Switching from Productboard, how Upfluence automated their feedback system with Cycle

Upfluence is a SaaS platform powering influencer marketing campaigns for e-commerce brands and SMB agencies. From influencer discovery to contract negotiation, campaign reporting, and integrated payments, Upfluence handles the full lifecycle of creator collaborations.

But as they scaled, their feedback engine was stalling.

For five years, Upfluence used Productboard. It helped centralize feedback at first—but over time, it became a bottleneck. Processing feedback from Intercom was painful. Slack messages had to be manually copied. Reporting was nearly non-existent. PMs lacked autonomy. And the product itself hadn’t evolved.

The team needed a better way to manage feedback at scale. That’s when they discovered Cycle.

Why they made the switch

Productboard Challenges	Cycle Advantages
Difficult Intercom feedback processing with no summarization	Auto-summarization of Intercom threads
Manual exports and spreadsheets required for reporting	Built-in dashboards showing top contributors and themes
Engineering support needed for feedback forms	Autonomy for PMs to create forms and flows
Manual, slow, and painful feedback processing	AI-powered processing that drastically reduced triage time
No smooth Slack integration	Slack → Cycle feedback capture via emoji reactions
No CRM connection for business context	Salesforce integration to tie feedback to MRR and customer tier
Limited vendor support	Continuous support via shared Slack channel with Cycle team

“With Productboard, we had 500+ feedbacks in the backlog that nobody wanted to touch. With Cycle, we cleared it in two sessions”

- Simon Boxus - VP Product @ Upfluence

Use Case: From backlog paralysis to feedback velocity

Each week, Upfluence received 20+ pieces of feedback. With Productboard, processing that volume felt very hard. PMs had to manually browse entire Intercom threads just to locate the relevant feedback snippet—re-reading every message, re-understanding the full conversation, and then carefully selecting the quote that could be turned into an insight. For each one, they had to find the right customer, link it to the correct feature, and repeat the process. The backlog grew. Morale dropped. It was time-consuming, repetitive, and draining.

With Cycle, everything changed. Feedback now lands directly from Slack and Intercom—preserving the original context, message history, and customer metadata. Instead of rereading full conversations and hunting for insights, Cycle’s AI surfaces relevant quotes automatically. It flags what matters, suggests tags, and links quotes to existing features—so PMs can focus on validation, not extraction.

“We used to block full mornings for feedback triage. Now it’s a 15-minute job. And the team actually enjoys doing it.”

- Simon Boxus - VP Product @ Upfluence

Use Case: Building a data-driven prioritization model

Cycle’s Salesforce integration added the missing link: business value.

Now, every feedback item is tied to the account that submitted it—along with its tier and ARR, using up-to-date data pulled directly from the CRM. This connection is crucial: it allows PMs to differentiate between feedback from a low-revenue freemium user versus a strategic enterprise client. It also enables dynamic segmentation of feedback by region, industry, or lifecycle stage—so prioritization isn’t just based on volume, but on weighted business impact.

“Seeing MRR per feature request? That was impossible before. Now we see it clearly—and it changes how we build.”

- Simon Boxus - VP Product @ Upfluence

Use Case: Reinforcing product culture across the org

Is not just about helping the product team—it re-engaged the entire company. CS, support, and sales are now active contributors because contributing is fast and rewarding. Slack messages can be turned into feedback with a simple emoji reaction—no forms, no context switching, no friction. This lightweight workflow lowered the bar for everyone to contribute: people across CS, sales, and support feel heard, because sharing feedback takes seconds and they see it flow directly into Cycle. That sense of impact fuels even more feedback, reinforcing a healthy loop of contribution and visibility. Dashboards make contributors visible across the org—creating a virtuous loop where everyone sees their input reflected in the roadmap, which encourages even more participation.

“People contribute more because they see what happens next. That loop wasn’t visible before.”

- Simon Boxus - VP Product @ Upfluence

Team-Wide Impact

Decision loops reduced from days to hours
Backlog cut from 500+ to zero in few sessions
Team-wide engagement in feedback collection and processing
Strategic decisions backed by revenue-linked data

Cycle didn’t just replace Productboard. It improved how we work.

- Simon Boxus - VP Product @ Upfluence