How Big Software Companies Listen to Customers to Build Better Products

Large software companies are using crowdsourcing—tapping their customers to provide ideas and feedback—to build products faster and keep customers loyal. Instead of relying only on company engineers to dream up new features, they're now asking users directly what they need.

Real Examples: How It Works

Salesforce, a major company that sells software to help businesses manage customers, runs a platform called IdeaExchange. Salesforce Trailhead Customers can submit ideas for new features, show those ideas to other users, and vote on which features matter most. This creates a direct line between what customers actually want and what the company's developers build next.

Kellogg, the cereal and food company, takes this further. It runs what it calls a "shelfie program" where consumers help test new food ideas before they hit the shelves. Salesforce Customer Stories Consumers talk directly with Kellogg's food scientists and engineers about new product concepts. This cuts months off the traditional time it takes to research whether a new product will sell.

Rob Birse, who leads advanced analytics and e-commerce strategy at Kellogg, oversees these customer feedback programs. Salesforce Customer Stories The system collects real-time reactions to ideas before they become finished products, which is much faster than the old way of doing market research.

Why Companies Are Doing This

Big software vendors are competing hard for customers. SAP, another major software company, recently said it wants to double its customer relationship software business within two years as a way to compete with Salesforce. Reuters Enterprise customers—large organizations buying software—have shown interest in options beyond Salesforce because it reduces their reliance on a single vendor.

The crowdsourcing approach serves two purposes at once. It speeds up product development by tapping into what customers actually need. It also makes customers less likely to switch to a competitor, because they become invested in the community and watched their own ideas get built.

How It Works Technically

These feedback platforms work in layers. Anyone can submit an idea and vote on ideas from others. More involved customers get early access to test new features, direct communication with developers, or a say in which projects the team tackles first. The company's computers have to connect these crowdsourcing platforms to the tools developers use to plan and build software, which is complex work with its own set of challenges.

The hardest part is telling the difference between genuine demand from many users and loud voices from just a few people. A small group can make a lot of noise about a feature that only they care about.

We have seen this pattern before. In the early 2000s, Microsoft invited expert Windows users into a structured program called the MVP program, where those users could shape how the operating system evolved. What's different now is the scale and how deep these crowdsourcing platforms are woven into the actual development process—they feed directly into automated systems that decide which projects to prioritize and how to allocate staff.

What This Means Going Forward

During the COVID-19 pandemic, traditional market research fell behind customer needs—the world was changing too fast. Companies realized they needed ways to listen to customers in real time, not through slow, traditional research methods. This pushed many toward crowdsourcing platforms.

Larger user communities produce better feedback because they represent more different situations and needs. This helps companies build products that fit more customers. Companies with mature crowdsourcing platforms can move faster than those using old-fashioned research methods.

The bigger picture here is that enterprise software vendors now see community engagement platforms as essential business infrastructure, not an optional extra. Success is no longer measured only by whether software runs fast or has the right features—it now also includes how many customers participate, how quickly ideas become features, and whether customers feel like real partners in building the product.

For organizations shopping for enterprise software, this shift matters. When you're evaluating a new system for your business, you should look not just at what features it has today, but also at how well the company listens to users and evolves the product over time.

The move from companies deciding what to build alone to companies building together with customers reflects something fundamental shifting in how enterprise software gets made. It affects how vendors compete, where they put their development resources, and how long customers stick with them.