How to collect client feedback without WhatsApp chaos
Agencies lose hours every week chasing bug reports across WhatsApp threads, email chains, and Loom links. Here's the workflow the Tellback team uses with our own clients — and how to replicate it in your product.
Stop treating feedback like a chat message. Put a "report a problem" button inside your app that captures a screenshot, the URL, the console log, and a 30-second voice note — and posts it to your issue tracker as a task the developer can act on without asking a follow-up question.
Why WhatsApp breaks for client feedback
WhatsApp is where the client already is. That's why it wins. It's also why it fails — every bug arrives as an ambiguous message ("the thing isn't working"), a screenshot without the URL, and a voice note nobody has time to listen to twice.
Three things go wrong, every single time:
- The developer can't reproduce the bug because there's no URL, browser, or console output.
- The account manager becomes a human ticketing system, translating chat into Linear tasks.
- The client thinks they reported it — and gets frustrated when the same bug shows up two weeks later.
The workflow we recommend
Below is the flow we use at Tellback with our own agency clients. It works whether the product is live, on staging, or in a preview URL.
- Client hits a "Report a problem" button inside your app.
- A screenshot, URL, browser info, and the last 30 seconds of console errors are captured automatically.
- The client records a 15–60 second voice note describing what they expected.
- The report lands in Linear as a task assigned to the on-call engineer, with all context attached.
A trimmed version of the widget script:
<script src="https://cdn.tellback.io/widget.js"
data-key="pk_live_..."
data-project="acme-client-portal"></script>Where voice notes actually help
Voice notes get a bad rap because they're painful in a chat thread. Attached to a bug report, they're the opposite: the client explains what they expected, in their own words, once. The developer plays it back at 1.5x while looking at the screenshot.
"Once we added voice notes to bug reports, our average time-to-fix dropped by 41%. Not because the code got easier — because the ambiguity disappeared."— Priya Sharma, Head of Delivery, Nine & Co.
Dev-ready handoff
The last mile is the task itself. A "dev-ready" task, in our definition, has four things: reproduction URL, expected behavior, actual behavior, and one attached piece of evidence (screenshot or voice note). Everything in the Tellback widget is designed to produce that shape by default.
- Screenshot with pointer annotation
- Console log for the last 30 seconds
- Voice note transcribed automatically
- Linear/Jira task with the right team and priority
A widget your users press once. Screenshots, console errors, network trace, and an optional voice note — sent to Linear as a dev-ready task.
Frequently asked
Do clients need to install anything?
No. Clients press a floating button inside your app or staging URL. Screenshots, console logs, and an optional voice note are captured in-browser.
Can non-technical clients use it?
Yes — the widget was designed for account managers and client stakeholders. They see a text field and a mic button, not a form.
How is this different from Loom or WhatsApp?
Loom captures a video. WhatsApp captures a thread. Tellback captures a structured report — screenshot, URL, browser, console log, and a short voice note — and sends it to Linear or Jira as a task.
Does it work on staging and preview URLs?
Yes. One project key covers staging, preview, and production. You can namespace reports by environment.