What Is Team Demand, And

Why Should I Care?

By Joe Daniels

Points Of View

1

Your internal teams all have their own perspectives on your product, and therefore have their own ideas, insights, and feedback to give.

Leadership:Sales:Customer Success:Customer Support:Engineering:Product:

Strategic overview, opportunities for growth.

Understand customer demands and pain points.

Improve onboarding, reduce churn.

Identify any product niggles or friction.

Understand time and effort involved.

In-depth product knowledge.

Top Tip: Reach out to members of your organization and tell

them how important their viewpoints are, and to keep an eye

out for any feedback opportunities.

The Challenges

2

There are several challenges you need to overcome in order for

you to make the most out of your internal team demand...

The Cushion Effect:

3

A phenomenon whereby a person only remembers

the most recent thing said to them.

This leads to a lack of historical perspective and

biased decision making.

Overcome this challenge by establishing a

feedback channel for your internal teams to use,

enabling you to look back and see the features

which keep cropping up.

Personal Bias:

4

People generally prefer to accept feedback from

those they get along with better.

This means that you may miss out on great insights

from people you don’t speak to as often.

You can counteract personal bias by encouraging

everyone to access the feedback channel

whenever they have an idea. You could even do

this anonymously.

Loudest Voice:

5

Some people will have a louder voice within your

organization.

As a result, feedback can often be collected from

these people more than others.

You can avoid this issue by allowing everyone to

speak their mind, even if it means approaching the

quieter members of your team one-on-one to ask

their opinion.

Managing Team Demand

6

Step 1 - The

Channel:

7

You need to create a channel that every team

member can access and update with their

feedback.

This allows you to easily analyze the data you

collect.

This channel can be as

simple as a Google Sheet

or email address.

Larger companies should

consider using Receptive

or Airtable.

8

You can now prioritize your insights and ideas.

And and open channel leads to cross-pollination of

ideas, enabling them to develop and improve.

9

Top Tip: It’s useful at this stage to invite your engineering and

dev teams to assess the ideas for time and effort required. This

will help with prioritization.

Step 2 - Communication:

10

You should ensure that everyone is up to date

with where your product is headed, and which

features are in the pipeline.

This can change quickly so communication is

crucial.

Use a roadmap and

release log, accessible by

all, and send status

updates to everyone, so

your team members are

in the loop.

11

This creates alignment around a common goal

through transparency and open communication.

Top Tip: Software like Receptive automatically keeps team

members updated on feature requests, feedback & ideas so

that you don’t have to do it manually.

Start Acting Strategically

12

For this feedback to work, you need a strategy.

We recommend a 90 day plan, outlining your big

goal for the next quarter.

Once you know your

aim, you can segment

your data accordingly.

13

An example: If you wanted to reduce churn over

the next 90 days, you could segment the data to

focus on customer support team members, as they

will have insights into why users are churning.

Top Tip: If a team member feels you aren’t paying attention to

their ideas, explain that priorities change over time, and whilst

it isn’t relevant today, it might be tomorrow.

Key Takeaways:

● Internal teams all have their own perspectives and insights into your product.● There are certain challenges along the way:

○ The Cushion Effect.○ Personal Bias.○ Loudest Voice.

● Managing team demand requires two steps:○ A dedicated channel to store feedback.○ Clear communication at all times.

● Once you have your data, you need to act strategically (90 day plan).● Segment your data in line with your big goal for the next quarter.

Thanks for Reading!

Photo Credits

1: https://unsplash.com/search/binoculars?photo=18dsFU_VpZI2: https://unsplash.com/search/challenge?photo=Jiyoj5B72iU3: https://www.halloweencostumes.com/whoopie-cushion-costume.html4: https://pixabay.com/en/rock-craft-people-friends-support-1771913/5: https://pixabay.com/en/megaphone-speaker-man-sound-alert-297467/6: https://pixabay.com/en/light-bulbs-light-bulb-light-energy-1125016/7: https://unsplash.com/search/tv?photo=R1J6Z1cnJZc8: https://www.goandroid.co.in/google-docs-sheets-apps-lands-play-store/37415/9: https://pixabay.com/en/honeybee-bee-flying-fly-insect-24633/10: https://unsplash.com/search/communication?photo=1PP0Fc-KSd411: https://unsplash.com/search/road?photo=8ZgJyLGbC7Y12: https://pixabay.com/en/chess-figure-game-play-board-1215079/13: https://pixabay.com/en/minneola-oranges-tangelo-429383/