Just Launched! — Capture Anonymous Customer Feedback in Ideas Portals

Last week, tens of thousands of ideas were submitted to Aha! Ideas Portals around the world. Some were good suggestions. And we are sure that some were stinkers. But even bad ideas are valuable to product teams. They give product managers insight into customer needs and problems. And product management teams are always looking to better understand what their customers really want.

Aha! already gives you the ability to capture customer ideas and promote the best ones to features on your roadmap. Ideas portals also give your customers a sense of what other customers have requested, along with your product team’s responses.

However, we know that there may be situations when people are hesitant to leave direct feedback in an open forum where anyone can see what they wrote. So, while understanding who provided an idea is the default, sometimes it makes sense to allow people to share their thoughts anonymously too.

Today, we are excited to launch a strategic enhancement to the ideas portal — you now have the option to anonymize ideas and comments from your customers, colleagues, and partners. 

When you make it possible for people to comfortably share their thoughts, you may find you get even more free-flowing feedback that is captured centrally within Aha! This new capability allows your portal users to create, vote, and comment on ideas — while keeping their identity hidden in the portal. And when you turn on the capability, it anonymizes everyone who uses that specific portal.

Here is how you can start collecting anonymous customer feedback:

Crowdsource anonymous ideas Give your customers, colleagues, and partners an outlet to freely share and discuss new ideas for your product — all while protecting their identity. Names are hidden at the portal level. Once enabled, all ideas and comments from your portal users will display as posted by “Guest.”

When user names are hidden in a portal, their display name is replaced by “Guest.”

Capture additional feedback When names are hidden in your ideas portal, customers can anonymously comment and add their thoughts to existing ideas. Anonymous comments help you capture honest feedback and gain insight into what your users truly want — but might otherwise be too shy to share.

User comments are anonymized, but Administrator comments are attributed to the user.

Promote the best ideas to your roadmap When feedback is captured centrally, it is easy to prioritize new ideas and promote them directly onto your roadmap. And even though user names are hidden in the portal view, the name of the person who created the idea is shown to the product team when viewing the idea in Aha! — so you can maintain valuable insight into who requested each feature.

As an idea is prioritized and the status changes, the user who created it (and all users who voted on it) receives an email notification — even if the portal is configured to hide user names.

Simple configuration Easily configure your new or existing ideas portal to hide portal names. Customizations Administrators can configure your ideas portals by navigating to Settings Account Configure Ideas Portals Select the Portal Hide Portal User Names.

When “Hide portal user names” is enabled, user names previously visible in that portal will be retroactively anonymized. Disabling the feature at a later date will automatically show all names that were previously anonymous.

When customers can comfortably share ideas, then the product team can review, prioritize, and promote the ones that matter most to develop.

We believe the best products are those built from customer feedback. Engaging with your customers and giving them a place to contribute ideas allows you to listen carefully and understand exactly what they want. Even if they would prefer to remain anonymous.

Sign up for a free Aha! trial — be happy Anonymous ideas portals are available to all Aha! customers. If you are not already an Aha! customer, you may want to sign up for a free 30-day trial of Aha! now to see why over 100,000 users trust Aha! to set product strategy, create visual roadmaps, and prioritize releases and features.