The best ways to collect customer feedback in a SaaS product are an in-app feedback widget, a public feedback board where customers vote, support tickets and chat, sales and success calls, short in-app surveys such as NPS or CSAT, customer interviews, community channels like Slack or Discord, product analytics and session recordings, and reviews on sites like G2. The method matters less than what happens next: send every piece of feedback to one list, link it to the customer who said it, merge duplicates, and tell people when you act on it. A feedback tool such as Murmur can pull requests out of email, Slack and Discord automatically so nothing is lost.
Ask a founder whether they hear from customers and the answer is almost always yes. Ask where that feedback lives and the answer is a support inbox, a Slack channel, a call recorder, a spreadsheet and somebody’s memory. Collecting customer feedback is rarely the hard part. Keeping it together, so it actually changes what you build, is. Here are nine methods and a way to make them add up.
Asked and unasked feedback
Anything a customer tells you about your product: requests, complaints, praise, questions and the workarounds they use, collected so you can decide what to build, fix or explain better.
There are two kinds, and you need both:
- Asked feedback answers questions you choose, at a time you choose: surveys, interviews, NPS.
- Unasked feedback arrives whenever customers want: support tickets, chat, calls, community posts, the feedback board. It is usually more honest and more specific, and it is the kind most teams lose.
9 ways to collect customer feedback
1. An in-app feedback widget
A button inside your product that opens a short form. It catches feedback at the moment of frustration, while the customer is still looking at the problem. The best widgets show similar ideas as people type, so they vote instead of posting duplicates, and pass the signed-in customer’s name and company automatically.
2. A public feedback board
A page where customers post ideas and vote on each other’s. It turns one-off requests into a ranked list and shows customers they are not the only ones asking. Pair it with a public roadmap so they can see what happens next.
3. Support tickets and live chat
Support hears more requests than anyone else. Tag tickets that contain a feature request and send them to the same list as the board. Better still, use a tool that pulls requests out of forwarded emails or chat automatically.
4. Sales, onboarding and success calls
Customers explain their workflows on calls in a way they never will in writing. Log each request within a day, in their words, against their account. Our guide to capturing feature requests from customer calls has a two-minute routine.
5. Short in-app surveys
One or two questions after a key moment: finishing onboarding, using a new feature, exporting a report. Good for measuring satisfaction (CSAT), effort (CES) and spotting where people get stuck.
6. NPS surveys
“How likely are you to recommend us?” every three to six months. The score is a trend line. The follow-up comment (“why did you give that score?”) is where the useful feedback is.
7. Customer interviews
Thirty minutes with five customers a month will teach you more than a hundred survey responses. Ask about their last week, not about features: what were they trying to do, what got in the way, what did they do instead.
8. Community channels
If your customers talk in Slack, Discord or a forum, requests appear there daily. Set up a way to capture them without someone copying messages by hand.
9. Analytics, recordings and reviews
Product analytics and session recordings show what customers do, which explains what they say. Reviews on G2 or Capterra show what they tell other buyers. Both are worth a monthly read.
The methods compared
| Method | Type | Best for | Effort |
|---|---|---|---|
| In-app widget | Unasked | Feature requests in context | Low |
| Feedback board | Unasked | Ranking requests by votes | Low |
| Support and chat | Unasked | Bugs, friction and requests | Medium |
| Calls | Unasked | Context and deal impact | Medium |
| In-app surveys | Asked | Satisfaction at key moments | Low |
| NPS | Asked | Loyalty trend over time | Low |
| Interviews | Asked | Deep understanding of workflows | High |
| Community | Unasked | Power-user ideas | Medium |
| Analytics and reviews | Observed | What people do and say publicly | Medium |
Keep it in one place
Nine channels feeding nine lists is how feedback dies. The fix is boring and it works: every request goes to one list, whatever channel it came from.
- Choose one home for feature requests: a feedback tool, not a spreadsheet nobody owns.
- Connect the channels that can send automatically, such as email, Slack, Discord and the widget.
- Give support, sales and success a fast way to add requests on a customer’s behalf.
- Merge duplicates into one idea with every customer attached.
- Review the list weekly and rank it. See how to prioritize feature requests.
“If it pulled straight from Google Sheets, we’d move the whole team over.”
What to capture with each piece of feedback
| Field | Why |
|---|---|
| The customer’s words | Keeps the real need, not a summary |
| Who said it, and their company | So you can follow up and see who is asking |
| Revenue | So you can weigh a request by what it is worth |
| Where it came from | Shows which channels matter |
| How important it is to them | Separates nice-to-have from blockers |
Common mistakes
- Only counting the board. Most requests never reach it. Capture what support and sales hear too.
- Losing the customer. “Someone asked for PDF export” cannot be prioritised or followed up.
- Surveying too often. Response rates drop and answers get lazy.
- Never replying. If customers never hear back, they stop telling you things. See how to close the feedback loop.
A simple feedback stack for startups
- One feedback tool with a board, widget, roadmap and changelog. Compare options in our best customer feedback software guide.
- One survey tool for NPS and a few in-app questions.
- Product analytics to check what people do against what they say.
Collecting feedback with Murmur
Murmur gives you a feedback portal and an in-app widget, and its AI, Autopilot, pulls requests out of forwarded emails, Slack and Discord and adds them to the right idea. Each request carries the customer and their revenue, so the list ranks itself. When something ships, everyone who asked gets an email. It is free for one board with unlimited voters, and Solo is $19 a month.
Frequently asked questions
What is the best way to collect customer feedback?
For SaaS products, the best way is a mix: an in-app widget and feedback board for feature requests, short surveys for satisfaction, and calls and support tickets for context. Send everything to one list linked to each customer, so you can rank requests and reply when something ships.
How do you collect feedback without annoying customers?
Ask at the right moment and keep it short. Use one-question surveys after a key action, let customers give feedback whenever they want through a widget, and capture what they already tell support and sales instead of asking again.
How often should you ask customers for feedback?
Collect unasked feedback continuously through your widget, board, support and calls. Run surveys such as NPS every three to six months, and in-app micro-surveys only at specific moments, such as after onboarding or a new feature.
What tools do you need to collect customer feedback?
Most startups need a feedback tool with a board and in-app widget, such as Murmur, Canny or Featurebase, plus a survey tool for NPS or CSAT. Product analytics and session recording tools add context on what users actually do.
How do you organise customer feedback once you have it?
Put every request in one list, merge duplicates into one idea with every customer attached, tag it by product area, and rank it by votes and revenue. Then update the status and tell customers when it ships.
Collect it, rank it, ship it, tell everyone
Murmur is customer feedback software for small SaaS teams: a feedback portal and widget, AI that captures requests from email, revenue on every vote, and emails to every voter when you ship. Free for one board with unlimited voters.