Do you ever feel lost in the ever-changing business landscape? You’re not alone. Navigating this ever-changing world can feel like an impossible task. The untapped power of frequent customer feedback can help shine the path. As wonderful as feedback is, it’s overwhelming. How do you structure it, organize, and absorb it in an effective way?

The Power of Feedback: Learning from Valve

I recently stumbled upon a video from Valve, highlighting their effective feedback incorporation system. Take a look to understand their process:

If you skipped the video, here’s a summary of Valve’s key steps:

1. Establish a goal and work towards it
2. Demo your progress when you are near the goal
3. Listen, absorb the feedback from the demo
4. Iterate until the goal is met (it’s no longer excruciating to listen to the demo)

Mike Ambinder from Valve encapsulates this idea beautifully:
“We see our game designs as hypotheses and our playtests as experiments to validate these hypotheses.”

Now, let’s explore how you can implement this at your organization.

Where to Start?

Select a problem that enables rapid feedback and one that end users are very passionate about. Don’t be afraid of choosing the hard problems, the ones where customers really struggle.

Frequency is vital — you should have multiple sessions a month. If you wait too long the customer will lose interest and will only amplify their skepticism. Choose a facilitator known for their calm demeanor and ability to extract deeper insights from participants with thoughtful follow-up questions.

Focus on people who use the product often and are passionate about improving it. Participants need to be vocal, opinionated, and collaborative. Variety is essential — bring in participants from different segments to enable richer, multifaceted feedback.

Tip: Have at least 3 and no more than 7 customers represented in your session.

Demo Time: Embrace the Mess

The first demo with your customers will be hard, messy, and nerve-wracking. That’s okay. The goal is to present new ideas, listen actively, and incorporate feedback.

Making something great is messy — and you’re showing how things really work at your company. It’s rare for development teams to receive direct customer feedback, so this involvement is crucial.

Set the stage and let them share why the product doesn’t work for them. This feedback is critical to building impactful solutions — and as a bonus, it will challenge everything in the backlog. Relentless pressure on the backlog validates that you’re building the right things, right now.

🎥 Record the session and always thank everyone for their insights.

The Iterative Process and the Road Ahead

After the first time, it gets easier. Soon, you’ll be conducting these sessions for everything. As the program grows, your customers become part of your team — sounding boards and champions.

When I watched the Valve video, I was struck by the parallels in my own experience. We started with a product customers wanted to walk away from, but a team committed to fixing it.

After the first session, our backlog was in shambles. We realized we were building the wrong things — and making them too complicated.

Each week we demoed what we built. The customer slowly started to believe in the product. Over time, skeptics became supporters, and eventually honorary team members.

That program became so successful, customers started paying to be part of it. They saw the value of turning their feedback into action — as a competitive advantage.