15 Types of Customer Feedback [+ Automated Priortization Tips]

Customer feedback is any insight—positive or negative—shared by users about their experience with your product, service, or brand. It’s how customers tell you what’s working, what’s broken, and what they wish you’d build next. And in today’s competitive landscape, it’s one of the few levers you can pull that directly improves trust, loyalty, and user experience.

When used well, feedback becomes your unfair advantage. It helps you refine your product, enhance customer support, and make smarter decisions that actually serve your users. It also builds credibility—because when people feel heard, they stick around.

In this guide, we’ll break down 15 essential types of customer feedback, from surveys and support tickets to user-generated content and feature requests. You’ll get real-world examples, smart collection methods, and actionable tips for turning raw input into strategic output. Whether you're just starting or scaling fast, this is the foundation every customer-centric team needs.

Why understanding different types of customer feedback matters

Understanding the different types of customer feedback isn’t just helpful—it’s essential. Not all feedback carries the same weight or serves the same purpose. A bug report demands a fix, a feature request reveals unmet needs, and a public review shapes brand perception. By categorizing feedback properly, you can improve your product, enhance customer service, and elevate the overall customer experience. It also directly supports initiatives like NPS, CSAT, and CX by giving you clearer, more actionable data. Most importantly, it helps you spot churn signals early and surface innovation opportunities faster. Businesses that take a structured approach to feedback don’t just react—they lead. And in crowded markets, that kind of responsiveness is what sets brands apart.

15 types of customer feedback

Keep reading for the top types of customer feedback, why they matter, how to collect them, and implementation tips.

1. Customer survey responses

Let’s start with the most obvious—but often misunderstood—type of feedback: customer surveys. These are structured questions sent to your users, usually with the goal of understanding satisfaction, loyalty, or experience. You’ve seen them before—“How satisfied were you today?” or “How likely are you to recommend us?” They seem simple, but when used consistently, they give you powerful signals that can influence everything from product direction to support strategy.

Why it matters

Survey responses are quantifiable. That means they give you trend data you can actually use. You’re not guessing what’s working—you’re seeing it in the numbers. Over time, this becomes your north star for customer experience.

Best ways to collect

• Email Surveys: Still the most common. Send them right after key events—like a purchase, support interaction, or delivery.

• In-App Micro-Surveys: These are short, snappy, and show up at the right moment inside your product. Tools like Frill make this easy.

• Exit Surveys: Show these when someone cancels or downgrades. It’s your last shot at understanding what went wrong.

• Embedded Web Forms: Place them inside your help docs or account dashboards. These are passive, but always on.

• SMS Surveys: Ideal for industries like hospitality or delivery, where speed and simplicity matter.

How to use this feedback

Use survey data as a running health check. If your NPS drops, that’s a warning light. If CSAT is climbing, double down on what’s working. Don’t just collect and store these scores—route them to your product, support, or CX teams. Tag low scores for follow-up. Tag high scores to trigger reviews or referrals. The magic happens when feedback isn’t just read—it’s acted on.

2. Online reviews

Online reviews are public, third-party feedback left by customers on platforms like Google, Yelp, G2, Trustpilot, or Amazon. This type of feedback isn’t curated, filtered, or hidden—it’s raw, visible, and often brutally honest. The thing is, people trust it. Prospects read reviews not just to hear what others thought, but to decide whether or not to buy from you. In many ways, reviews are your silent sales team.

Why it matters

Online reviews directly shape perception. They influence trust, purchase decisions, and even search rankings. A single bad review might sting, but a consistent trend—good or bad—is what moves the needle.

Best ways to collect

• Follow-Up Emails: Send review requests after a successful purchase, support ticket, or service experience. Don’t overthink the copy—just make the ask.

• In-App Prompts: For SaaS or apps, pop a subtle prompt when users hit a “success moment” (like publishing a campaign or completing a task).

• QR Codes on Packaging or Receipts: Great for restaurants, retail, or services. Make it easy, and you’ll increase response rate.

• Review Platforms with Incentives: Use tools like Trustpilot or Yotpo to automate review collection—some even offer optional rewards for users.

• Link in Email Signatures: Low-effort, always-on. Just a friendly line: “Enjoying our product? Leave us a review!”

How to use this feedback

First, read every review. Seriously. Look for patterns: repeated complaints, consistent praise, areas where expectations aren’t matching reality. Use positive reviews as social proof across landing pages, ads, and email sequences. Address negative ones publicly and professionally—it builds trust more than you think. And if a feature request or issue pops up repeatedly? You’ve got your next roadmap item.

3. Customer support interactions

Every time a customer reaches out via live chat, email, or phone, you’re getting something more valuable than just a ticket—you’re getting insight. These moments surface bugs, frustrations, misunderstandings, and occasionally, some praise. It’s unfiltered, unsolicited feedback that shows up right at the point of friction. If you’re not already mining your support inbox for trends, you’re sitting on a goldmine and not even digging.

From live chat to email tickets to phone calls...these conversations often hold the clearest signal. They tell you where the experience is breaking down in real time. Customers don’t sugarcoat support requests—they just want help, now.

Why it matters

Support feedback isn’t theoretical. It’s urgent. It highlights gaps in your product, documentation, or onboarding flow—often before they scale into churn.

Best ways to collect

• Tagging in Helpdesk Tools: Use labels like “bug,” “feature request,” or “UX issue” inside Zendesk, Intercom, or Help Scout. It creates a searchable archive of pain points.

• Agent Notes or Flags: Train agents to mark notable conversations for review—especially when they hear something more than once.

• Post-Ticket Surveys: A quick CSAT survey after a conversation can validate how effective your support—and product—actually are.

• Conversation Review Sessions: Product, support, and success teams should regularly listen to call recordings or review chat logs together. You’ll find insights faster this way than in any dashboard.

How to use this feedback

Create a feedback loop between your support and product teams. Weekly or bi-weekly reviews of flagged conversations can surface high-priority issues early. If three customers complained about the same workflow in the past week, it’s not an edge case—it’s a fire drill. Tag, track, and prioritize these insights like you would feature requests. And don’t forget to tell customers when you fix what they flagged—it builds real trust.

4. Social media mentions

Social media mentions are one of the most honest and unfiltered forms of customer feedback you’ll ever come across. Whether it’s a shoutout on Twitter, a rant on Reddit, or a passing comment on Instagram, these posts give you real-time insight into how people feel about your brand. The key distinction? This feedback isn’t given to you—it’s said about you. And that nuance changes everything.

Why it matters

Each platform gives you a different signal. Twitter is instant. Reddit is longform and brutally honest. LinkedIn leans professional. Facebook and Instagram are more emotional. Together, they offer a complete spectrum of public sentiment.

Best ways to collect

• Social Listening Tools: Use tools like Brand24, Sprout Social, or Hootsuite to track brand mentions across platforms. Set alerts for your product name, competitors, or key terms.

• Hashtag Monitoring: Monitor hashtags you own (#YourBrandName) and those tied to your category. You’ll often find indirect feedback here.

• Manual Search (Weekly): Regularly search your brand on Reddit, Twitter, or TikTok. Yes, manually. Sometimes automation misses the stuff that really matters.

• Customer Engagement Teams: Empower your social team to tag or flag feedback posts internally, especially if it highlights friction, delight, or confusion.

• Dedicated Feedback Hashtags: Some brands create hashtags like #YourBrandFeedback to direct customers to a shared space. It doesn’t work for everyone, but when it does, it’s gold.

How to use this feedback

Start by categorizing what you find—bugs, praise, confusion, comparisons. If one tweet gets 300 likes complaining about your onboarding flow, that’s not a fluke—it’s a roadmap signal. Positive mentions? Repost them. Critical ones? Respond publicly if helpful, but always route them internally. Social media feedback isn’t about control—it’s about visibility. Treat it like the world’s biggest focus group, because that’s exactly what it is.

5. Bug reports

Bug reports are pieces of feedback where users identify something broken in your product—glitches, crashes, missing buttons, broken forms, or anything that doesn’t work as expected. These reports are usually sent when a customer is frustrated or blocked, which means they often come with heat. But beneath that frustration is something useful: a direct, detailed pointer to a broken part of your user experience that needs attention—fast.

This can look like users reporting glitches, crashes, and UI issues. This feedback tends to be emotionally charged—and that’s a good thing. It signals urgency. Bug reports don’t just describe problems; they expose UX debt.

Why it matters

Most customers won’t report bugs—they’ll just leave. When someone takes the time to tell you something’s broken, they’re doing QA work for free. Ignore that, and you’re basically choosing churn.

Best ways to collect

• In-App Feedback Widgets: Use a tool like Frill or Usersnap to let users quickly report bugs from wherever they are in your product.

• Support Channels (Live Chat, Email): These are common sources of bug reports—especially if users can attach screenshots or describe the issue in context.

• Public Roadmap Tools: Let users label posts as “bug” in tools like Frill, Canny, or Trello so you can track visibility and prioritize accordingly.

• Session Recording Tools: Tools like Hotjar or FullStory help you visually see where users hit friction—even when they don’t report it.

• Internal QA Logging: Empower your internal teams (support, sales, onboarding) to log and flag bugs they encounter during customer conversations.

How to use this feedback

Triage first: separate critical bugs from UI annoyances. Assign bugs directly to product or engineering with detailed context, ideally using screenshots or recordings. Track common themes—if multiple users hit the same issue, escalate. And most importantly: close the loop. Let the original reporter know it’s fixed. That tiny gesture builds trust, fast. Bug reports aren’t just problems—they’re an opportunity to prove you're listening.

6. Feature requests

Feature requests are direct suggestions from customers about what they wish your product could do. Sometimes it’s an improvement to something that already exists (“Can we get dark mode?”), and other times it’s an entirely new idea (“I want to export this to PDF”). Either way, it’s a signal that someone sees potential. And the more often a request shows up, the more you should pay attention.

Ideas for improvements or new functionality don’t come from nowhere. They come from your most engaged users—people who care enough to imagine what your product could be, not just what it is.

Why it matters

Feature requests are your R&D department—only faster and cheaper. They point toward gaps in value, competitive comparisons, and unmet needs you might not even be thinking about internally.

Best ways to collect

• Public Idea Boards: Use tools like Frill or Canny to let users suggest and upvote features. This builds a transparent feedback loop and gives you a prioritization signal.

• In-App Feedback Widgets: Let users submit ideas while they’re actively using your product—this increases the relevance and context of the request.

• Customer Interviews & Sales Calls: Feature requests often come up as side comments—capture them in a shared doc or CRM tag.

• Support Ticket Mining: If your support team keeps hearing, “Does it do X?”, that’s a feature request in disguise.

• Product Surveys (PMF/NPS Follow-Ups): After asking how satisfied they are, ask what’s missing. You’ll be surprised what comes through.

How to use this feedback

Log and tag all requests in a central system—then segment by frequency, customer type, and potential impact. Prioritize features that align with your roadmap and your business goals. When a feature goes live, circle back to the customers who requested it. Not only does that close the loop—it turns those customers into advocates. People love to see their ideas come to life.

7. In-app feedback

In-app feedback is the practice of collecting user input directly inside your product—while the user is actively engaged. It often shows up as micro-surveys, thumbs up/down buttons, or short “Was this helpful?” prompts. This type of feedback is contextual, meaning it’s tied to the exact moment the user experiences a feature, task, or potential friction. That context makes the feedback sharper, more accurate, and easier to act on.

Contextual micro-surveys or “Was this helpful?” widgets are great examples of this type of customer feedback. Unlike traditional surveys, these are short, specific, and delivered in real time. They're not asking about the whole experience—they're asking about this page, this button, this moment.

Why it matters

This is one of the few types of feedback that doesn’t rely on memory. You’re catching users in the act—when they’re most honest, most alert, and most likely to tell you the truth about what’s working (or not).

Best ways to collect

• Tooltips with Thumbs or Emojis: Embed “Was this helpful?” buttons at the end of tooltips or modals. Simple, low-friction, and useful.

• Micro-Surveys Triggered by Actions: Show a one-question prompt after a key action—like saving a document or inviting a teammate.

• Feedback Tabs in the UI: Persistent widgets that let users leave feedback anytime, without interrupting their workflow.

• Feature Launch Prompts: After someone tries a new feature, ask: Did it meet your expectations? These insights are gold for product marketing and UX.

• Error States or Dead Ends: If a user hits a wall (e.g. empty state or error screen), ask what they were trying to do. It’s a perfect moment to learn.

How to use this feedback

Review in-app feedback weekly and segment by feature or user type. Look for repeated patterns—especially in low scores or negative responses. Use this data to prioritize UI improvements, rewrite unclear tooltips, or add onboarding guidance where people struggle. The small stuff adds up here. In-app feedback isn’t about overhauls—it’s about polishing what’s already in place. And that’s where great UX is born.

8. Customer interviews

Customer interviews are one-on-one conversations with users designed to uncover deeper insight into their goals, frustrations, and decision-making behavior. These aren’t surveys—they’re exploratory, open-ended, and designed to reveal things users don’t even realize they’re thinking. What you gain isn’t just feedback—it’s empathy. You hear tone, hesitation, confusion, excitement. It’s the richest form of qualitative feedback you’ll ever collect, and arguably, the most underused.

If you want to understand the why behind your data, you won’t find it in charts. You’ll find it in conversations

Why it matters

Interviews expose what users won’t write in reviews or surveys. They help you uncover root causes, test ideas, and design features people actually want—not just features that sound good on paper.

Best ways to collect

• User Research Panels: Maintain a list of users who’ve opted in for feedback sessions. Segment by persona, use case, or lifecycle stage.

• Post-Survey Follow-Ups: After someone leaves a particularly helpful NPS or CSAT response, invite them to chat. Their context is fresh.

• Sales and Success Calls: Repurpose onboarding or renewal conversations as informal interviews—just ask a few open-ended questions.

• Beta Testing Feedback: Early adopters often have the most insight. They’re engaged, opinionated, and willing to talk.

• Incentivized Outreach: If you’re struggling to recruit participants, offer small incentives—gift cards, discounts, or early feature access.

How to use this feedback

Transcribe and tag interview notes around key themes: motivations, pain points, decision criteria, objections. Use these to shape messaging, simplify UX flows, or rethink feature prioritization. Patterns matter more than individual quotes. But don't underestimate the power of quoting real users verbatim—those insights often become the seeds of your best product decisions and highest-converting copy.

9. Sales objections & presale feedback

Sales objections and presale feedback refer to the hesitations, concerns, or outright rejections voiced by potential customers during the buying journey. These might show up in demo calls, trial cancellations, pricing questions, or competitor comparisons. In essence, they’re answers to a very simple—but critical—question: Why didn’t they buy? And if you’re listening carefully, these objections don’t just tell you what went wrong—they tell you exactly what to fix.

"Why didn’t they buy?" This is your pre-churn feedback. It’s your second chance to fix something before a customer ever gets far enough to churn.

Why it matters

Objections expose gaps in your messaging, onboarding, pricing model, or perceived value. If you don’t track them, you’ll keep losing customers at the top of the funnel without ever knowing why.

Best ways to collect

• CRM Notes from Sales Reps: Make it standard practice for reps to log objections after every call. Track by theme (e.g. “too expensive,” “missing feature,” “confused by use case”).

• Exit Surveys for Trial Users: Ask one focused question: What’s the #1 reason you didn’t continue? Keep it simple. Keep it honest.

• Demo Recording Reviews: Regularly listen to recorded demos with your marketing and product team. You’ll hear objections you didn’t know were common.

• Live Chat Transcripts: Review transcripts where users ask pricing or product-fit questions. These often contain the first signs of doubt.

• Sales Enablement Feedback Loops: Create a direct line between sales and marketing/product so patterns in objections lead to better collateral, positioning, or features.

How to use this feedback

Group objections by theme and frequency, then map them to actions: pricing page tweaks, clearer onboarding, deeper competitor comparisons, or product fixes. The key isn’t to “overcome” every objection—it’s to preempt them with better copy, smarter onboarding, or strategic product updates. When you start solving objections before they’re raised, that’s when conversion rates begin to climb.

10. Churn feedback / exit surveys

Churn feedback refers to the insights you gather when a customer cancels, downgrades, or stops using your product or service. Typically collected through short exit surveys or post-cancellation interviews, this feedback offers a behind-the-scenes look at what pushed someone to leave. It might be pricing, bugs, unmet expectations, or even competitor switching. Whatever the reason, churn feedback gives you the closest thing to a postmortem on lost revenue.

Why it matters

Every churned customer is a missed opportunity to improve retention. By analyzing trends in exit feedback, you can identify avoidable friction points, refine onboarding, and reduce revenue leakage over time.

Best ways to collect

• One-Click Exit Surveys: Keep it simple—ask one multiple-choice question like “What’s the main reason you’re canceling?” followed by an optional comment box.

• Post-Cancellation Email: Send an automated email a few days later asking for more detailed feedback. Sometimes a bit of space makes users more honest.

• Live Chat at Cancellation: Offer an optional chat with support or success during the cancellation flow—great for identifying fixable issues in real time.

• Churned Customer Interviews: Reach out to high-value or long-term customers for short exit interviews. You’ll often get nuanced answers that don’t show up in survey data.

• In-App Feedback Before Exit: If someone deletes your app or deactivates their account, prompt them with a “Tell us why” modal.

How to use this feedback

Start by grouping churn reasons into categories: pricing, product gaps, poor support, etc. Share these insights with the relevant teams—product, marketing, success. Then act. Tweak your onboarding if people leave early. Fix bugs if they’re cited. Revisit pricing if it’s a common blocker. And always close the loop where you can. Even a churned customer might come back if they see you’re actually listening.

11. User-generated content (UGC)

User-generated content is any feedback, endorsement, or commentary about your product that comes directly from your customers—but without being explicitly asked. Think testimonials, unboxing videos, social media shoutouts, product demo reels, blog reviews. UGC is that rare blend of feedback and advocacy. It’s how customers show appreciation and provide insight—all while influencing others in the process. It’s organic, public, and often far more trusted than anything your brand could write.

Testimonials, unboxings, product demos, blog posts all count. UGC isn’t just feedback—it’s storytelling. Customers showing, not telling, what your product means to them.

Why it matters

UGC builds credibility. It’s social proof in its most authentic form. But it’s also feedback in disguise. When customers create content, they reveal what matters most—and what’s missing.

Best ways to collect

• Monitor Social Channels: Track your brand hashtags and mentions to surface content you didn’t ask for (but should absolutely pay attention to).

• Create a Submission Flow: Add a section on your site or in your product that invites users to submit testimonials or videos.

• Feature UGC Publicly: When you highlight customer content in newsletters, your website, or social posts, you encourage more of it.

• Run UGC Campaigns: Prompt users with challenges or incentives—“Show how you use [product] and tag us to win.”

• Ask Post-Launch: After a customer sees success with your product, that’s the perfect moment to request a review or video.

How to use this feedback

First, analyze UGC for common language, highlighted features, or use cases. You’ll often find messaging gold you weren’t expecting. Second, integrate the best pieces into your website, landing pages, and onboarding. And third, use UGC themes to inform what you prioritize—if customers keep showing off one workflow but ignoring another, that’s feedback worth digging into. UGC shows you where the excitement lives. Build more of that.

12. Net Promoter Score (NPS)

Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a standardized customer feedback metric that asks one simple question: “How likely are you to recommend our product or service to a friend or colleague?” Respondents answer on a scale from 0 to 10. Based on their answers, they’re grouped into Promoters (9–10), Passives (7–8), and Detractors (0–6). The final score gives you a pulse-check on customer loyalty—and a baseline to track over time.

Put simmply, NPS tells you measures the likelihood to recommend. It tells you if your users are willing to put their reputation on the line by recommending you to someone else.

Why it matters

NPS is a leading indicator of word-of-mouth growth—and often a lagging indicator of product-market fit. If your NPS is dropping, something’s broken. If it’s rising, you’re likely creating promoters who help you grow for free.

Best ways to collect

• In-App Micro-Survey: Trigger the NPS question inside your product after a user completes a key action (e.g., sends their first email, invites a teammate).

• Email Campaign: Send to customers 30–60 days post-onboarding, when they’ve had time to experience value but are still engaged.

• Quarterly Check-Ins: For ongoing services, NPS is useful to track over time. Trends are more important than one-off scores.

• Segmented by Lifecycle Stage: Ask trial users, new customers, and long-time customers separately—each gives you a different signal.

• Post-Support Interactions: This isn’t traditional, but it can be useful to capture NPS right after a great (or poor) support experience.

How to use this feedback

First, track the overall score—but don’t stop there. Dig into the qualitative comments behind each rating. Promoters are a great source for testimonials. Detractors reveal friction you didn’t know existed. Use NPS data to inform product improvements, surface churn risks, and identify power users. And most importantly: follow up. When a customer gives you feedback, respond. That’s how you turn a passive survey into an active loyalty loop.

13. Customer Support Satisfaction Ratings (CSAT)

Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT) is a simple, transaction-level metric used to measure how satisfied a customer is with a specific support interaction. Usually triggered immediately after a support ticket is closed, it asks a direct question like: “How satisfied were you with the support you received?” Responses are typically scored from 1 to 5 or with emojis. It’s short, contextual, and highly actionable—perfect for tracking agent performance and spotting recurring issues.

Why it matters

CSAT reveals how well your support team is performing in the moments that matter most—when your customer is stuck and needs help. Low scores are early warnings of churn; high scores often correlate with loyalty.

Best ways to collect

• Automated Post-Ticket Emails: Send a one-question CSAT survey as soon as a support ticket is closed. Keep it lightweight and frictionless.

• In-App Chat Follow-Ups: When using live chat tools like Intercom or Drift, trigger a CSAT prompt at the end of the session.

• Embedded Ratings in Knowledge Base Articles: For self-service help, ask “Was this article helpful?” and capture feedback right where it happens.

• Transactional CSAT by Agent: Let users rate individual agents—not just the experience. This helps surface coaching opportunities and top performers.

• SMS or Mobile Push Surveys: For mobile-heavy user bases, keep it native. A quick 1–5 scale or smiley face survey works well.

How to use this feedback

Start by tracking CSAT trends by agent, channel, and issue type. Use the qualitative responses to identify training gaps or process breakdowns. If CSAT scores drop after a specific update or policy change, that’s a signal to investigate. And don’t just use it to catch problems—celebrate wins, too. Recognizing agents with consistently high CSAT builds morale and reinforces what “great” looks like.

14. Product usage behavior

Product usage behavior refers to the actions users take inside your product—what features they use, how often they log in, where they drop off, and what paths they follow. Unlike surveys or reviews, this is inferred feedback. It’s data-driven insight into how users engage with your product, what they ignore, and where they get stuck. In short: it’s what your customers actually do, not what they say they do.

Why it matters

This type of feedback helps you spot friction, uncover feature adoption issues, and prioritize UX improvements. It’s your roadmap to building a stickier, more intuitive product—one that adapts to how users behave, not just how they respond to questions.

Best ways to collect

• Session Analytics Tools: Tools like Mixpanel, Heap, or Amplitude help you track user flows, time-on-feature, and drop-off points.

• Heatmaps & Click Tracking: Tools like Hotjar or FullStory show you what people click, where they scroll, and where they get stuck.

• Funnel Reports: Track conversion rates through onboarding, activation, and key lifecycle stages. Low conversion = a friction point worth fixing.

• Feature Adoption Dashboards: Measure who’s using what features—and who’s not. Helps you understand engagement gaps.

• Retention Cohort Analysis: Break down how long users stick around after signup and what behaviors correlate with long-term success.

How to use this feedback

Use behavioral data to back up—or challenge—what customers tell you in surveys or interviews. Prioritize UX improvements around high drop-off points. Spot underused features and revisit onboarding or in-app guidance. And look for “power user” patterns—what are your best customers doing differently? Behavioral feedback helps you turn guesswork into clarity. It's not just about the numbers—it's about what those numbers reveal.

15. Community forums & idea boards

Community forums and idea boards are public or semi-public spaces where customers share feedback, suggest features, ask questions, and connect with others using your product. These platforms—ranging from Frill boards and Discord servers to Reddit threads and niche industry groups—are where conversations happen without a moderator in the room. Users post what they love, what’s broken, what’s missing, and what could be better—often with more detail than in formal surveys.

Why it matters

Communities give you long-form, context-rich feedback at scale. They surface ideas you’d never think of internally and offer a front-row seat to how customers talk about your product when you’re not in the room.

Best ways to collect

• Frill or Idea Boards: Use a tool like Frill to organize feature requests and bug reports with upvoting, status updates, and comments.

• Reddit Monitoring: Watch relevant subreddits (or threads mentioning your brand). You'll find brutal honesty and genuine praise in equal measure.

• Branded Discord or Slack Communities: Create a space for users to collaborate, troubleshoot, and talk about the product. Feedback flows naturally in these environments.

• Help Forum Analysis: Monitor support forums or knowledge base comment sections to find recurring themes or missing resources.

• Community Surveys & Polls: Drop micro-surveys inside your user group to surface priority ideas fast.

How to use this feedback

Tag and categorize recurring themes—especially requests, bugs, and confusion. Use high-engagement posts as signals: if an idea gets lots of discussion, it’s likely a priority. Loop this feedback into your product roadmap and make your responses public. Community users appreciate transparency. And when they see their ideas shaping your product, they become not just customers—but advocates. This is feedback with momentum. Harness it.

How to classify customer feedback

Before you can act on customer feedback, you need to understand what you’re looking at. Not all feedback is equal—and not all of it arrives the same way. Some comes directly from users. Some shows up in your analytics. Some is detailed and thoughtful; some is just a single angry emoji.Classifying feedback helps you make sense of it. It’s like tagging your data before analysis—without structure, you’re just swimming in noise. Below is a simple framework you can use to segment feedback by source, format, intent, and timing. It’s not about adding complexity—it’s about creating clarity.

Direct vs indirect

Direct feedback comes straight from the user. Think surveys, support tickets, and feature requests. Indirect feedback is what you infer by observing user behavior—drop-offs, usage patterns, social media comments. One is spoken; the other is observed. You need both.

Structured vs unstructured

Structured feedback fits neatly into forms and dashboards: NPS scores, yes/no answers, multiple-choice questions. Unstructured feedback is raw text: customer interviews, long-form reviews, chat transcripts. Structured data is easier to analyze. Unstructured data is where the real nuance lives.

Solicited vs unsolicited

Solicited feedback is what you actively request—surveys, polls, review prompts. Unsolicited feedback shows up on its own—tweets, Reddit threads, user-generated videos. The key here? Solicited feedback reflects what you want to know. Unsolicited feedback reflects what they want to say.

Real-Time vs periodic

Real-time feedback happens in the moment—after a support ticket, inside your app, or during a live chat. Periodic feedback is collected at regular intervals, like quarterly NPS surveys or post-purchase reviews. One captures urgency; the other captures trends. You need both to see the full picture.

How to organize and act on feedback

Collecting feedback is table stakes. Acting on it—that’s where the competitive edge lives. But action without structure leads to chaos: you end up chasing the loudest voice in the room or burning time on low-impact fixes. The solution? Build a system that doesn’t just capture feedback but organizes, ranks, and activates it.

The goal is simple: turn a pile of opinions into clear, strategic product decisions. And the best way to do that isn’t with a spreadsheet. It’s with a living, automated feedback engine that evolves as your users do. Here’s how to build one:

• Categorize by intent: Start by tagging feedback based on what it’s trying to tell you: is this a bug report, a feature request, a shoutout, or someone just... confused? This creates buckets you can route to the right team without second-guessing.

• Use tags and tools: Use a feedback management tool like Frill, Intercom, or Productboard to tag responses as they come in. Set up consistent labels (bug, praise, onboarding, pricing) and use them religiously—it saves hours later.

• Close the loop with responders: When someone shares feedback and you act on it, tell them. This tiny gesture builds loyalty, trust, and shows your customers that their voice matters.

• Automate feedback prioritization: Don’t leave prioritization to guesswork. Frill’s prioritization matrix lets you weigh effort vs. impact, auto-calculate scores using real request data, and visually plot what to tackle next. No spreadsheets. No bias. Just clarity.

• Don’t treat all feedback equally: Every comment deserves respect—but not every suggestion deserves a spot on the roadmap. Filter all feedback through your product vision, customer segments, and long-term goals. Prioritization is a strategic skill, not a democratic process.

Best tools to collect and manage feedback

These tools, especially when combined, help you collect all of the types of feedback you might want.

1. Frill

If you want a single source of truth for customer feedback—especially if you're managing a product—Frill is one of the cleanest, most efficient customer feedback platforms out there. It's built specifically to help teams collect ideas, gather sentiment, and prioritize what to build next. And it doesn’t just stop at collection—it also includes a public roadmap and changelog to close the loop with users.

Best for: Product teams, SaaS companies, feedback-driven organizations.

Key Features:

• Feature Request Board: Let users submit and upvote ideas with a simple, no-login UI.

• Roadmap: Publicly share what’s planned, in progress, and shipped—no more emailing updates manually.

• Prioritization Matrix: Automatically sort feedback by effort and impact using real feature request data.

• In-App Widgets: Collect feedback in real time without disrupting the user experience.

• NPS + CSAT Modules: Run simple surveys that integrate directly into your product flow.

• Custom Tags & Statuses: Categorize and filter feedback to streamline workflows across teams.

Frill keeps things lean. No bloat, no over-complication—just clean UX and useful features.

2. Typeform

If you’re looking to collect direct, structured feedback in a way that feels personal, Typeform is hard to beat. Its unique one-question-at-a-time interface feels more like a conversation than a form, which helps boost completion rates.

Best for: Customer satisfaction surveys, onboarding feedback, market research.

Key Features:

• Conversational UI: Smooth and engaging—great for reducing form fatigue.

• Templates for NPS, CSAT, CES: Get up and running fast with proven formats.

• Conditional Logic: Ask smarter questions based on user input.

• Integrations: Send responses to Slack, Google Sheets, HubSpot, and more.

• Brand Customization: Beautiful, mobile-friendly designs that reflect your brand.

• Analytics Dashboard: View completion rates, drop-off points, and performance metrics.

Typeform doesn’t replace a feedback management system—it enhances it with rich, structured data.

3. G2

Public reviews aren’t just a marketing tool—they’re one of the most honest forms of customer feedback you’ll get. Platforms like Trustpilot and G2 are where users share both love and frustration, in a space that other buyers trust.

Best for: Online reputation, social proof, high-signal product feedback.

Key Features (G2):

• Verified Reviews: From real users with professional profiles.

• Competitor Comparison: See how you stack up across multiple criteria.

• Review Tagging: Break down what users are saying about features, pricing, support, etc.

• Lead Generation: Turn positive feedback into qualified buyer intent.

Key Features (Trustpilot):

• Open Review Platform: Anyone can leave a review—more volume, broader insights.

• TrustScore System: Visual reputation metric that reflects overall sentiment.

• Flag & Respond: Publicly reply to reviews and flag inaccurate ones.

• Review Collection Tools: Email invites, on-site widgets, and QR codes.

These platforms double as feedback engines and marketing goldmines.

4. Intercom

Intercom is best known as a live chat tool, but under the hood, it’s a powerful platform for collecting feedback in-context—especially during support interactions. It’s also a great tool for gathering insights from trial users or new customers when they hit friction.

Best for: Support feedback, onboarding insights, proactive user research.

Key Features:

• Live Chat Widget: Capture feedback during natural user interactions.

• Custom Bots: Trigger CSAT/NPS surveys or feature surveys automatically.

• Conversation Tags: Tag feedback by theme (e.g., bugs, onboarding, pricing confusion).

• Product Tours & Messages: Push micro-surveys or announcements to targeted segments.

• Reporting: See trends in feedback across support volume, tags, and resolution quality.

Intercom shines at catching feedback when and where users are feeling it most.

5. Hotjar

Sometimes the most useful feedback isn’t verbal—it’s behavioral. Hotjar combines heatmaps, session recordings, and in-app micro-surveys to give you a full picture of what users are doing and thinking.

Best for: Identifying UX friction, validating design changes, collecting on-page insights.

Key Features:

• Heatmaps: See where users click, scroll, and ignore.

• Session Recordings: Watch real user sessions to spot bugs and confusion.

• In-App Feedback Widgets: Ask “Was this helpful?” or collect open-ended responses.

• User Funnels: Spot drop-off points and reverse-engineer bottlenecks.

• Surveys: Run NPS, CSAT, or custom polls from any page or app screen.

If you’re not using Hotjar, you’re flying blind on how people actually experience your product.

6. Sprout Social

Feedback isn’t always handed to you neatly. Sometimes it’s a tweet, a comment, or a Reddit thread. Sprout Social helps you monitor and manage this unstructured, unsolicited feedback in real time.

Best for: Brand monitoring, competitive analysis, indirect feedback.

Key Features:

• Social Listening Tools: Track mentions, hashtags, and keywords across platforms.

• Sentiment Analysis: See how people feel about your product at scale.

• Smart Inbox: Centralize feedback from Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram.

• Tagging & Automation: Route feedback to the right internal teams with custom tags.

• Reporting Dashboards: Understand trends, spikes, and recurring themes.

Sprout Social lets you listen in on the customer conversations you’re not invited to—and extract insight from the noise.

Frequently asked questions

Get answers to important questions.

1. What are the main types of customer feedback?

The main types include customer surveys, online reviews, support interactions, social media mentions, bug reports, feature requests, in-app feedback, customer interviews, and behavioral analytics. Each type reveals different insights, from satisfaction levels to user pain points and product ideas.

2. Why is it important to collect different types of feedback?

No single feedback channel tells the whole story. Surveys give structured data, but social media reveals unfiltered emotion. Support tickets surface friction, while user behavior shows what people don’t say. Collecting a mix gives you a more complete picture of the customer experience.

3. How do I know which type of feedback to prioritize?

Start with your current goal. If you’re trying to improve retention, focus on churn and support feedback. If you’re building a roadmap, lean into feature requests and in-app behavior. Prioritize based on impact, effort, and alignment with your product vision.

4. What’s the difference between direct and indirect feedback?

Direct feedback comes from what customers explicitly say—surveys, reviews, tickets. Indirect feedback is what you infer from actions like drop-offs, low engagement, or repeat behavior. You need both to uncover what customers think and what they do.

5. Can customer feedback help with product development?

Absolutely. Customer feedback is one of the most valuable inputs for product strategy. It helps validate ideas, uncover unmet needs, and prioritize features. Tools like Frill can help you organize and act on that feedback in a structured, scalable way.

Customer feedback is your competitive edge. The better you get at listening, the better you get at building.

Want an easier way to manage it all? Try Frill, your all-in-one platform for collecting ideas, prioritizing features, and closing the loop.