During a recent consultation with a new customer I was asked:

Andy, how would you improve my software?

I couldn’t give an application specific answer because I didn’t have enough experience with the customers software. However, I did have an answer and I want to share it with you today. It’s how we’ve managed to grow our software from nothing more than an idea to a full time business.

Here’s the short answer:

Listen to your customers. Release early and release often, remain agile.

Let’s face it, good or bad, all customer feedback is very important. The good feedback makes it all worthwhile, while the bad feedback can be tough to swallow at times. How you handle the feedback will define your business.

Here are 3 simple tips to improving your software based on customer feedback.

1. Remain true to the software.

Listening to your customers does not mean you have to code everything they ask for. Some requests would take your application off track or be too specific to distribute in production. It’s ok to tell the customer we can’t or won’t implement this feature for our production distribution. Be sure to explain why the feature can’t be implemented and offer paths, such as custom development, to get it implemented.

2. Learn to spot trends in feedback.

It’s not always easy to spot trends in the feedback you receive. For example, most of our feedback comes through our support desk. If I get several tickets regarding a certain feature I take the time to revisit that feature. I try to find ways to streamline it by comparing the tickets to see if they have anything in common. This will usually result in identifying small changes that improve the feature overall.

3. Release early and release often, remain agile.

Constantly develop your software and release the changes every 4 to 6 weeks. Use customer feedback to further develop and improve the software. Developing too much in advance might result in features your customers may not want or need.

What advice would you give?