Should I listen to my customers' feature requests?

The high-risk option: You think you're the next Steve Jobs, and you know better than everyone else. Build to your vision regardless of what people are asking for (they not visionaries like you), and eventually you'll turn out to be right. There's a 99.999% chance that you're not the next Steve Jobs of course, and then you'll lose. Still, on the 0.001% chance that you are, it'll be a shame if you didn't bring the next iMac/iPod/iPhone to the world.

The less high-risk option (still high risk, because startups always are): listen to your customers. They know what they need better than you do. Your business lives or dies on the question of whether you can serve customers' needs. If you don't listen, it's you who's stupid, not them...

Your best bet is to understand your customers pain. They may tell you one thing yet be worried about something completely different. Ask questions, get to know their business and then listen to what they have to say. Customers are not stupid -- they are just solving the problems in front of them. Your job is to help them.

Always hear your customers. It is rude not to, and its their money that keeps you in business.

As for listening (rather then just hearing), it depends on what they say. There is some value in the wisdom of the crowds, and you get learn a lot from your customers, but you should not do everything they suggest.

Your customers are probably your best source for breakthrough innovations, since they know what they are willing to pay for more then anyone else (its their buck). The trick is to figure out what is important without loosing focus on other important things.

I would never assume that my customers are stupid, and I would never let them know I think that of them if I come to the conclusion that they in fact are.

Listen to your users for problems. They use your service (probably more than you do) and they're great at knowing what's wrong with it.

Do not listen to your users for solutions or prioritization of problems because they're terrible at that.

You have to listen to your costumers. Don't expect them to contribute new ideas (though you might be surprised), but it's the only way to understand what works and what doesn't. You can't expect to improve your product without customer feedback.

Obviously you need to filter ridiculous ideas, or ideas that go against the core of your product. You need to ask the right questions in order to get the right feedback. But never ignore your customers - would you use products from a company that ignores you? make sure to respond amicably to every customer feedback, even if you have no intention of incorporating it in your product.

A little of both. In the beginning you need to go with your vision and not get distracted by customer requests (which are frequently bad). As you get going, it will become obvious which customer requests make sense.

You should always listen to your customers and potential customers. Possibly they will point you to far more lucrative possibilities.

It is the Sirens and the Trolls you need to ignore...

Every customer has a different background, experience so the new feature request from customer A might have no value for any other customer and it might not fit into your product vision. Its up to you to decide if it makes your product more valuable.

On the other side, if a lot of your customers requesting more or less the same feature it might be you who is missing an essential improvement of your product.

What i think is important, every customer who shows that connection with your product/company should be respected and should know that their feedback is welcome.

Tomas

Customers are not stupied, and they hate feeling this way - watch out that strategy!

In the old days, you could just listen to your customers. However, Social-media changed things a bit

Now you can Find where your customers are socialising, Listen to what they have to say, and get involved in their conversation.

I'm sure doing that, will help you understand better how to improve your services, and make your customers happy.

Good luck

Millo

I would go with a bit of both. If what they are asking for doesn't make sense (to you) - go back to them. Start up's these days pride themselves on 2-way conversation which improves the overall service and experience. Use this channel to confirm what they are after and keep the majority happy.

Not everytime. Certain features are very expensive to implement. You have to weigh the cost of implementing the new features they request vs. how much revenue you will get from it, either through retained customers (or lost customers if you don't implement it) or additional sales. If they vote with their money, then it's worth listening. Sometimes, however, it's hard to hear what they're actually saying.

Absolutely listen to your customers. I am a Green Belt Six Sigma and one important aspect of any project is VOC. Voice of the Customer. It is crucial to listen to your customers. I worked for a start up for 7 years and the best information we received was from our customers. We built our features based on what the customer wants, not what management believed they want.

Everyone should listen to their customer requests in the initial days but also you need to take average of how many customers are on the same line.........................because each customer may have different set of feautures in their mind so you need to list all the features from all the customers and see what majority customers are asking for and analyse them and then implement them.

At the same time look at the features of minority customers and help them to solve the issues or atleast tell them why they cant get their features done at this point of time and help them solving their problems even though you did not listen to them