How important is customer feedback for the improvement of a product?

As customers are the one's that will use our product, it's the most important thing, for sure. And it's good to take this into account when launching a new product/startup. What do I mean? You can launch a beta version or even MVP, give it for free and wait a year or two to gather feedback before launching the fee-based version. The positive side effect is that your free beta users very often become paid users.

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Hey Elena! From what I have seen and experienced, I feel that customer feedback is of utmost importance when building or improving your product. Why do we build products or startups in the first place? Isn't it because we want to provide a solution for a problem that the masses face, correct? Hence I feel that feedback from the users that are actually using your product is very essential when making decisions and would definitely need to play a major role in your product life cycle and evolution.

I can't imagine making a product without customer feedback. Without it we wouldn't find many problen, even though we use our product daily a lot. Also, we can find more about them, what they do, need and struggle with. It makes us see the problems from different angle. It leads to a much better solution for everyone.

I find it very important! It can help us to clarify points that seemed to be clear to us, to professionals, but users are observing from an another corner... Any impression and suggestion can help and boost improvements of an project... ^_^

I would say it's crucial. It's basically guaranteed that your customers will find out something about your product that you haven't been aware of. I think that launching my latest project (BotMeNot) in beta and asking users to provide feedback has given me so many ideas on what I can work on. The bottom line is, you're making your product not for yourself, but for your customers.

We at Caravel have built whole products based on the direction we were given and feedback by both customers and prospects. It's crucial to keep a pulse on the "Voice of Customer" - something your company is probably already doing, just see who owns this and ask to get those insights. So, whether it's improving the product or building one altogether, feedback is essential - just make sure you're not listening to the loudest customers (aka the tyranny of one)! Hope that helps, but happy to expound if you want.

#CUSTOMER IS KING Customer feedback is fundamental for any Product. PM/CEO should listen to their customers "ASK". But, I have seen even a good PM miss these points. In a journey of creating innovative products and disruptive ideas, companies forgot to consider this basic fundamental. I am building products for INDIA and I believe there are two types of PM's exist, first is learned through Top schools and the second is learning through experience. yesterday, I had a meeting with a founder, running an e-commerce business, and he had some 1K downloads, but the reviews and bounce rate was pathetic, I asked him, how much time, he spends while talking with customers, he says hardly an hour in a month. Now, that's the reason, why is not able to understand the customer pain and needs, he himself is not talking with customers, how he can expect from any of his teammates. Now, I take a local uber ride, to my home, that person has decorated his car, so well, he has Carvaan(radio), fan, chess, and Sudoku as well. Curiously, I asked him, why he has spent so much on his car decor, he said it's because customers get bored while traveling, thus I want to keep them engaged and provide them great customer experience. #customer feedback most Important

100% agree, the most important thing is to understand what customers expect.

When you initially introduce a new product, brand or service to market, you probably have an idea about customer needs. Market research that you conduct before introduction gives you an idea if potential customers would be willing to buy it and also they can give you some tips on how you could improve it. However, only after your customers use your product or service you can learn about all the advantages, flaws, and experiences. On top of that, their needs and expectations evolve with time.

That's probably the single most important thing in developing and deciding the roadmap of the product other than competition analysis and some vivid imagination

Probably the most important thing. However, customers are great for problem definition. Not so much for creating solutions. Therefore take suggestions with a pinch of salt and more importantly try to understand the need that is driving them in the first place.

It is the most important actually. Because we need to develop the product as per the customer needs.

Elena, it’s very important. The fastest way to learn is to talk to customers. Not releasing code, or collecting analytics, but talking to people. Customer feedback is the best way to understand customers' pain points and start conversations with them. Customer feedback is one of the best kinds of user researches.

Absolutely crucial, but... I echo a lot of the other comments about customer feedback being so important for iterative product innovation. The book 'The Lean Startup' by Eric Reis explores the iterative startup model engine really well. However... I have found that chasing every single piece of feedback can often become overwhelming and trying to include every feature suggestion without filter or prioritisation can lead to a bit of a mess of a product. Like how a dog chasing fallen sticks in a forest after a windy day quickly realises only one or two can be successfully carried, a start up founder finds that by trying to pick up each piece of feedback, it's difficult to accomplish your main task. In my experience with WiggleDesk, I really value each piece of feedback that my customers take the time to share. I encourage them to share them through the in product chat tool, which has an inbuilt roadmap. Sometimes these ideas may take weeks of development time and so strict prioritisation is needed : )

In my experience, counter to what most people may think, B2B companies (especially those that target the enterprise) tend to put more emphasis on getting customer feedback and working closely with customers to figure out what to build or change. In fact a very experienced and successful founder once told me that he'd much rather start an enterprise B2B company than a B2C company because usually you can get the best (actionable) feedback from customers and translate that to revenue growth when your customer is a business. This may be why consumer products have a reputation of being extremely difficult—even if your customers are giving you feedback, they're almost never going to take the time to sit down with you and allow you to really dig in and find out from them how they want to use the product and the problems you can solve for them.

"User calling" is a term in product management and growth. Schedule a meeting with the user and get the proper feedback. These days few companies are so passionate about user calling that they select users and send tickets to fly, meet and talk. PS - Amazon gives you $100 aws credits for the feedback. According to me, it's core of the product development and growth.

100% important because there is feedback from customers we can evaluate about our own products

I believe it is of utmost importance as it gives out the true picture of your customer experience. You must understand what your customers desire and how they feel in order to provide them with the finest possible experience. Consumers will be more loyal to your brand if you can provide a better experience than your competitors. And that is only possible when you try to hear back from them after selling your product.