Feedback triage is the process of quickly assessing and categorizing incoming feedback to determine priority and next action. Like emergency room triage, it's about making rapid decisions on what needs immediate attention vs. what can wait.

The Goal of Triage

Not to solve problems—that comes later. Triage is about:

• Classifying feedback by type and severity
• Routing to the right team or person
• Flagging critical issues for immediate action
• Organizing everything else for systematic review
• Making sure nothing urgent gets lost

Effective triage ensures critical issues get attention within minutes while routine feedback gets acknowledged and queued.

Triage Categories

Severity levels:

P0 - Critical: System down, data loss, security breach, payment systems broken. All hands on deck. Response: immediate.

P1 - Urgent: Major functionality broken for significant users, key workflows blocked. Important customers affected. Response: hours.

P2 - High: Significant issues but workarounds exist, or affects smaller user segment. Response: days.

P3 - Normal: Bugs, friction, or requests without immediate business impact. Response: weeks.

P4 - Low: Polish, nice-to-haves, minor annoyances. Response: prioritize with roadmap planning.

Feedback types:

• Bug report
• Feature request
• Question / Support
• Feedback / Suggestion
• Complaint / Frustration
• Praise

The Triage Process

Step 1: Rapid assessment (30 seconds)

• Read feedback
• Classify type and severity
• Identify if immediate action needed

Step 2: Context gathering (30 seconds)

• Who is this user? (Free, paid, enterprise?)
• What's the business impact?
• Is this a new issue or repeat?

Step 3: Decision (30 seconds)

• P0/P1: Alert relevant team immediately, start investigation
• P2: Tag, assign, set review date
• P3/P4: Tag, batch for weekly review
• All: Acknowledge receipt to user

Total time per item: ~90 seconds

What Makes Triage Hard

Volume: When feedback comes from email, Slack, support, social, forms, you're context-switching constantly.

Incomplete information: User says "it's broken" without details. Need to follow up before you can properly triage.

Unclear severity: Is this "frustrated user exaggerating" or "serious problem affecting many"?

Competing priorities: Everything feels urgent when users are complaining.

Triage fatigue: After 50 pieces of feedback, your decision quality degrades.

Ambiguous ownership: Not clear who should handle certain feedback types.

Manual vs. Automated Triage

Manual triage works up to about 20-30 pieces of feedback per day. Beyond that, it becomes overwhelming and error-prone.

Automated triage uses AI to:

• Classify feedback type automatically
• Score severity/priority based on language, user context, and patterns
• Route to appropriate team members
• Flag critical issues for immediate attention
• Batch routine feedback for systematic review
• Detect duplicate or related feedback

This doesn't eliminate human judgment—it accelerates triage so teams focus on response and resolution rather than sorting.

Triage Rules of Thumb

When in doubt, escalate. Better to over-triage as critical than miss a serious issue.

User value matters. Same issue from enterprise customer vs. free trial user warrants different priority.

Patterns trump individual reports. One person reporting a bug might be an outlier. Three people reporting it in a day is an incident.

Language signals urgency. "Can't," "broken," "losing money," "customers complaining" are red flags.

Acknowledge immediately, even if triage takes time. "Thanks, we're looking into this" takes 10 seconds and buys you time.

Triage SLAs (Service Level Agreements)

P0 - Critical:

• Triage: Within 15 minutes
• First response: 15 minutes
• Resolution: Hours (all hands)

P1 - Urgent:

• Triage: Within 1 hour
• First response: 2 hours
• Resolution: 24-48 hours

P2 - High:

• Triage: Within 4 hours
• First response: 1 day
• Resolution: 1 week

P3/P4 - Normal/Low:

• Triage: Within 1 day
• First response: 2-3 days
• Resolution: Prioritized with roadmap

Common Triage Mistakes

Everything is high priority: If everything is urgent, nothing is. Be ruthless about severity.

Insufficient context gathering: Making priority decisions without understanding user value or business impact.

No acknowledgment: Leaving users hanging while you triage internally. Always acknowledge receipt.

Triage by chronology: Newest feedback isn't necessarily most important.

Over-triaging: Spending 10 minutes triaging something that should take 90 seconds.

Under-triaging: Glossing over feedback without proper assessment, missing critical issues.

Solo triage: No escalation mechanism when unsure. Build in ways to quickly consult teammates.

Triage Team Structure

Small teams (1-5 people): Everyone does triage on rotation. Daily or twice-daily triage sessions.

Medium teams (5-15 people): Dedicated triage person or rotating triage duty. Real-time for critical, batched for routine.

Large teams (15+ people): Dedicated support/triage team. 24/7 coverage for critical issues. Specialized triagers by product area.

After Triage: What Happens Next

P0/P1: Immediate work begins, status updates every few hours, user kept informed.

P2: Added to current sprint or next sprint. User notified of timeline.

P3/P4: Added to backlog, reviewed in weekly product meetings. Batched with similar items.

All: Tracked through resolution. User notified when fixed or addressed.

The feedback loop doesn't end at triage—it's just beginning.