronyms or no acronyms, etc.
• What are the circumstances for when they should pick up the phone and call the user or get the CSM engaged?

KPIs & Dashboards

We all know the adage, “What gets measured gets managed.” So let’s make sure we are measuring we want to want to manage. You defined the “How” in the Operating Model in Step 1, now it’s time to create dashboards containing your primary and secondary KPIs. Include context and the definitions for the data: how was it calculated, what is your target, etc. Also consider including instructions directly on the dashboard, what should they do with this information. No need to send the team somewhere else to learn what they need to do.

Also, consider the distribution method – Will your colleagues have to go to the dashboard to review or will you send the report out automatically?  

Determine the accountability process. Do you notify your colleagues only if there is a problem they need to address? What is the escalation process if the items out of compliance remain out of compliance?

As with any project, the first 90 days are critical to long-term success. The first 90 days set the tone for the entire initiative. Not to say that you wouldn’t be able to course correct of course, but getting on the right path from the beginning makes it easier to stay on that path. First and foremost, use the dashboards to observe metrics and manage behaviors. You will also want to set up a cadence to share learnings across the company, driving ongoing engagement and buy-in.

• Be candid; make sure to share both positive and negative learning. This will help build trust with your organization.
• Consider utilizing a Slack or Teams channel to share impromptu learnings and feedback.
• 30 Days In: share a quick update to the executive team including participation metrics, customer feedback about the initiative, and early wins.
• 60 Days In: Check in with the primary users to learn any tips or tricks to share with the entire group. Also, determine challenges they may be facing and resolve those challenges through training or process improvements.
• 90 Days In: Share an update with customer-facing teams, potentially all teams and even customers. Include participation metrics, feedback about the initiative, and any adjustments you have made.

Internal and external engagement is paramount to ensuring a successful customer feedback initiative. Including these best practices in your launch plan will ensure you get the broadest reach and early participation.

Check out Step 1 & Step 3: