According to Microsoft, listening to the community is a key aspect of catalyzing the evolution of user experiences built around its products and a critical element of providing support. For the sake of bettering customer experiences and advancing community support, the Redmond-based company swallows and digests a consistent quantity of feedback. Toby Richards, Microsoft general manager of Community and Online Support, revealed that largest volume of input that the software giant had to analyze on a daily basis was generated independently of any company intervention, which does nothing more than to simply provide a medium for the feedback to be delivered, and sometimes not even that.

“One of the primary ways we listen to the community is by creating community forums and support destinations that allow for interaction with our customers and partners. We also make use of rich social media analytics to identify industry leaders and conversations, analyzing 15,000 Microsoft product- and technology-related articles per day across a large number of blog sites and 600 forum locations on MSDN, TechNet, Microsoft Answers and Expression Web sites,” Richards revealed.

In addition, Microsoft takes a proactive approach to gathering feedback. On top of harvesting input from the community, the company also engages industry leaders, one example of which is the Most Valuable Professional (MVP) Award Program. MVPs receive sneak peeks at company products, technology previews in exchange for feedback and beta testing. Social networking hotspots also provide a comprehensive source of feedback for Microsoft, and a way to easily keep its ears to the street.

“Through our MVP community, we understand not just customer issues, but also what is specifically needed in real-world scenarios to resolve them,” Richards added. “For example, last year we hosted more than 750 product feedback sessions with our MVPs, and gathered 32,000 pieces of beta feedback to help us improve across our product set. This is tremendous. Furthermore, based on what we hear through community listening forums, we gain superb early insight into their future expectations. For example, we expect a sizeable number of our Windows XP customers will want to upgrade to Windows 7 as part of the upcoming release. We are making preparations to support that migration experience, through better content and tools.”