Get Customer Input Before You Build, Not Feedback After You Ship

Most businesses collect feedback. Very few get input. The difference is timing, and timing is the whole thing.

Feedback arrives after you have built the thing. The money is spent. The team is trained. The process is live. At that point feedback is not information you can act on cheaply. It is a bill.

Input arrives before. It costs a conversation. It changes what you build while changing it is still free.

What SPRY Did

SPRY Therapeutics, which builds an EMR and practice platform for outpatient therapy, formed a Clinical Advisory Board. Nine outpatient therapy practice leaders sit on it: Sharon Gutwin, Cody Hartley, Jonathan Hodges, Stacy Hund, Carlos Martinez, Ken McKenzie, BJ Pataria, Tom Porter, and Keith Glasser. The announcement is here.

The detail worth noticing is when the board gets involved. Members review product strategy and feature development on an ongoing basis, before features are released, not after. Practicing clinic operators are in the room while the decisions are still open.

I am not a member of that board and I have no role in it. I am pointing at the structure, because the structure is the lesson, and the lesson has nothing to do with software.

The People Using What You Build Already Know What Is Broken

Your patients know which part of your intake process is confusing. Your front desk knows which question every caller asks before they ask it. Your therapists know which step of the visit they quietly work around. None of that is hidden. It is just unasked.

So most owners find out the expensive way. You buy the software. You roll out the new schedule. You print the new forms. Then the complaints come in, and every one of them is something somebody could have told you in ten minutes, for free, a month earlier.

That is the pattern. Not bad decisions. Good decisions made without the people who would have known better.

"Feedback is a receipt. Input is a decision you still get to make."

What This Looks Like If You Do Not Sell Software

You do not need a board. You need a rhythm. A scheduled, repeatable way to get input from the people who use what you build, before you build it.

1. Pick your five. Five customers, five staff, or a mix. People who use the thing daily and will tell you the truth.
2. Ask before, not after. Bring them the change while it is still a sketch. Ask what breaks. Ask what they would work around.
3. Put it on the calendar. Once a quarter, same week every quarter. If it is not scheduled, it will not happen.
4. Close the loop. Tell them what you changed and what you did not. People give better input the second time when they can see the first round mattered.
5. Decide out loud. Input is not a vote. You still own the call. Say what you decided and why.

That is the whole system. A few hours a quarter. It buys you the cost of not building the wrong thing.

Where This Shows Up in Your Business

It shows up in customer experience first. It shows up in your numbers second. If you want the framework for both, start with the Critical 7 metrics, which tell you whether a change actually worked. Then look at The 6-Hour CEO™ Advisory, where building this rhythm into how your business runs is part of the work.