Stakeholder Feedback Guide with Essential Tips

Gathering good, honest feedback from relevant colleagues and executives is a key part of stakeholder engagement. Quality feedback may be the most efficient way to improve your product and services, including the way you interface with clients. You can uncover unmet needs, and clarify what you’re doing well or what needs improvement.

In this stakeholder feedback guide, we’ll take a closer look at:

Why stakeholder feedback is so critical
Common challenges of getting stakeholder feedback
How you can make this process easier

What is stakeholder feedback?

Stakeholder feedback refers to any input, opinions, or perspectives from anyone who has an interest in a project or decision. It can come from internal sources, like employees, or external sources, like clients, customers, or partners.

Whether complimentary or critical, the purpose of collecting feedback is to make sure your project, organization, or processes are aligned with needs or expectations of your stakeholders.

Why stakeholder feedback is critical for project and business success

Here are a few reasons why collecting feedback is so important:

It makes it easier to manage stakeholder expectations. If you don’t know what your stakeholders want, then you won’t be able to deliver it. Collecting feedback identifies how well you are meeting or falling short of expectations.
You can use it to improve alignment. Regularly checking in and collecting stakeholder feedback helps you quickly spot when stakeholders start to drift out of sync.
It helps identify process improvements. Your internal stakeholders, such as your employees, have visibility to tell you what is and isn’t working. Regularly collecting their feedback is a great way to ensure your processes remain effective and efficient.
It can lead to greater innovation. Getting feedback from a diverse set of stakeholders enables you to tap into a range of perspectives. This will help break you out of your normal processes and hopefully spark new ideas and encourage more creative problem-solving.
It’s good for building trust and engagement. Actively soliciting and listening to stakeholder opinions and advice shows that you care what they think. This will help foster a sense of trust, transparency, and collaboration, all of which are essential for building strong stakeholder relationships.

Related: How to design a better stakeholder engagement plan

Internal vs. external stakeholder feedback: Key differences

Internal and external stakeholders offer different perspectives, and they don’t always respond to the same approach. Knowing which group you’re collecting feedback from helps you choose the right method and get more useful input.

Internal stakeholder feedback

Internal feedback comes from stakeholders within an organization, such as employees, managers, or even whole teams or departments. Because they have direct knowledge of an organization’s processes and culture, they can give insight into workflows, operations, employee satisfaction, and overall organizational performance. They can also provide a layer of accountability by helping you identify places where there may be significant internal issues.

Collecting internal feedback can be done formally; although, it is typically a more informal process. Asking for feedback could also be a regular part of manager reviews or weekly check-ins, or you might run a stakeholder feedback workshop.

External stakeholder feedback

External feedback is from anyone outside of your organization. This will usually be clients or customers, but it could also refer to partners, suppliers, or even governmental bodies. These stakeholders are well-positioned to give you insights around your products or services, customer satisfaction, reputation, or any other aspect of how your organization presents itself externally.

Because these stakeholder groups are outside your organization, you’ll usually need a more formal, hands-on approach to collecting their input. Many teams build stakeholder feedback loops into their regular processes, like sending a survey after a customer purchase or requesting feedback after a project wraps up. This way, organizations can consistently measure and respond to what external stakeholders think.

Pro-tip: Use a stakeholder analysis to identify and map key stakeholder groups.

Common challenges when collecting stakeholder feedback (and how to overcome them)

Gathering actionable insights from stakeholders can sometimes be tricky.

Identifying stakeholders can be difficult. The process of finding and engaging relevant stakeholders can be challenging, especially when there’s a large number of them or the project is complex.
The quality and reliability of feedback can vary. Once you’ve identified your stakeholders, you’ll also have to identify those who can offer detailed, honest, and actionable input — instead of vague opinions.
Their availability could be limited. If your feedback depends on holding a conversation with your stakeholders, you’ll likely have to contend with conflicting schedules and competing priorities. Incentives can help but require resources.
They may require a variety of outreach methods. You may have to employ a number of different methods to gain their input, especially when you’re dealing with a diverse group of stakeholders. Gathering and synthesizing this feedback to ensure inclusivity can be complex.‍

Related: How to create a stakeholder map [templates & examples]

How to ask for stakeholder feedback and gather actionable insights

With some proper planning, you can incorporate the feedback process into your routine client interactions. Here’s how.

Understand which stakeholders will be most involved

Begin your next project by clearly defining your stakeholders. This should include their roles and responsibilities, their needs and desires, their communication preferences, and any other qualities that will help you understand them and their expectations. This will give you insight into the scope and structure of your project. It will also help you narrow the focus of your stakeholder feedback process.

Regularly check-in with stakeholders and schedule feedback milestones

Depending on the length and size of the project, these check-ins could be weekly, monthly, or quarterly milestones. The idea is to make giving feedback an organic and natural part of the project so that it seems much less intimidating.

And try creative ways to facilitate productive discussions. For example, the rose, thorn, and bud exercise is a fun and easy-to-use way to learn what’s going well, what isn’t work, and what kind of opportunities there may be for improvement. Once you make something like this a habit, you’ll be able to get your feedback and start improving your processes fast.

Prioritize feedback and align on next steps

One common roadblock to getting good feedback are stakeholders who don’t think of it as necessary, so make sure you and your stakeholders are aligned on expectations from the beginning.

Tip: Use a structured format for gathering feedback like Mural’s feedback grid template.

The feedback grid template is a useful framework for gathering feedback from stakeholders and clients.

Allow for anonymous feedback

Mural’s private mode makes it easy to put together sessions in which everyone can share their opinions, list out problems, and offer critical advice — all while remaining completely incognito.

Follow-up on feedback

Make sure your stakeholders will keep offering their input in the future by following up on their comments. For example, you could compile the results in a report, or detail the ways your organization plans to take action and address their most valuable feedback. Make sure to send a note thanking them for taking the time to share their thoughts.

Build continuous stakeholder feedback loops into your engagement strategy

Getting the right feedback can be like finding a shortcut to improvement. Make feedback loops a regular part of how you engage and interact with stakeholders. Want to explore more strategies for collaborating with your stakeholders? Chat with our team or set up a demo.