Change your operating model to incorporate customer feedback proactively
Recently, I shared the solution to address the statement, “If we don’t add that feature, our customer won’t renew.” Now I will share two ways to stop the onslaught of those statements.
Every technology organization struggles with the challenge of critical customer requests, without exception. Some companies struggle with it more than others. If you are getting barraged with critical customer demands, i.e. “must-haves”, “required for implementation”, “go-live blocker”, how do you end the onslaught? How do you reduce these instances from a daily inundation to an occasional request? It’s not easy, but it can be done…I’ve seen it happen.
If this is a frequent occurrence, there is an issue of market alignment. If your product was tightly aligned with the market needs, these requests wouldn’t come as often. So you’re either not listening to customers enough or you’ve turned into a custom dev shop and become order-takers. This isn’t a judgment against you or your company; it happens to the best of us. Having worked in technology for 25+ years, I have seen both sides of that issue…on several occasions. Here are two of those stories.
Example 1: Listening to Customers
On one side, I worked with a product that had effectively stopped listening to customer feedback. Not because they didn’t care, but it was a mature product and the company shifted focus to other priorities and significantly reduced investment in that product’s development. Because of that, the product team shied away from interacting with customers. They couldn’t implement anything, so why bother? You can probably guess the impact…they lost credibility with the customers and, almost as important, they lost the quantifiable intel to get back on track. As expected, the product lost market share and experienced substantial churn.
After several years of decline, the product line did a conscious reset and became the most customer-focused product I have ever seen. With executive support and investment, they leaned hard into listening to customers, and most importantly, applied those learnings to build a truly market-focused solution. The funding was pivotal, but the approach they took was what cemented their success. They held focus groups 2-3x a week, interacted with users on the community and idea portal so much that they got on a first-name basis with users, shared designs and workflows before a single line of code was written, and put quantitative measurements in place to analyze the learnings objectively. And as with any successful initiative, they recognized the value of communication. They utilized a closed-loop process by regularly informing the users what they learned and how they were using that information. That proactive communication built trust, and more importantly, patience with the users. Each month, as user-influenced features were released, the customers grew more excited…and loyal. This approach demonstrated market understanding and commitment. To be clear, this wasn’t just a task they took on, the product team completely changed their operating model, and it was impressive. Within 18 months, the “critical” customer requests more or less stopped.
Example 2: Order Takers
On the other side of the market alignment issue, I have worked with product lines where the roadmap was mostly comprised of orders from customers. It just happened over time – you stretched into a new market prematurely or signed a few marquis accounts and BAM! Now your list of “critical needs” is more than anyone can handle. And every customer and every team member says those features are “critical”, and they probably are. But using that approach created a product that became Frankenstein’s monster: lots of features for lots of different customers instead of a unified solution. Without a significant shift in strategy, you’ll never get out from under the never-ending pile of orders. I’ve been there – it feels like the Night King and his wights at the Battle of Winterfell from Game of Thrones. No way to stop them. Sound familiar?
How do we stop the madness?
It’s possible, even if you aren’t fortunate enough to secure funding. You CAN get out from under the customer requests. It will take three things: time, audacity, and transparency.
In terms of time, as a starting point, you will need 18 months. Start by creating your plan – for one month, devote 20% of your product management resources to maintaining the status quo. Put the other 80% into strategic planning to develop a 12-18 month plan that you can share both internally and externally. As with any strategic planning, you’ll partner with customer success, product development, sales, marketing, etc. The most critical part will be prioritization so getting buy-in from your colleagues should be more than a formality. Truly bring them into the prioritization process so they can partner with you on those tough decisions. That’s why you need to take a month – don’t rush this with a one-day offsite.
- Spend weeks 1 & 2 gathering the following information.
- Review support tickets, implementations, concessions, and escalations
- Review wins, losses, renewals, and churn
- Review defects – quality and design
- Review the idea management portal – both in terms of cumulative quantity and recent participation
- Complete a market review to see where the market is going
- Complete a competitive review to identify the competitive gaps – where your product is lacking and where you have opportunities to leapfrog
- Spend week 3 analyzing this information individually and as a whole to identify trends and possible solutions. Send your analysis to your partners in preparation for the final week.
- Spend week 4 reviewing the possible solutions with your partners, getting their feedback, and determining a prioritized approach. Once you have finalized the 12-18 month plan, review that final plan with your leaders, your partners, and the executive committee for final buy-in.
Tip: I have found the best way to prioritize as a group is to write out each objective/headline/priority onto separate cards and force the group to stack rank them. Yes, we need to do them all. Yes, they are all important. Unless you have unlimited funding, you have to prioritize – you have to have a #1.
And I know that I am simplifying an 18-month product strategy to 4 simple weeks but there are several tools online with best practices on how to complete this process.
In terms of audacity, you are going to have to say “no” to a lot of things. Or better said, you are going to have to say “not right now” to a lot of things, during the 4-week planning session and the 18-month implementation. Focus on a few areas at a time and get them right. Using a peanut butter approach will hurt you because no one will be happy. If you can focus on one area and then another, you will build credibility in the market. This will be difficult – it’s easy to say no when you are looking at a whiteboard. But when you are in front of a customer and have to tell them they have to wait, that takes fortitude.
That’s where transparency comes in. This isn’t time for spin – this is when you use candor to your advantage. Acknowledge the current status of the product and invite your users and customers into the solution. Share the approach to your strategic plan and set expectations on what they will see over the next 12-18 months. And then provide frequent updates – with each one, you will demonstrate progress in the market and build trust in the community. This transparency will buy you the time needed to deliver the roadmap.
These approaches will enable you to reset the relationship you have with your colleagues and the market.
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