One of the best ways to find out how much customers like a product is by seeing how involved they are with it.
An active thriving community that helps, answers questions and puts up ideas for review makes the product exponentially better over time.
Before the internet became a standard feature in our lives, research companies had to find the right respondents, come up with a detailed questionnaire and then find out what their concerns and issues were. Or even what they liked most about the product.
However, that can only be done once or twice a year. And then decisions have to be made before implementation. Even then, it isn’t clear if users will welcome or reject the new development.
For example, how do you make air-conditioners better? Or washing machines? The only people working on this are the employees in the product research departments of these companies. Customers are mostly absent from the day-to-day discussions. That’s one of the reasons why practically every consumer durable looks and works like its competitors. Dyson, who came up with a completely different approach based on his mother’s experience with the vacuum cleaner was rejected by every company he tried to sell his idea to.
Removing test data from form submissions
Users who work day in and out with HubSpot get to know the product extremely well over time. They may be using just a few of the multiple features based on their role but their experience is invaluable in finding out what more needs to be done and how the product can improve.
The constant flow of requests and ideas from users helps drive product development at HubSpot
Since HubSpot has to work with several other digital systems, the people using the features know what they want next.
The link to the page establishes the context of what users are asking for. In this blog post, a few of the ideas will be covered and how important they are to users.
One of the important requests is the ability to delete test form submission data
When a company has to deploy several forms on landing pages, it has to test them out first. The form has to be submitted, a thank you email generated and then, the data entered has to appear as a lead.
To get the process right, company personnel may use several test flows in order to get it right.
This is what users wrote about the process of testing forms for submissions: Often times we enter fake data into our own form to test workflows or we get spammed with fake accounts. I'd like the ability to delete form submissions so they don't impact the metrics.
I want to be able to remove "test" contacts from being counted as a lead.
If I'm testing a form, I want to see that the form went through and get the follow up email, but I don't want it to go in our email marketing system as a marketing qualified lead. I want to be able to block email domains e.g. from my company name from a buyer's journey/customer life cycle stage.
They all involve actual product experiences that users themselves encounter. Making it a great way to build the roadmap – where users have a big role
Test contacts mess up metrics. And I work out of several office locations so filtering by IP address doesn't help.
Responding to Instagram messages from HubSpot
Some of the comments posted regarding the idea:
Being able to reply to my business Instagram Direct Messages within HubSpot would be a really efficient feature. I see I can reply to Facebook messages and emails but i was really hoping Instagram DMs could be added as well because that’s an important part of customer service for my team.
One main purchase aspect for HubSpot was, to universally track our social activities.
Integration with Instagram, which is already integrated on FB level, would be great. Not to speak of the various other tools coming our way (e.g. TikTok, LinkedIn) in the future.
It would be great if it could go one step further and host all comments and messages in a communal space or a place where questions can be sent to the right team members and answered by them. Kind of like a website chat but for Instagram.
HubSpot product managers interact and provide updates
HubSpot takes a keen interest in ideas the community supports and develops a timeline for developing the ones that have traction.
Most of the features involve making several other changes as well, so it has to be done through a series of steps to see the impact.
It is as if each step leads to a new set of discoveries on what is possible. When users get the functionality they want, they start exploring further – and that leads to the next idea or breakthrough.
As can be gauged from the detailed response for a request to include a Line item to Deals in the workflows from Ethan at HubSpot: This particular feature probably won't have a wide beta. We'll test it with a dozen or so teams, then we'll just roll it out to everyone on a percentage basis. I'll update this thread when we begin the percentage rollout.
As a sidenote, I'll be updating the top Ideas associated with Products and Line Items ~once per quarter going forward. I will include (1) whether or not a feature is on the roadmap for that quarter or not and (2) what our rollout plan for that feature is (e.g. will there be a beta or not). If you have feedback about additional information I could include in these updates, drop a note here. If I see a theme, I'll adjust my updates to address that.
Talk to our experienced consultants at Blueoshan to see what HubSpot can do for you. And you can see, this is a constantly evolving product that keeps customer needs top of mind.
