What’s the best way to work with customers, get feedback and improve or extend solutions to problems?
As a product manager, one of the best ways to gather feedback from customers and potential customers is to establish regular communication channels, such as customer interviews, surveys, and focus groups. Additionally, you can also gather feedback through online forums and customer support channels. It’s also a good idea to set up a customer advisory board, which can provide valuable insights and feedback on a regular basis. In addition, you can also gather feedback by tracking customer engagement and usage data, and by monitoring customer satisfaction metrics. It’s important to be responsive to customer feedback and to make sure that customer feedback is regularly incorporated into product development.
First and foremost you should BE, a customer, too. Empathy is a word that gets tossed around often in the PM world but it’s for good reason. If you can’t honestly sit down in the driver's seat and feel real pain points or the need for solutions your product could offer — you may never materialize a win. What better way to find a solution than to feel the problem firsthand?
I’d like to think for a moment in terms of the opposite of MVP. What actions would I take if resources were limitless and time was never-ending? How would I be able to accomplish this, what would I do? Possible thinking exercise outcomes for this could be that the CEO and I sit down with every customer one on one and watch them use the product and do exhaustive attention to every interaction, we’d never miss a thing. This is not realistic but it gives me the ability to say “What gets me closest” now what can I do to be that close and understand the same thing with less time and resources?
Let’s talk about the CAB method: As the Chief Product Officer for Solana Sanctuary I was not only setting up my own CAB interviews, but I also sat on some as well with partners we had — various interdependent products we used such as on-chain tools and KYC protocols.
A customer advisory board (CAB) is a customer or group of customers who have been selected to provide feedback and advice on a company’s products, services, and/or overall business strategy. These customers are typically chosen for their experience and expertise in a specific industry or market, and they are typical representatives of key customer segments for the company.
The role of a CAB is to provide a sounding board for the company’s product development, marketing, and sales efforts, and to offer a customer’s perspective on the company’s overall strategy and direction. CABs typically meet on a regular basis, either in person or virtually, to discuss new products and features, provide feedback on existing products, and offer suggestions for improvements. The CAB also helps companies to identify new market opportunities and stay ahead of industry trends. This is a great hands-on empathy tool to allow you to see the product in use.
The goal is an insight that you can bring back to your team to continue to make your product more fun, usable and robust in whatever domains it operates in.
I highly suggest having someone screen share with you, better still they have never used your product before and ask them for live feedback, and honest feedback.
Creating a CAB can be a valuable tool for companies looking to gather feedback and ideas from customers, and to build stronger relationships with key customers. It also helps companies to make better product decisions by understanding the needs of their customers and staying in tune with industry trends and emerging technologies.
What customer interaction experiences, methods, or tools have worked well for you? I’d love to hear about them.
