Feature requests are a great source of input for your product roadmap and an opportunity to build a great relationship with your customers. Read on for our tips on how to manage your incoming feature requests.

Feature requests are product ideas and suggestions that your customers share with you. They can be separated into:

It is often said that "feedback is a gift" when it comes to receiving personal feedback. The same is definitely true for product feedback. When you receive product suggestions, it means that your customers care about your product and are willing to invest the time to let you know what they think. This is a great thing. Make sure that you make the most out of it by managing incoming product feedback well.

1. Make it easy for your customers to give you feedback

The easier you make it for your customers to share their feedback with you, the more valuable data and input you will collect. Make sure your customers know that you want to receive their feedback and make it easy for them to give it to you. This could be as simple as having a feedback button in your product connected to a form or an email address for feedback that you share with your customers.

2. Gather all your feature requests in one place

Stay on top of all incoming requests by gathering them in one place. This allows you to organize the requests and add important information, such as who has requested it and how many customers have requested it. Ideally, you want to aggregate similar feedback and be able to notify your customers when you ship the feature.

3. Understand what your customers are asking for

It's important to understand what your customers are asking for with their feedback. Ask questions about their feedback and clarify any details. When you have a potential solution, ask them for their input again. Make sure you're on the same page and that your customers feel understood and involved. Take the opportunity to build a better product together with your customers.

21% of products being delivered failed to meet customer needs

Make sure you're not part of that statistic.

4. Reply to all incoming feature requests

If your customer has taken the time and effort to send you feedback, make sure you respond. It can be as easy as letting them know that you have received the request and asking some follow-up questions to let them know that you care. This can be the start to building a great relationship with a customer. Also, if they are requesting a feature that you are not going to implement, tell them that and let them know why. They might be disappointed, but also happy that you are being open and letting them know your reasoning.

There are several popular frameworks for prioritizing product roadmaps, such as the 

 or the Value vs Effort matrix. Regardless of which framework you use, two important inputs that you should keep track of are:

Who is requesting the feature? Are they a strategic and important customer?

How many of your customers are requesting the same thing? (read more about 

Once you know "who" and "how many", you will have a pretty good idea of the importance of the feedback. Combine that with the other factors that you use to evaluate product ideas to make a prioritization.

6. Keep your customers in the loop on the feedback they give you

Once you have prioritized the feedback and decided next steps, let your customers know. Especially let them know if you have launched something that they have asked for. This is a great user experience! One way keeping your customers in the loop is with an 

Also, collecting feature requests does not mean that you will build everything that your customers ask for. There can be many reasons not to build a feature. That's fine, just be upfront with your customer and let them know why.

As your business grows, you will have increasing amounts of incoming feature requests. This is a great source of data and input to your product roadmap. It's also an opportunity to build a great relationship with your customers. If your customers invest time and effort to let you know what you think, make the most of it and use it to your advantage by managing their feedback well.

You can manage feature requests manually or use a 

 like Convas that helps you gather & prioritize all incoming requests in one place and communicate directly with your customers to ask questions and update them when you launch something they have asked for. You can 

Feature requests are great input for your product roadmap and an opportunity to build customer relationships. Read on for our tips on how to manage your incoming feature requests.

How to manage feature requests & product feedback from your customers

How to manage feature requests and product feedback from your customers

Looking for a Google Sheets template to help you keep track of your feature requests? 

This template will help you track feature requests and help you prioritize your roadmap by giving you an overview of what features are the most important to your customers and who is requesting the feature. 

Use the template to keep track of which customer requested the feature in the first place and  other customers that request the same feature. This gives you a priority score based on the number of "upvotes" a feature gets (also known as feature voting). Since you know who has requested the feature, you can also make a qualitative priority order based on how important or strategic the specific customers are. 

By adding the email addresses of those that requested and upvoted feature, you can let them know when you launch what they have requested (your customers will love this 🚀 ).

Keeping track of your feature requests will help you build better products and customer relationships. Use our template to get started and if you want to upgrade to a feature request tracking tool, you should 

 (we have a free plan to get you started)

Google Sheets feature request tracking template

Get the template here!

1. Open the template & download a copy (File / Make a copy)

2. Enter and keep track of all your feature requests on the Feature Requests tab. 

Include who requested the feature (name, email and company). By keeping track of which customers have requested the feature, you can let them know personally when you launch the feature (your customers will love this).

3. When other customers request the same feature, add them as upvoters (if you have more than one upvoter, separate them with a comma). The number of upvotes is automatically updated when a new upvoter is added.

4. Set the status of the feature to show it on the roadmap: Planned, In Progress, Complete, or Under Review. Features with status set to Open are not shown on the Roadmap.

The Roadmap is generated from the Feature Requests tab (don't make edits on the Roadmap tab).

If you want to customize the statuses, update the text in the "Status input" fields on the Feature Requests tab (update the status manually for existing features).

Looking for a Google Sheets template to help you keep track of your feature requests? Get our free template.

Feature request tracking template - Google Sheets

We are happy to announce that you may now share a public roadmap with your customers using Convas. The public product roadmap is an easy way for you to show your customers feedback that is planned, currently being worked on, or recently completed.

We hope that the product roadmap feature will help reduce the number of incoming queries that you and your support team receive from enthusiastic customers. It's a great way to keep your most engaging customers informed and happy, without much extra effort from you.

If you don't know what Convas is read more 

The product roadmap will automatically show all feedback posts that are either Planned, In Progress, or recently Completed. It's that simple. 

Take a look at how our product roadmap looks at 

Please share your feedback on the product feature roadmap with us, any thoughts or concerns are welcome. Just go to our 

Public product roadmap showing customer feedback organized by status

We are happy to announce that you may now share a roadmap with your customers using Convas. The roadmap is an easy way for you to show your customers feedback that is planned, currently being worked on, or recently completed.

Back to Blog.

Product roadmap - New feature on Convas

How does the public roadmap work?

Feedback on the roadmap feature

Plug: Convas, a feedback page for your company

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How to manage feature requests and product feedback from your customers

Feature request tracking template - Google Sheets