#43 - Putting Customers First: Insights and Strategies for Customer-Centric Product Management
Have you ever wondered why some tech products fail while others become wildly successful? The answer lies in how well the product solves for the customer, the business, and the technology.
In short, a successful tech product is a result of solving for the equation
Tech Product = Customer x Business x Technology (From Marty Cagan’s post on what is a product)
This equation maps to our four big risks in tech products: addressing usability risk is part of solving for the customer; addressing feasibility risk is part of solving for the technology; and addressing business viability risk is part of solving for the business. And value risk is a function of all three. If you don’t address any of these three, then the result (the product) will be a failure (anything times zero is zero).
There is no coincidence that the first component is the CUSTOMER because what is foundational for building a product is understanding your customer or user - their demographics, decisions, wants, needs, and pain points, in one word: BEHAVIOR.
In my role as a product leader at Mindtickle, I recently had the opportunity to run a product tour across the US to meet with our customers. Over the course of three weeks, we met with 21 of our enterprise customers and had the privilege of deeply understanding their business problems, enablement priorities, and how they align with our product strategy. We were also looking to learn with every interaction: Are the customers who we thought they were? Did they have the problems we thought they have? How do they solve that problem today? What would it take to get them to switch?
During those 3 weeks of stepping outside the office, I learnt so much more about our business, their business, and their intrinsic motivations and came back inspired to solve their challenges.
So, how can you be customer-obsessed when building your SaaS product? Here are a few tips:
Engage with your customers regularly and deeply : Ask them for feedback, and listen to their suggestions. Start with their business drivers and their own success metrics deeply. How can you help them be even more successful? Is there an adjacent space you hadn’t thought about? What is common across the customer base? Is there a segment that uses the product the way you intended them to use it and is getting superlative outcomes? What are this segment's needs and how different are they from the other groups?
Data-driven Product Development: Track customer behaviour and analyse their usage of your product. See how your best customers are using your product vs the ones who churned. What did the best customers do differently? Why were the churned customers unable to do those things? Are those things hard to discover? Do they not fit into everyone’s business workflows? This will help you identify trends and patterns and make informed decisions about your product.
Extreme Sensitivity to a Customer Problem: The way a product manager handles tough decisions and stressful situations is a true test of their customer-centric approach. When a customer faces a "showstopper" issue with your product, how you respond is crucial. Do you treat it like any other problem, or do you prioritize it with a sense of urgency (not panic) and set an example for your team to find a solution?
Truly customer-centric companies have leaders who proactively reach out to product managers and offer their help to solve customer problems. This shows the team how important it is to prioritize customer needs without micromanaging them. However, if the product team isn't taking the customer's issue as seriously as the executives are, then it can shake their confidence in the product manager. Even if they support empowered teams, they may step in to ensure the customer's needs are met. Ultimately, if you force them to choose between empowered teams and customer satisfaction, it's not going to end well.
In my experience, sincere and consistent customer-centricity takes a while to develop in a new product manager – on the order of a year or more. There will be mistakes in judgment along the way, but with active and constructive coaching, you can help the product manager learn how to embody this trait and communicate its importance to their product team.
You, your business exist because of your customers. Hence customer-centricity isn’t optional :)