On becoming customer obsessed — why this is important for great product building
Customer obsession is the only reason I became a product manager and I continue to think that building most great products begins with the…
Customer obsession is the only reason I became a product manager and I continue to think that building most great products begins with the customer first. There are exceptions to this rule however, for e.g., with a ton of core engineering innovations such as in my previous world of Intel, micro processor innovation came from deep research and technology development. Some times the world didn’t even know they needed so much processing power until they got it.
But most great products that have greatly impacted our tech innovations today have resulted from customer obsession. The iPhone, AWS and Amazon Prime, Alexa, Airbnb, Uber are all hugely impactful products that have dramatically changed how we live our lives. As we think about the next decade of products to evolve, I think customer obsession could be the moat that most products consumer facing or not, will win with. Design 2020 is going to play a central role, but customer obsession should impact product strategy and development cycle. Build products customers need and are willing to pay for, and the rest will follow.
I’ve outlined a few points in developing customer empathy, I am sure there are a myriad of others and I would love to learn from the community. But here are some, that you can quickly build without expending too much effort:
Building and listening to online communities
Using tools such as surveys, focus groups for feedback loops
Building advisory groups, user acceptance testing groups etc
Conducting interviews of every customer facing representative in your company, they are the proxies to real customers and have a wealth of tribal knowledge. Just ask!
Lastly, paying attention to the zeitgeist and borrowing ideas from a myriad of social media channels, comments, trends from different social groups, countries, age groups etc.
If you want to talk to me about customer obsession, a topic that is closest to my heart, please write to me at deepika at solveforxx dot com.