So, 300 ideas! That seems a lot but what may be more helpful for us, is helping Genesys pay attention to each and every one:
Does that mean that every one of them will get put into the product – not at all! What is shows is that they consider carefully about each idea, if it is worth developing, if they need more input, and even saying that they won't develop some.
In submitting this plethora of ideas, I have found out some very important items that will help your idea be seen, considered, and moved forward on the development path and wanted to share them with you all.
- Number of Votes
Just because an idea gets hundreds of votes does not mean it will be instantly catapulted to the top of the list. The PMs have to take many things into consideration aside from the number of people interested like can it actually be done, what other development would be required to implement the idea in the current framework of the product, the impact on other development efforts, and when best to release it in conjunction with other feature releases – you can't just release a bunch at features at once and bombard users with a slew of new things to discover and use.
- Use Cases are more important than votes
I see a lot of our own engineers putting in ideas and then sending out a blanket email to "please vote for my idea" so they can get the votes to be seen. While that might get attention, in reality what is more important to Genesys is not the actual votes, but the use cases you can attach to the idea when you submit it. They can filter for both Individual and Organization votes, so if they see and idea with 50 votes and only 2 organization votes, then they know something is fishy. What would be even more effective than the vote request from colleagues would be to ask them to comment with more use cases and reasons that your idea is worth developing. This gives the PM and idea of how it would be used, how passionate people are about the idea and provide more fodder for management to throw money and resources at the feature.
- Be Clear and Concise
I try to consciously think about what my idea impacts and how it could be put into the product. Sure, you could come up with some pie-in-the-sky creation that in reality would take years to come out like self-driving cars, but what Genesys would rather see are clear and concise ideas to reach that goal like cameras all around the car or adding lidar to the car. For Genesys cloud, instead of asking for many things in one idea, split it up so developers can see the path to your idea. Also, in the description, be clear about what you expect to see in the UI or how you expect it to work. I will usually describe the button, what it does and how it is labeled and nothing else in the description. In the use case, I describe why I need it or how hard it is to accomplish the same thing now.
- Describe your Workflow
While you may know exactly how you get to your pain point, others may take different approaches or routes to the same information. Be sure to describe how you get to where your feature fits into the UI or where you expect the feature to be exposed. It could be as simple as "place a search box in the data table display page" or something more complex "we need a report that shows abandoned calls by agent" and going on to explain what information you expect to see in that view and what you are missing with the current view. Remember that PMs and developers know their own products and not so much about other areas of Genesys Cloud, so they might need some direction where to get to what you are enthusiastic about.
- Don't Be Afraid To Dream
No idea is a bad idea (well, there have been a few), but your idea my spur others to produce their own. You may see something in another product which is really cool and should also be a cool feature in Genesys or maybe you really miss a feature you had in your previous product that is not there (not like that does not happen!). Just let the world know even if you have no idea how to describe it clearly. Others may catch on and comment on your idea with the correct description.
We are all a community, and all want Genesys Cloud to grow to be the best solution out there, but it does take a village! PMs and developers are not the epitome of product knowledge and need your insights to help them understand, so help them out by giving them your ideas today at https://genesyscloud.ideas.aha.io.