What is the difference between a feedback board and an NPS survey?
Feedback boards and NPS surveys both help you understand what your customers think. But they answer very different questions.
| Feedback Board | NPS Survey | |
|---|---|---|
| What it measures | What customers want you to build or fix | How likely customers are to recommend your product |
| Input type | Feature requests, bug reports, ideas (qualitative, open-ended) | A single 0-10 score plus an optional comment (quantitative) |
| Who initiates | The customer submits when they have something to say | You send it at a scheduled interval or trigger point |
| Output | A prioritized backlog of customer needs | A sentiment score (Promoters, Passives, Detractors) |
| Best for | Deciding what to build next | Measuring overall satisfaction trends over time |
| Frequency | Always-on, continuous collection | Periodic (quarterly, post-onboarding, post-support) |
When to use a feedback board#
Use a feedback board when you want customers to tell you what they need on their own terms. Boards are great for collecting feature requests, letting users vote on priorities, and building a backlog your team can actually use during planning. They work best as an always-on channel.
When to use an NPS survey#
Use NPS when you want a quantitative pulse check on customer satisfaction. It's useful for tracking sentiment over time, spotting at-risk accounts (Detractors), and benchmarking against industry averages. It's a scheduled measurement, not a continuous channel.
How they work together#
The best product teams use both. NPS tells you how customers feel. Feedback boards tell you why they feel that way and what to do about it. A Detractor who also submits a feature request is basically handing you a roadmap to winning them back.
FeatureOS includes both feedback boards and in-app surveys (including NPS, CSAT, and custom surveys) in every plan. You don't need separate tools for each. See our guide to survey vs feedback board differences for a deeper comparison.