Ask HN: How do you handle feature requests from your users? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How do you handle feature requests from your users?

25 pointsharisb201224 comments

How do you get and process feature suggestions from your users?

I'm a big fan of how Circa does it - https://medium.com/circa/the-right-way-to-ask-users-to-revie...

I've been looking for a good time to ask my users for a review. I used to have one of those annoying popups but decided to move it to a point where the user had a positive interaction with the app.

For a couple of months now I've moved it to the 'Thank you' dialog after an in-app upgrade but although I do see less negative reviews, the number of reviews has gone down dramatically. (To a point where I get 1 or 2 reviews a week) It kinda makes sense because I wouldn't want to exit an app I just upgraded (before checking out the pro features) to review the app.

I will probably try out what circa does and see how that works out. Thanks for the link.

That looks like an awesome technique. Thanks for the share!

Welcome. We've rolled this out within Hootsuite labs with the Suggestions iOS app and are seeing phenomenal results.

- https://itunes.apple.com/ca/app/suggestions-by-hootsuite-cur...

I put a feedback form at the bottom of every page in the app.

http://i.imgur.com/YIMNIEr.png

I add the suggestions to Improvely's Trello board.

That reminds me of a window forms program I wrote for a customer, I added the ability to do a right click, add comment to pretty much anything on the forms and controls. Getting that input simplified a lot of things. For one the context of what the user was complaining about was usually utterly obvious.

Sometimes a comment was a bug report. Or a feature request. Or just fixing my poorly written help docs.

I use UserVoice [1]. They used to have a free tier, but it looks like they don't anymore. I must have a grandfathered account.

[1] https://www.uservoice.com/

I have a subreddit[1] and the regular github[2] issue tracker. It works pretty well :)

Reddit has a much lower treshold for people to register themselves than 'big scary' github, leads more often to discussions with users and can be moderated by others from the team as well. Also, no spambots!

Brilliant platform imo :) The users usually come with a suggestion on Reddit, we discuss the pro's and con's right there, and if it's any good and will also benefit other users without introducing months and months of development work, we'll consider implementing the requested feature, create a Github ticket, and link to and from it from Github.

[1] http://www.reddit.com/r/duckietv [2] http://github.com/schizoduckie/DuckieTV/issues/

I added a 'Feedback' navigation menu entry in one of my Android apps that simply launches the the email client and I did see an increase in feedback from users.

If I think that the suggestion fits it with my vision of the app I add it to the backlog on Trello. When it gets implemented depends on how good I feel the feature is.

How i get and process feature suggestions;

Support receives a suggestion of the customer, passes it on to R&D/me. I go over the idea and contact the customer, mostly attempt to simplify/combine it with other feedback/insights to help more users in one go. Then i update my issue tracker, and make sure that customer gets recognition, a workaround, and info on taken action. Closure given by support or initial contact person. Whenever the new release/update breaks ice, i reach out to the customer and welcome any further feedback.

Our customers (and most colleagues) dont (want to) know of an issuetracker, and any would do. (i use mantisbt) I'm surprised some here are shouting "software X" as the answer to this question..

I stumbled across Doorbell.io recently and am using it on Pleasant.io quite successfully. It's free (with a paid plan that gives you additional users, etc) and very simple: first one I found that wasn't cluttered with fields and features.

Thanks for the endorsement Tim :-)

Most people opt for the worst-in-class and abuse phpbb as a public bug tracker. Especially in the game dev scene you'll see 99% of people doing this. It's a hilariously disgusting user experience for everyone involved, and by extension even for people who never touch it, because things easily get lost in there and never fixed/added.

Personally i use a combination of Uservoice and Github (if open) or otherwise find a way to make the internal bug tracker readable to the public.

Yeah please don't use phpBB. This is one reason I started the Discourse project.

One thing to consider here is the difference between "help us track our bugs" and "let's build a community around our product". In the long run, the community will be far more valuable than merely acknowledging a feature request or bug report.

There are a lot of bugs and even feature requests that require a fair bit of back and forth discussion, both internal and external, to decide what the best approach is. I like GitHub for straightforward bugs, but it is not great for discussion. And involving your active users / customers in the future of your product, including your own team, is a huge strategic advantage.

You can track anywhere. JIRA is good. Google Docs works too. UserVoice if you want it public. Record customer contact information at all times so you can follow up.

The logout page is a good place to ask as well.

Most customers get frustrated when requests go into the trash can. It is important to show progress against requests. Simply referring to the request system in feature announcements is sufficient. "We had 18 requests for FizzBuzz. After talking further with customers, we designed..."

But there is no software just for features tracking, right?

You can certainly use JIRA just for feature tracking if you like - it even lets you let your customers view progress/comment on the issues themselves

Yes, but you have to pay whole product JIRA to use it. Do they have option to embed it to my website? That's what I need.

I use a Trello board for tracking feature requests and my current roadmap. Support requests come in both via email and an in-app support form.

How did you integrate trello with in-app support form? Using API?

It's not automatically integrated. I just transpose as needed from my help desk system into it as I doubt I'd find it as useful if the entries were not in my own terminology.

I ask them, tell them whether I'm going to do it and get back to them when done.

Everyone here seems so focused on tools, yet most companies don't ever actually respond to customers with anything more than 'we'll pass this onto developers' which normally means 'we'll throw this away and you will never hear from us again'.

I get then through a email support button.

I respond to every request with a personal and habd written that amounts to "Thank you for the idea, it has been added to our to-do list."

We have started using freshdesk. Not sure how good of a solution it will be but it seems really powerful.

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