Conversations for feedback now in public beta

In December, we provided a sneak peek. In January, we initiated an Early Access Program (EAP) for interested customers. And today, we’re stoked to announce the public beta release of “Conversations for feedback”, available to all LaunchNotes customers.

Our EAP for Conversations, which ran from January through February, gifted us with feedback and insights that helped us improve and enhance the UX/UI of the feature set, preparing Conversations for the beta release today.

Additionally, the EAP reinforced what we'd been hearing from customers and why we built Conversations in the first place: giving and receiving product feedback is a HUGE challenge for both customers and product managers. Customers can often feel the feedback they’ve provided ends up in a black hole and is never acted upon. At the same time, product teams struggle to keep up with, interpret, and follow up on the ever-increasing volume of feedback they receive daily. This creates a lose/lose scenario for everyone involved.

To turn this around, we built Conversations for feedback! Let’s dive into the details.

Conversation for feedback

The Conversations functionality unlocks a product team’s ability to quickly turn any feedback item received into a dialogue with the customer or internal stakeholder who submitted it – directly from the feedback item and without ever having to leave LaunchNotes. In turn, this enriches the team’s understanding of what their customers are asking for by providing the opportunity to unearth additional context and dig in for more details – all with just a few clicks.

The ‘Conversations for feedback’ feature is available for all feedback items across announcements, roadmap items, and ideas. At the bottom of each piece of feedback, there is a "Conversation" call-to-action, along with a count of the number of messages that have been exchanged in that Conversation.

When you click on a Conversation, an info panel opens to display the associated feedback. At the top, you can see who the feedback is from, its importance (if indicated), and who reported the feedback if it was not submitted directly by the customer. Just beneath that, you can find the date the feedback was created and its content.

Internal notes and external replies

There are two options for interacting with a Conversation: leaving an internal note or sending an external email reply to the subscriber who originally left the feedback. Sending an external reply is disabled if the feedback was reported internally on the customer’s behalf. This helps ensure that internal conversations owned by customer-facing teams stay internal and aren't interrupted unintentionally.

As Conversation messages are created, they will appear in chronological order, with the newest at the top and the oldest at the bottom. This allows everyone to keep track of the context and communication happening between the internal team and customer teams.

The Conversation editor uses the same editor as announcements and roadmap items, but with streamlined functionality. We've included the ability to tag people with @mentions. Simply type an @ or click on the mention button to view all of your colleagues that are users in your LaunchNotes project. As a reminder, Admin seats in your project are not limited to any plan.

In the management portal, notes are visible to every internal user on your team in the project. When tagging an internal user in a “note”, they'll receive an email notification and can view the Conversation by clicking "View conversation". This opens up the feedback inbox and automatically opens the info panel for the relevant Conversation, displaying the previous messages for context.

More on external email replies

But we didn’t stop there. You can also send email alerts to your customers about when their feedback has been addressed, how it’s being addressed, and even who on the team is responsible for addressing it.

• Automatic email notifications when either a product manager, CSM, or the submitter responds externally to the Conversation

• Automatic email notifications to internal stakeholders when an internal note or external email is added to the Conversation

• Subscribers can respond directly to the Conversation from their email and have that response recorded in the Conversation info panel in LaunchNotes!

• The Conversation is appended directly to the feedback item, so all the context is always in a single place

We believe Conversations can elevate the opportunity for how product teams, customer success teams, and customers connect, making it easier than ever to get feedback, iterate on suggestions, and build the features with the functionality tailored to customers' needs. We’re excited to help transform the challenges and frustrations of feedback into an opportunity to start an engaging dialogue amongst teams passionate about building great products, features, and experiences. It’s a win/win!

Your feedback is a gift! 

As always, we greatly value your input on what we’re building. Love the opportunity to create a dialogue with Conversations for feedback? Have ideas that you’d like to offer up for the Conversations feature? Let us know! Please and thank you.