Customer Feedback and Data Collection Techniques in Software R&D : A Literature Review

In many companies, product management struggles in getting accurate customer feedback. Often, validation and confirmation of functionality with customers takes place only after the product has been deployed, and there are no mechanisms that help product managers to continuously learn from customers. Although there are techniques available for collecting customer feedback, these are typically not applied as part of a continuous feedback loop. As a result, the selection and prioritization of features becomes far from optimal, and product deviates from what the customers need. In this paper, we present a literature review of currently recognized techniques for collecting customer feedback. We develop a model in which we categorize the techniques according to their characteristics. The purpose of this literature review is to provide an overview of current software engineering research in this area and to better understand the different techniques that are used for collecting customer feedback