From Feedback Chaos to Inbox Zero: A Founder's Guide

The Feedback Nightmare

You're getting feedback through email, Twitter DMs, Discord, support tickets, and random Slack messages. It's everywhere and nowhere at the same time.

Important requests get buried. You forget what users asked for. Building your roadmap feels like archaeology instead of strategy.

Here's how to fix it in under an hour with Collectic.

Step 1: Create Your Workspace (5 minutes)

Sign up for Collectic and create your workspace. Choose a slug (like "yourapp-feedback") and pick your brand color. This automatically generates:

• A public feedback board at collectic.com/board/yourapp-feedback
• An embeddable widget for your app
• A private kanban board for managing ideas

Step 2: Import Existing Feedback (15 minutes)

Don't start from scratch. Import your existing feedback in bulk:

From Email

Connect your Gmail account through OAuth. Collectic scans your support inbox for feature requests and imports them automatically. Use keyword filters like "feature request" or "would be nice" to catch relevant emails.

From Discord/Slack

Add the Collectic bot to your community server. It monitors designated channels and imports feedback in real-time. Old messages? Export your channel history and bulk upload.

From Spreadsheets

Got feedback in a Google Sheet or Notion doc? Export as CSV and use our bulk importer. Map columns to idea fields (title, description, votes) and import everything at once.

Step 3: Let AI Organize (Automatic)

Here's where the magic happens. Collectic automatically:

• Generates embeddings for each idea
• Detects duplicates across all channels
• Groups similar requests by cluster
• Calculates priority scores

You'll see your inbox organized into clusters of related ideas. Each cluster shows similarity scores so you know what to merge.

Step 4: Triage Your Inbox (20 minutes)

Now the easy part. Open your dashboard inbox and work through each cluster:

• Obvious duplicates? Click "Merge all" to consolidate into one idea with combined votes
• Related but different? Keep separate or merge based on similarity score
• Out of scope? Archive or mark as "won't do" with a note
• Ready to build? Add effort estimate (S/M/L) and move to backlog

Step 5: Share Your Board (5 minutes)

Your feedback is now organized. Time to close the loop with users:

• Share your public board URL in your app footer, email signature, and help docs
• Add the embed widget to your settings page with one line of JavaScript
• Tweet your board link and say "here's what we're building next"

Users can now vote on existing ideas instead of sending duplicates. Your inbox stays clean automatically.

Maintaining Inbox Zero

After the initial setup, maintenance is minimal:

• New feedback is auto-organized by AI
• Duplicates are flagged immediately
• Priority scores update automatically
• Spend 10 minutes per week reviewing and triaging

Welcome to inbox zero. Your feedback is organized, your roadmap is clear, and you can focus on building instead of organizing.