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.