Power-User Tips: Triaging Feedback Effectively

Triaging your feedback—making sure it’s clear and assigned to the correct feature request—is one of the most important steps in creating an effective feedback collection system. In this article, we’ll give you some tips from the feedback experts at Savio to help you set up a system that works for you.

We’ll cover:

• Two models for triaging feedback

• Power-user setting: skip the feedback inbox

• Power-user setting: disable submitters’ ability to create feature requests

Two models for triaging feedback

There are several ways you can triage feedback from your customers. Here are the two most common models we see.

Assign a dedicated feedback manager to triage

In this model, there is a single person who understands the list of feature requests and does the triaging. Many team members can submit feedback, but one person is responsible for going through it all and assigning it to feature requests.

Advantages of this model: It has high accuracy. Because one person is in charge, you’re most likely to get feedback assigned to the appropriate feature request.

Disadvantages of this model: It can be labour intensive for the feedback manager if there is lots of feedback.

When this works: This model works best when there is a relatively low volume of feedback, so the one triage manager doesn’t get overwhelmed. It’s also better when the list of feature requests is relatively large and there is a higher chance someone could make a mistake as they are assigning feedback to feature requests. We also like this model to start with because it only requires one person to learn the process.

Savio Settings: This model works best with the following settings:

• Skip your feedback inbox: Disabled

• Submitters can create feature requests: Enabled or Disabled (at the discretion of the feedback manager.)

Each Person Triages When They Submit

In this model, each submitter includes all the required information and assigns feedback to a feature request. The feedback they submit can, at your discretion, skip the triage inbox and go directly into the feedback vault without anyone taking a second look. We don’t recommend skipping the triage inbox until you’re confident that your team will be pretty accurate and won’t assign feedback to the wrong feature requests.

Advantages of this model: This model is less time consuming and doesn’t require a dedicated person to do triage.

Disadvantages of this model: There may be less accuracy as team members may assign feature requests inconsistently or create duplicate feature requests.

When this works: This model is ideal when there is a large volume of requests and it would be impractical to make it one person’s job to go through each of the requests.

Savio settings: This model works best with the following settings:

• Skip your feedback inbox: Enabled
• Submitters can create feature requests: Enabled

Power-user setting: skip the feedback inbox

You can choose to have feedback skip your inbox. This lets feedback submitters assign feedback directly to a feature request without it being checked.

• Enable this feature when you don’t need someone to double-check the feature request assignments that your teammates make.

• Disable this feature when you’d like to have someone double-check feedback to ensure it’s accurate before it’s assigned to a feature request.

This feature is disabled by default. To enable this feature, do the following:

1. In Savio, click on your name in the top right corner and select “Settings”.

2. Find the “Skip Your Feedback Inbox” box and select “Enable”.

Power-user setting: disable submitters’ ability to create feature requests

You can choose not to let your team members with a “Submitter” role create new feature requests when they submit feedback using the Chrome extension.

When to let team members with “submitter” roles create feature requests: This feature is best for teams with relatively few feature requests or when the submitters are very familiar with the feature request database. This setting helps the feedback process go more quickly and doesn’t overwhelm one person with the triage process.

When to prevent team members with “submitter” roles from creating feature requests. Disabling this feature is useful when you have hundreds or thousands of feature requests and the team members who are submitting feedback aren’t very familiar with the feature requests in your database. This feature helps ensure your team doesn’t accidentally create duplicate requests or create a bunch of features that aren’t relevant.

By default, submitters can create new feature requests when they submit feedback. To turn this feature off, do the following:

1. In Savio, click on your name in the top right corner and select “Settings”.

2. Find the “Submitters Can Create Feature Requests” box and select “Disable”.

3. To enable it again, click “Enable”.

When this feature is enabled, team members with submitter roles are able to create new feature requests right from Savio’s Google Chrome extension.

Notice that this submitter is able to create a new feature request right from the Google Chrome extension. This is the default setting.

When this feature is disabled, individuals with a Submitter role can no longer create new feature requests when they submit feedback through the Savio Chrome extension.

Notice that, here, it is not possible to create a new feature request from the Chrome extension.

Last Updated: June 28 2021