Recap notes from CMX 2023 Summit session. Grammatical errors and typos are my own 🙂

Abstract

Build alignment and gaining buy-in with product leadership. – Build a reasonable & scalable process from the start with product leadership & ops – Gain respect and being transparent with your community about product co-innovation – Make product managers heroes in your community – Change the dynamic at an organization to value co-innovation with community – Erica Kuhl, CEO & Founder, Erica Kuhl Consulting and Stephanie Grice, Head of Global Community and Customer Advocacy, Atlassian

Notes

2 methods to get product feedback

• Structured – Have a dedicated place for all the “stuff” to go to the product organization
• Unstructured – PMs going to events, having office hours, going to community for AMAs. No specific destination

5 things you need to focus on doing

1. Have product management and leadership commitment (executive buy-in)
   • Top down: ask leadership to ask PMs to participate more (buy-in at the top)
   • Bottoms up: start with one PM and expand – hard to gain traction by going one person at a time.
   • Community manager – build the process so that it works
2. Define roles and responsibilities
   • PMs don’t talk to customers as much as community managers do. They build products that the customers may use. They may not know how to engage with customers. Community manager should define what they should do – “respond to posts with x number of feedback”. Community manager: “I will protect you if a customer is spicy with you, I will help you create content, etc.”
     • This is your role, this is my role.
     • Be very specific about what their role and responsibilities are
     • Put your feet in the shoes of the PM
   • Set expectations with community members
     • Be clear about what customers should expect from PMs
   • Hold everyone accountable
3. Infrastructure
   • Synthesize conversations – 1/month, share what posts had the most positive/negative engagement, asked for feedback, etc.
   • Set expectations where the feedback is and make sure that it’s structured and there is a dashboard (one location)
4. Feedback comes in many shapes and sizes
   • Many signals – e.g. attended an event and had conversations there. People engaging or NOT engagement is a feedback signal
   • What’s this action (or lack of action) telling me?
   • Sometimes the squeaky wheels are overpowering other voices
   • Share the process of what it takes to build the product with customers so that they understand that you can’t just update something quickly.
5. Evolving processes over time. Don’t just set it and forget it
   • Don’t give a feature and then take it away. If the budget goes away, will you still have it? etc. Don’t just forget about it.
   • Think about it first and how you would evolve your processes

Just do it. It’s going to be done somewhere else.