When it comes to gathering feedback, most jump straight to the typical Google Form or a town hall meeting between the entire team to raise points from the current iteration of a project, ready to tee off the next cycle of actions. Although both of these methods can bring back good pointers for next steps, they have a flaw; they’re both subject to opinion. What one person thinks is the best route forward might be the complete opposite of what another person would do.
If we’ve got two clashing opinions for the next actionable step, how can we make a logical choice of where to lead the conversation? Data.
Finding meaning in the data
The two main types of data we’ll be looking for here are qualitative and quantitative. It’s important to know that these two types of data work together to bring meaning to each other.
Qualitative data
This type of data is non-numerical information that captures richness and depth through text, images, or sound. It could be collected through interviews, observations, or focus groups. It answers the “why” and “how” rather than the “how much”.
Example: Hair colour, categories of product or eye colour
Quantitative data
This type of data is numeric and countable. It could be collected through surveys or observations of countable events. Here, we’re answering the “how much”
Example: Temperature, height or event count
When we’re looking at the data, we need to be mindful of what meaning we’re pulling from it. An exceptional example of this is during World War II, when returning planes were assessed for where bullet holes were and if there were patterns between where they were most likely to be shot.
At first glance, it appears that more armour is needed where the red dots are; however, looking beyond the data, they are only collecting data from planes that managed to return! It would then be fair to say that holes outside of the above pattern were the ones that were causing the most damage, and thus meant that the plane would not return.
Using data to drive decision-making
Looking forward, the aim for all businesses looking to grow and thrive should be to reduce guesswork in their decision-making.
For SaaS businesses, who is the most important person in or out of the business when it comes to success? The user. If the user isn’t getting on board with the changes that are being made, you’re more likely to see a decline in utilisation. So, how can we take thousands of users’ experiences and use them in the feedback loop to improve your current offering?
We’d take this as a two-step process: gather internal feedback and assess the data. Ideally, these two should be done separately, then brought together.
Gather Internal Feedback
Gathering internal feedback means getting feedback from across the business, including customer services, sales, delivery teams and leadership. These teams can interact with the project and client in different ways and can identify recurring issues and operational challenges that may not appear in analytics alone.
For example, in a SaaS project management platform, the customer support team may report repeated complaints about users struggling to invite team members, while the sales team highlights that prospects often ask for better permission controls. Combining this feedback helps improve the alignment of customer needs and business goals.
Assess the data
Assessing the quantitative evidence such as analytics, product usage metrics, churn and customer satisfaction scores helps to identify trends and patterns to validate the assumptions. This ensures decisions are based on evidence rather than opinion.
Again, in the SaaS example, 65% of users might abandon the onboarding process at the bank account connection step. Combine this with an increase in related support tickets; this data clearly indicates a usability issue that should be addressed.
Assessing the data is important because it helps teams to measure the performance of previous feedback loops, identify pain points and measure performance. However, only using the data may overlook the reasons behind the user behaviour, requiring it to be combined with qualitative research to provide proper context.
Turning insights into action
Closing the feedback loop means turning all of those collected insights into meaningful improvements and ensuring that stakeholders know their feedback has lead to action.
Acting on insights is critical because gathering feedback without implementing changes can reduce trust, discourage future participation and prevent a product or project from evolving to fulfil client and business needs. Like in the example of identifying the onboarding issues through customer feedback and usage data, the product team may want to redesign the onboarding flow, simplify instructions and release the update in the next sprint. Communicating all of these actions then becomes the second most important part of the process through release notes, email updates, or notifications that demonstrate that feedback is valued and encourage continuous improvement and engagement from clients and internal teams.
Measuring the impact of these changes using metrics such as user adoption or customer churn helps determine whether the improvements should be an ongoing process that supports continuous improvement rather than one-off growth.
Changing the culture
For some people, feedback and accepting the nature of a continuous feedback loop can feel daunting, especially if it feels like the feedback is coming from opinion rather than data-backed facts but that doesn’t have to be the case. Here are two examples of feedback. Which do you think is more likely to have a positive outcome from someone in your team?
I think that the add-to-cart button needs to be moved up the page.
Or
Over XX% of users aren’t scrolling far enough down the page to see that there is an add-to-cart button on this page. If we move it up, we could capture XX% of those who might not have converted before.
At Embryo, Samantha Welch and the team work extensively to ensure that feedback is at the core of all decisions, both internally and client-facing.
The takeaway
Ultimately, the strongest decisions are rarely driven by instinct alone. By combining qualitative feedback with quantitative data, businesses can move beyond assumptions and make informed decisions that genuinely improve their products, services and customer experience.
Just as importantly, closing the feedback loop by implementing insights and measuring their impact builds trust with both customers and internal teams. Feedback should never be viewed as a one-off exercise but as an ongoing cycle.
When data provides the evidence, the feedback gives the context.
