When working with our customers, they will occasionally ask for features which aren't in the product yet. We won't build a niche feature for a single big customer, but if we can see a request being of benefit to multiple customers, we should capture, track and feed it back to our product teams.
Current Feature Request List
We track feature requests a custom object in Vitally. You can see the current list of feature requests here. It's filterable by team, and shows the accounts and combined ARR of those accounts who have asked for the feature. There's also a Kanban board view which helps you track the progress of requests.
Adding a customer to an existing request
- Open up the request by clicking on the title of it
- Under Accounts near the top of the request click to Select an Account
- If the customer has specific context or a link to a Slack discussion then add it into the text area at the bottom of the request UI. Also add in the contact information of the person asking for it, if it's not a Slack thread.
Creating a new request
If you've checked the list above and can't see an existing request then you should create a new one. You can do this in two ways:
- When looking at the list of features, there is a Create new button in the top left of the UI.
- When looking at an account, you can see the feature requests they are connected to in the related objects section of the UI. There's a Create new button at the top of that UI as well.
Most of the fields are self-explanatory, and the status should almost always be set to Requested if it's a new one, unless the team is actively working on it. Make sure you add as much context in the text area at the bottom as possible, with links to Slack/Zendesk tickets.
Collaborating with product teams
It's on us to represent our customers to the wider PostHog and as such we should communicate these back to product teams.
Urgent requests
If a customer is at risk of churn, or otherwise unhappy about the missing feature, then we should communicate this to the relevant team in their Slack channel (usually #team-xyz). Adding in the urgency, ARR and tagging the team lead is a good approach here to get some focus.
Non-urgent requests
We should also review the list of requests with teams on an ongoing basis:
- Monthly on the Product <> CS Call
- When teams are doing quarterly planning