It’s a tough world out there for any new product, where only the most customer-centric survive and stick. Lots of people think they have what it takes, but being people-centric is a lot more of a commitment than some realize. Ask these 5 questions to find out where you stand:
It’s 10pm, do you know who your users are?
If you haven’t started regularly speaking to end users, it’s time to start now. Customers, members, visitors, business partners - whoever it is that is using your product, talk to them on a regular basis to get honest feedback. It’s always mindblowing to hear what they have to say. It surprises me every time I set up a research group to talk to users, how deep their insight is if we are willing to listen.
Do you care about what your users care about?
Do you respect their opinions when they differ from yours? Are you able to admit that when they don’t like something, it’s really YOUR fault and not theirs? This is harder to do than it seems. I’ve seen many a founder or product manager expect the users to “just understand” or just forgive when things are sub-par. They don’t.
Do you understand every possible alternative they have?
Most often, we make the mistake of thinking we compete against, well, our competitors. We completely fail to understand the actual alternatives to using the product or service we are building - those alternatives which hide in plain sight. You might be surprised to find that customers are hacking their own way toward a goal or not using any of your competitors to get there. Learn to recognize these opportunity gaps and make use of them.
Do you really understand what role this product plays in their lives?
A classic mistake that product managers, designers, and founders often make is to assume the role that their product can play in people’s lives is quite large. Sometimes this is true, but when working with tech products we often overestimate the importance users are willing to subscribe to what we are building, even when it works well, or does what it is supposed to do. For example: you’re building an AI tool that allows someone to cut the amount of time spent checking their email in half. Great. Now, where does that fall in the scope of everything else that matters to people in the course of day: family concerns, career obligations, religious practice, leisure activities. You get the picture.
And lastly: how far are you willing to go to provide value?
The first step in recognizing an issue is, of course, recognizing you have one. But in the race to succeed, are the issues that you commit to fix first, those same issues that you discovered were most important to customers? Are you willing to commit the time and energy needed to fix them, even if it might seem like a tall order? Or do you sweep them under the rug because it would take too many resources? By now it should be clear what to do to improve your bottom line: the faster you improve on the things that really matter - the faster your customers will return that appreciation.