Collect Stakeholder Feedback the Right Way

“You can’t manage what you can’t measure.”

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This quote, largely attributed to Peter Drucker, a management consultant and educator, reaches the heart of stakeholder feedback. In order to effectively make change, you must first know the full scope of what is happening.

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That’s why stakeholder feedback is so important — it provides insights into what a variety of stakeholders think and feel about your business, so you can make informed decisions. 

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In this article, we discuss the right way to collect stakeholder feedback so you’re better equipped to make decisions that will help your business thrive.

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Gathering Stakeholder Feedback

To many people, it can feel complicated to collect stakeholder feedback; who do you collect feedback from, how, when, and how often? With these easy steps, you can get on track to collecting stakeholder feedback the right way.

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Clarify Your Objectives

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The first step to any feedback collection process is to understand your goals and objectives for collecting stakeholder feedback. Are you looking to improve a process? The user experience? Your quality assurance process? By identifying your objectives, you can be better prepared to answer future questions, like determining who should be involved.

Understand Who Needs to be Involved

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Even Abbott and Costello knew the better question was to ask “who’s on first?” All joking aside, you need to know who you’re collecting feedback from before you dive into the collection process itself. You should also consider who the right stakeholders are.

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While you can survey or interview everyone involved in a project, chances are, only some people will have relevant feedback to share. Asking everyone or anyone will make parsing out helpful feedback from unhelp feedback more challenging later on. Instead, begin to look at who can help uncover your blindspots and concerns that affect different aspects of your project or as it relates to your goals. 

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Consider Your Methods

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Depending on your goals and stakeholders, the world is your oyster for actually collecting feedback. Between qualitative and quantitative data, you can choose from feedback forms, focus groups, interviews, observations, surveys, workshops, and more — oh my! While there are many options, be aware that each has its benefits and challenges, especially as they relate to the type of information you want to collect, the availability of your team and your stakeholders, how many stakeholders you’ll be collecting feedback from, and more.

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Depending on the method you choose, consider having an option for anonymous feedback, too, so your stakeholders can more freely share their thoughts. As our CEO, Tom Vander Well says, “One of the biggest advantages of using a third-party research provider is that customers are more reluctant to be honest if they feel their responses are linked to their personal information.”

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This is also a good time to consider whether you want to collect all of your feedback at once, or stagger it and regularly check in with stakeholders. No matter what methods you choose — and be sure to include options for both quantitative and qualitative methods — and how you choose to adopt and implement them, make sure you’re keeping your stakeholders’ preferences front and center throughout the process.

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Analyze and Prioritize Feedback

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You’re going to get a lot of information — don’t panic. Not every piece of information will be helpful, and not every piece of information will be actionable. Your first order of business will be to analyze the feedback you received and begin to sort through and identify trends, patterns, and actionable insights. Not sure where to start? Consider talking to an expert who can provide specific insights on trends and themes when interpreting the data. 

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Once you have a good idea of what the feedback is saying, you can begin to prioritize the changes you want to make. We recommend using a prioritization matrix or other tool to help you understand, objectively, what is most pressing as it relates to your objectives and goals for the feedback, as well as your budget, stakeholder interests, risks, opportunities, and so on.

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Align on Next Steps and Make Relevant Changes

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Now is the time to act! Taking your feedback and turning it into action can be one of the most difficult parts of collecting stakeholder feedback, and also the most rewarding. After you’ve prioritized your feedback, begin considering what is feasible for your business, so you can align on what changes you’ll implement. Then comes the time to actually make changes. Whether you’re making process changes or website changes, be patient — and realistic — with yourself and your team, as the changes could range from small updates to major overhauls.

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Iterate

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Once you’ve made changes, take time to let them work, then take a moment to check back in with your stakeholders, both to inform them of the changes being made and to keep lines of communication open. After a period of time, which you can decide upon with your team, open up the lines of communication for additional stakeholder feedback. This allows stakeholders to provide additional input while strengthening your insights for future changes to be made. If, once you live with the changes, you notice continued challenges or opportunities for improvement, take the time to revisit your process and consider continuing to collect stakeholder feedback to make future changes.

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Need Support? Intellgentics Can Help Collect Stakeholder Feedback

The stakeholder feedback process is a challenging one. From setting goals to choosing methods, there are a lot of opportunities to make unintentional mistakes from lack of knowledge and/or experience. But the result — a stronger product, service, or business — is well worth the effort.

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If you’re planning your stakeholder feedback process and finding that you’re getting stuck, have no fear: Intelligentics is here. Our Stakeholder Feedback and Assessment services provide you with the insights and feedback you need to make informed business decisions.

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With deep expertise in conducting survey- and interview-based research, our goal is to help you understand your unique audience and objectives. We’re also an impartial, data-driven partner, so you can rest assured that you’re getting the best possible outcomes.

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Together, we can foster goal alignment, relationship-building, collaboration, and operational efficiency.

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Whether you’re ready to get started or have stalled out on an existing project, Intelligentics can help. Contact us today to get started collecting stakeholder feedback.