Tag: Customer relationship

  • What are customer needs? 5 steps to meet them

    What are customer needs? 5 steps to meet them

    two women near tables
    Photo by Blake Wisz on Unsplash

    There are three certainties in life: Death, taxes, and product marketers being reminded to address their customer needs.

    Sure, you can be easily forgiven if you’re sick of hearing this time and time again. After all, it’s a message seemingly being played on a continuous loop, and it ain’t gonna lose its momentum anytime soon.

    And with good reason. After all, a customer base is at the heart of every business, driving sales and propelling organizations to the next level.

    Without them, we wouldn’t exist. Period.

    So follow our advice as we look at:


    What are customer needs?

    There are times when we act impulsively and buy something on a whim. We’ve all been in the scenario when we’ve been at the mall with zero intention of buying something and ending up wasting money on a horrific shirt that’s confined to the wardrobe, never to see the light of day.

    However, the majority of the time, customers buy products or services because there’s a genuine need and reasoning behind their purchase.

    Let’s say the customer’s lawn is looking like Tarzan’s Africa, and they’re keen to transform it into their very own Garden of Eden. They’ll need a lawn mower and gardening equipment to resolve their problem.

    So, customer needs can be defined by what a customer wants and needs when they’re set to interact with your business, your competitors, or when they’re searching for a product or service you may be able to offer them.

    Product marketers need to make sure they’re in a position whereby they can cater to the requirements of customers who fit their buyer personas. Let’s face it, if you can’t offer the solution to their problem, they won’t hang around until you’ve got your ship in order. They’ll waltz to your nearest competitor, who’ll be more than happy to benefit at your expense.

    Which prompts the million-dollar question: Which methods are used to identify customer needs in the first place?

    Customer needs vs wants

    Customer needs are essential and most of your customers will have the same needs from your product. There is usually a hierarchy of needs, so the most important needs should be filled, and so on.

    Customer wants, on the other hand, are unlimited and can arise from needs. For example, the need to eat dinner may lead to wanting a McDonald’s burger. Wants also compete with each other for the limited resources of the customer.

    And perhaps most importantly, wants are not universal across your customers. You may want to use your customer segmentation to split customers by their wants.


    How do you identify customer needs?

    Make no mistake, understanding your customer needs isn’t merely a case of throwing mud and seeing what sticks. A range of methods are used by companies to ensure they’re not barking up the wrong tree and offering customers products that are way wide of the mark.

    But this doesn’t mean it isn’t possible to introduce ways that’ll give you an indication of what customer needs you should be honing in on – and as usual, we’re going to ease your worries and give you a whistle-stop tour of what you need to know.

    Hakuna Matata.

    Focus groups

    Sometimes, you need to turn to the art of conversation to discover what you want to find out, in which case, what better way to pick the brains of your customers than focus groups?

    Focus groups are a market research method whereby you interview a group of people who are representative of your target audience.

    Granted, a breadth of valuable information can be gained by using data, but addressing your prospective customers directly brings a whole new perspective on what they want in terms of features, price points, and so forth. You can even grill them on things they don’t like about products provided by competitors and use this feedback to either develop an existing product or design an offering that’ll blow their socks off – figuratively speaking, of course.

    Focus groups provide the perfect backdrop for a frank, honest discussion with your customers. While you may not necessarily like some of the feedback you receive, in many ways, that’s the point of conducting these sessions – to iron out any imperfections and be sure you’re providing a solution your customers love.

    Sometimes, it may be difficult to get a sample together to survey a physical location, particularly given the current circumstances surrounding COVID-19. Yet this needn’t stop you in your tracks. Surveys can be sent via email, post, and with the emergence of video platforms such as Zoom, you could even hold a virtual meet – the possibilities are endless.

    Working on a budget? No worries – Google Forms is an awesome tool you can use for free.

    So, wear your thick skin and set the ball rolling.

    Social listening

    Social media listening allows companies to track and analyze what their prospective customers are saying about them on social media channels, such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

    In 2019, 2.95bn people were using social media platforms – pretty crazy, right? In essence, this creates an invaluable pool of feedback for companies whereby they can monitor their customers’ social media posts and see exactly what’s being said about their company and the services they offer.

    Let’s say you’re a fast-food chain and your brand-new burger prompts a hashtag to start trending on Twitter – and the feedback isn’t great.

    The widespread feedback amongst burger buffs is the sauce on the burger is too spicy, but otherwise, they love the other features of your new creation. You could go back to the drawing board, revise the recipe, and start the same burger, with a sauce that won’t give diners the sweats.

    This is a perfect example of social listening: you’ve launched a product, listened to the response, and amended your offering to align with the expectations of your customers.

    Easy-peasy.

    Keyword research

    Not only is it important to think about what your customers want, but it’s also important to think about what they’re searching for.

    Google receives over 63,000 searches per second on any given day. Madness, isn’t it? And all the more reason you need to make sure your keywords are on point.

    Keyword research not only sweetens your SEO ranking, but it can also give you an idea of your customer’s requirements, and what they want from your business and the product or service you’re offering. By identifying your customer’s online searching habits and more to the point, how they’re searching for your company and industry, this enables you to establish exactly what they’re looking for – i.e. their customer needs.

    Using this nugget of information, you can finetune your strategy to ensure you’re giving your customers what they need.


    What is the importance of customer needs?

    You get feedback

    You might know the product inside and out but you probably don’t use it daily like they do. Maybe they just want a more condensed version of your existing user manual. Maybe they want a whole new feature adding. If you don’t ask you don’t know.

    Remember, no matter how great your solution is now it can always be better and picking up snags and customer wish lists is the single best way to take it to the next level.

    You can act faster

    The more often you check in with customers the quicker you can pick up on any flaws, issues or demand, and the sooner you identify things like that the sooner you can take action. That means happier customers, less churn, a step up on your competition, and more sales. And now, not later.

    Keep in mind: for every customer who bothers to complain, 20 others remain silent.

    You get buy-in

    It’s easier to get the go-ahead on a new campaign, feature or product if you’ve got concrete evidence supporting the why. That’s not to say you have to go and invest $$$$$s just because one customer said they’d quite like feature X adding to product Y, but keep a physical track of your conversations and if a trend emerges use it to support your argument.

    You shape your campaigns

    If one person’s thinking it others almost certainly are too, so the tidbits of knowledge you pick up during your chats could even shape future campaigns.

    For example, let’s say you’re a CMS provider. Currently, your main marketing line is that your solution is “incredibly intuitive with drag-and-drop-style building features”. However, having spoken to a tonne of customers now, the selling point seems to be shifting towards its built-in SEO capabilities. Could there be a new campaign slant in it to attract more prospects?

    Find out how you’re doing

    Quantitative data is great and gives you a real insight into how products and campaigns are performing, but there’s nothing quite like qualitative research. It adds meat to the bones and helps you understand the reasons and emotions behind the numbers.

    Why is page A the most visited in our app? How come people aren’t finding their way to feature B? Why didn’t campaign C work? Why was campaign D so successful? How can element E of feature F be improved? All answers you can get from direct communication with your customers.


    How often should you speak to your customers?

    We mentioned at the start there’s no such thing as a gospel frequency so we don’t have a magic number for you all of a sudden, we’re afraid, but what we do have is some for food thought.

    While speaking to PMMs for our Product Marketing Insider series, we’ve come across leaders who make getting on the phone to customers part of their daily routine – however, while that’s definitely #customercontactgoals, understandably, it might not be achievable for everyone.

    So, here’s what some other PMAers had to say:

    “Within a team of three (different marketing roles, I’m the only PMM) we probably field several support questions weekly related to resources that we publish (i.e. can I get a recording of the webinar, that download didn’t arrive in my inbox…) and then between the team we run one or two customer interviews a month either for case studies, user testing content or product feedback.”

    – Rebecca Taylor, Product Marketing Manager at GatherContent

    “Maybe once in two weeks. We run feature adoption campaigns regularly and so end up getting on a call with the customers to understand the friction they face in not using the feature.”

    – Vaishnavi Ketharnathan, Product Marketing Manager for Checkout at Chargebee

    “It happens at least weekly. Not to the same customer, but it has to happen at least weekly.”

    – Aneel Lakhani, Exec Marketing Consultant

    “I’m on the phone at least once a week with a customer doing persona interviews.”

    – RJ Gazarek, Senior Product Marketing Manager at Atlassian

    “I find that with a role as busy as ours, committing the team to customer calls/visits is required to keep everyone on point. We require two customer calls a week per PMM, not including sales calls (so true “customer” calls).”

    Jonathan Hinz, Senior Director of Product Marketing at Seismic

    “Frequency will vary based on the size of your company, industry, etc. but one thing I would recommend is setting the objective for the conversation/feedback and having a way to consolidate and share on a quarterly basis with broader team or company.”

    Daniel Kuperman, Director of Product Marketing @ Snowflake


    Should you market to current customers?

    Why market to current customers?

    Adam Thomas, PM expert, shares why we should market to current customers.

    “Sure, it’s easy to give lip service to our current customer base.

    ““We are customer-obsessed” or a variation of it, is somewhere in your company’s mission statement, and it may be something that gets talked about during an offsite, but think about how often you’ve talked to current customers in a proactive way?

    “We usually talk to our customers reactively, in fact, if I look in your customer conversation tool (think Intercom) my guess is that any and all proactive conversation is in sales or retention. The “why” is simple – our incentives are aligned that way – Net Churn and Activations are going to get eyes immediately when talking to leadership.

    “That isn’t customer-obsessed, that is keeping the ship together. Why not talk to the current customer base? Sure the numbers aren’t sexy, but over the long term, you are guaranteed to learn the following:”

    Question -> Metrics/Output

    “Why does the customer trust you ->  Customer satisfaction, pricing analysis

    “Why does the customer share your product?  -> Referrals

    “What would the customer buy from you? -> Follow-on products

    “All of these things are good for business. All of them are going to make you look good.

    “Win-Win.”

    Look after your existing customers

    Aicha Zaa, Product Marketing Manager at Productsup, shares how to look after your current customers.

    The customer is king! As product marketers,  we know that but how many of us really create strong processes around it?

    New markets are exciting to enter, and when your company is ready, new markets can lead to a big payoff. However, don’t forget the customers who are already loyal to your company, as they are your competitors’ target market. They might have become brand advocates but now the work is in keeping it that way.

    To begin with, use customer feedback surveys to gather this information. Learn how your competitors offer to support their customers and weigh yourself accordingly to discover the scope of improvement. Customer support and satisfaction is the door to a profitable business as it helps businesses win their customer trust and maintain loyal relationships.

    For more insights check out Aicha’s article on the topic:


    What is a customer needs analysis?

    Customer needs analysis survey

    The customer needs analysis is used to help companies figure out their position in their respective competitive markets and how they fair in terms of meeting their target customers’ needs.

    The survey should ask questions about your brand as well as competitors, what your customers know about your product, and brand awareness in general.

    You could ask:

    • Are there any positive and negative word associations with our brand?
    • Which brand would you is similar and/or competes with our brand?

    Means-end analysis

    Now you’ve conducted the customer needs analysis survey, you can use the answers to get a better picture of why your customers are your customers, as well as what makes your product or service stand apart from your competitors’.

    A means-end analysis uses those answers to determine the reasons why a customer would buy your product.

    These reasons are then divided into three main groups:

    1. Features: Your customer may purchase your product because of a specific feature, if you were buying a new phone, for example, the fact that it has a titanium, indestructible casing might be a draw.

    2. Benefits: Your customer buys your product or service because of a benefit, they believe your product will offer them. E.g. the customer might buy your phone because it wirelessly syncs to their other devices easier than competing models.

    3. Values: A customer buys a product or service to help them fulfill an individual value. They may feel that by buying this phone they’ll communicate more frequently with loved ones who have the same handset.

    Reasons for buying a product can be personal to each customer and vary wildly, which is why it’s important to make note of the answers and group them into each category. From there you can identify exactly which motivating factor your product falls under and which perceived problem it solves!

    This is a great way to find areas you need to improve in and discover new ways to one-up your competitors.

    Customer Feedback

    After conducting customer surveys you will have loads of data on what your customers need – the problem is sorting through it. And that’s without counting all the unprompted customer feedback you could analyze.

    You should try to sort this into rough groups relating to different major customer needs. Then you should look for common keywords in each of the groups and make a note of positive and negative emotions related to the feedback.

    This can help you to get a sense of the key patterns in the data.


    Common examples of customer needs

    There is a whole range of different customer needs. For example, when we reach into our pocket and order an Uber taxi, this is driven by the need to go from A to B. Similarly, we may call for a pizza delivery, and again, this is driven by our need to satisfy hunger.

    The list is endless. We’ve categorized the types of customer needs below and divided them into two categories: product needs and service needs – have a nosey and familiarize yourself with them.

    Product needs

    Functionality

    Q: Given the choice, will your customer A) invest in a product or service that does half a job, and may not even solve their problem, or B) buy a product or service that’ll tick all the boxes?

    No prizes for the right answer there. Customers need your product or service to function exactly the way they need it to, to rectify an issue or fulfill their desire.

    Price

    Whether it’s $20 or $2000, more often than not, buyers will be working on the constraints of a budget.

    Remember, your customer will have a price point they won’t be able to surpass, so price accordingly.

    Compatibility

    Always ensure your product or service is compatible with your existing products on offer.

    For example, when Xbox released its Xbox One console, a list of backward compatible titles from the previous console was released, meaning gamers could continue to enjoy their old favorites.

    In doing so, you’ll keep your customers happy, and reduce the likelihood of them switching allegiances to your competitor.

    Efficiency

    Let’s face facts: we’re all impatient, and your customers are no different when looking for a product or service. They’ll always be attracted to a product or service that offers immediate gratification.

    Performance

    Nobody would visit a car showroom and buy a top of the range Mercedes with square wheels. After all, why buy the undrivable car?

    Similarly, your product or service needs to fulfill the duties required by the customer so they can achieve their goals.

    Reliability

    Sticking with the car motif, ever wondered why so many people buy Volkswagen cars? One word: reliability.

    Products or services need to perform reliably, as advertised, whenever the customer uses it. Anything else doesn’t meet the customer’s needs.

    And that won’t cut the mustard.

    Design

    A product could have every feature on God’s green earth, but if it’s lacking aesthetically, chances are it won’t perform to its optimum potential.

    When designing your product, always put usability at the forefront of your mind, because if it’s awkward to use, there’s a strong possibility this will impact the customer experience and they could seek future solutions elsewhere, rather than give you a chance to redeem yourself.

    Experience

    Never overcomplicate things as far as using your product or service is concerned.

    Remember, the customer has bought your product to simplify matters, not make things harder!

    Convenience

    Your customers are always looking for the most convenient solution to their problem – if they wanted to jump through hoops, they’d have joined the circus.

    Offer a practical solution to their problem. They’ll be grateful for it.

    Service needs

    Accessibility

    Nobody wants to constantly hear a pre-recorded message when calling customer service teams – it’s irritating, and sends out all the wrong signals.

    You need to make your customer service support teams accessible, even if this means having multiple ways whereby they can get in touch with you, including chatbots, customer service numbers, and so forth.

    Remember, word of mouth can make or break your company’s reputation, and if your existing customers turn the air blue if you’re not accessible, they’ll make their voices heard.

    Empathy

    However, let’s be positive and assume your customers won’t have any trouble at all contacting you.

    Top tip: people getting in touch with customer support aren’t calling for a chat – they have a problem. So, if they’re disappointed, or express dismay for whatever reason, show empathy and understanding when providing help.

    Be fair

    Nobody likes being ripped off. Ever.

    So, when you’re pricing your product or setting out terms of a customer contract, don’t be sneaky or sly. It’s not big, it’s not clever, and you’ll only wind up booking your customers a first-class, all expenses paid trip to your nearest rival.

    Be clear

    Similarly, we can’t say how important it is to be crystal clear with your customers.

    For example, if their cell phone tariff is set to increase by a couple of dollars, don’t spring a surprise on them when they open their next bill. Pick up the phone and let them know. They’ll appreciate your honesty, and it’ll only do good for your reputation.

    Control

    Everyone likes to feel some level of control and customers are no different when it comes to business interactions. Customers should feel empowered from start to finish and well after the sales. Make it easy for them to return products they don’t find satisfactory, play around with terms, and change subscriptions and you’ll have a customer for life.

    Options

    Consumers need options, after all, variety is the spice of life! Make sure you offer a variety in the form of products, features, subscriptions, and the way your customers can pay.

    Information

    Ever been in a scenario whereby you’re totally out of the loop?

    If you haven’t, you’re not missing out: it sucks. If you have, you’ll know what we’re talking about, and shouldn’t subject your customers to the same treatment.

    When people know about what they’re buying, this inspires trust; a relationship with no trust holds no credence, and sooner or later, you’ll shoot yourself in the foot.

    Publish content geared to providing your customers useful information they can use to make informed buying decisions and get the most from their purchases: blogs, instructional videos, downloadable brochures – they’re all useful resources that’ll improve your overall service.


    What are the most common customer needs?

    We’ve unleashed a helluva lot of examples onto your plate in our previous section, but don’t panic; not every single one of the aforementioned customer needs will be particularly applicable to your circumstances.

    To round off, here’s a bite-size list of the most common customer needs:

    1. Price
    2. Reliability and sustainability
    3. Risk reduction
    4. Usability and convenience
    5. Transparency
    6. Control
    7. Empathy
    8. Information

    How to meet customer needs in 5 steps

    Sometimes, circumstances stop your customer from meeting their needs with your products or services, and when you’ve devoted copious amounts of time and effort to developing a product or service you’re super-proud of, it can be difficult to stomach seeing customers go elsewhere.

    But not to worry, some steps can be taken to address common pain points and have your customers eating out the palm of your hand.

    Well, not literally, but you know what we mean. Here are some ideas:

    1. Pool customer feedback from different sources to show multiple sides of the story

    Everyone’s number one choice is always going to be one-on-one phone, video or in-person time but sometimes that’s easier said than done. So, here are all your options.

    Call your customers

    This’ll give you an open forum to get firsthand answers from the horse’s mouth and comes with a couple of pretty huge benefits:

    Benefit #1: you can explore areas you might not have originally anticipated – if a customer’s answer sparks a question that wasn’t on your premeditated list, for example.

    Benefit #2: you can gauge their inflections and this can say an awful lot about how a customer really thinks and feels. For example, let’s say you send out an email survey for people to complete. One of the questions is “What do you think about our analytics software?” and someone answers “Yeah, it’s good.”

    Written down, that might not seem like a negative at a glance. But, what if that Q&A happened over the phone and it turned out there was a long pause while they had to think about it before they responded? And the customer’s voice was a bit deflated and unsure? Instantly, it becomes less positive.

    In terms of organising your calls, if you want time for a decent chat, it’s probably best to book appointments with your customers in advance – after all, no-one likes a 20-minute phone call being sprung on them out of the blue. Giving people notice will also ensure they book time out to answer your questions with care and thought.

    If you’re going with the ad hoc approach just be mindful of what time of the day you pick up the phone (remembering to take time zones into account, too). It’s thought between 8am to 9am and 4pm to 5pm is best, lunchtime, between 1pm and 2pm, is the worst – a hangry customer is not a happy customer!

    Last couple of tips for this one:

    Tip #1: remember to ask open-ended questions; one-word answers don’t tell you much. So, for example, instead of asking “Do you like our analytics software?” ask “Can you tell us what features, in particular, you like about our analytics software and why?”

    Tip #2: people are busy and sometimes it takes a little nudge for them to part ways with some of their time for you. Try it for free first and be creative with your approach, but if you don’t get anywhere and you have the budget, think about attaching an incentive to the call – a simple voucher would do.

    Get the info secondhand

    Unlocking internal data is a time old problem in the PMM community. We all know other departments (sales and customer service in particular) are sitting on a gold mine of data, but extracting it can be like getting water from a stone sometimes.

    Unfortunately, there’s no quick or easy fix for this one and before you’re freely and regularly fed with the info you need, an internal, cultural shift might be needed. Why? Because, rightly or wrongly, before said people in said departments go out of their way to help you, they need to understand why it’s important and how it benefits them.

    The good news is that’s pretty easy to justify. Better products and features mean easier sales for your reps and fewer calls to your service departments. Winner.

    Next, you need to make it as easy as possible. You’re busy, they’re busy, everyone’s busy, but the harder you make feeding back the less likely they are to stick to it and they kind of hold the cards on this one, so it’s best to give them what they want – within reason, of course.

    A couple of ideas include:

    • Introducing a CRM whereby customer and prospect-facing teams can easily add important notes there and then. The later they recall what they’ve been told, the more likely they are to forget or miscommunicate key details.
    • Investing in something like Slack and creating channels dedicated to feedback on things like ‘reason customer complained’, ‘reason prospect didn’t convert’ and ‘customer praise’.
    • Sending someone from your team over to do random desk drops throughout the day to pick their brains in person.

    Tip: if you want to really drive adoption of this kind of mindset it could be worth competionising it, at least for the first quarter or two until it’s fully embedded. For example, you could offer a reward to the sales rep who provides the most and richest feedback each week.

    Analyse phone calls

    This could be with your sales, customer service, support or onboarding teams and can be used in tandem or instead of (if you don’t get any co-operation) the previous point.

    Admittedly, this option’s going to be a lot more labour-intensive but there are tools out there to help, like:

    While the above tools are great the only snag is they’re predominantly for sales enablement, which doesn’t necessarily help decipher post-sale conversations. So, here are a couple of ideas on how to make the qualitative data you earwig on manageable and actionable:

    • Divvy it up. That way, you can work your way through more without eating too much into any one person’s day.
    • Set up a system. For example, you could create a scorecard with specific issues listed and then each time a customer raises something relating to that issue, scribble some of the buzzwords into the corresponding field.

    On the flip side, you could monitor things people don’t say. For example, sticking with the CRM builder, if not a single person mentions your drag-and-drop builder as a pro, is it really as easy as you think?

    Approach them in person

    If you put on semi-regular events, trade shows or conferences for your customers use them as an opportunity to poach them for feedback – odds are, people will be a bit more giving with their time if they’re already at an event for them, by you. If all goes to plan, this could be a great outlet to get tonnes of first-hand feedback at once.

    One caveat for this though is to make sure you’re speaking to the right person. If you’re B2B and want to understand how a customer finds your CRM system you need to speak to the person who uses it, not the person who foots the bill.

    If all else fails…

    You’ve still got lots of online options to gather quantitative and qualitative feedback, you’ll just miss out on some of the benefits that come hand-in-hand with actually hearing the responses.

    Some popular tactics include:

    • Sending out email, SMS and in-app surveys
    • Going through social media conversations (public and private)
    • Adding a quick form to your Wifi network (commonly used in cafes, restaurants, bars, leisure centres, and hotels)
    • Using feedback monitoring sites – like Google and Yext
    • Recording visitors’ website sessions
    • Reviewing live chat transcripts.

    2. Map your insights back to your customer profiles and LTV

    Karim Zuhri, GM & Chief Operating Officer at Cascade, shares the rest of these steps for meeting customer needs.

    “Quantify the JTBD and unmet customer needs. Don’t just surface feature requests, instead focus on the problem the customer is trying to solve, remove bias, and assess alignment with your company’s goals and product strategy.”

    3. Look at your funnel from acquisition to churn

    “In order to gain alignment across different parts of the business, this is essential. It helps each team to begin to understand how actions they take at the top (and bottom) of the funnel can impact customers further on in their journey.

    Image via moonshotio.com

    “Make sure that you have success metrics along the customer journey to measure product lovability at any time. Google’s HEART framework provides a set of 5 user-centric metrics that revolve around happiness, engagement, adoption, retention, and task success. Each metric aligns with a goal and a signal to let you know how well you’re tracking towards that goal.”

    4. Get input to gain buy-in

    “For instance, if the feedback is related to a new feature – ask the Product Manager’s thoughts on how it fits into their roadmap. Have they thought about this feature, from this particular vantage point? Allow them to publish their thoughts on the request so they feel they’re able to add input into the work that you do.

    “Is this request something that we are already planning to ship? Is this issue related to a broader problem we’ve seen consistently across several sources? If we build this solution, how big is the impact? . Will it help with engagement, reach, expansion, or retention? What’s the time to value? Is there a dependency that’s blocking us from taking action today?”

    5. Let your customers know you are doing something about it

    “Your roadmap is not a secret, but it doesn’t have to be set in stone either. Make your upcoming roadmap collaborative. Be transparent with your customers, discuss it with them, understand what’s critical and what a particular feature may mean for them. Be proactive in communicating not only what’s coming soon, but also what you are considering longer-term.

    “At its core, this program continues to help us bring customer feedback, information, and thoughts to the forefront of our business’ conversations. Our aim was to consistently demonstrate, at scale, what our customers are saying and how they feel about our offer. We will continue to work towards this ever-illusive goal, and are confident that in the interim we’ve managed to ensure transparency and alignment across the business.

    “Steve Jobs once said, “You’ve got to start with the customer experience and work backwards to the technology.” Don’t put it off and say it’s someone else’s job. Implementing a customer-obsessed culture within your company is definitely your job as a product marketer. Don’t settle, drive internal conversations and be the voice of the customer, always.”


    Want to learn more?

    Product marketing is and always will be a customer-centric role. A core part of your job is to value the voice of the customer and advocate for their wants, needs, and pain points. It’s your responsibility to make them feel heard. Therefore, customer marketing is an integral part of what you need to do to ensure that you’re staying true to this.

    The Customer Marketing Certified: Masters course has been designed to give you invaluable, practical insights into streamlining your customer marketing approach so that you can ensure that:

    • Your customers are happy,
    • Your products are the best they truly can be,
    • Your brand reputation is consistently positive, and
    • That you bring in increased revenue for your organization.

    So what are you waiting for?

  • You need to know when to fire a customer

    You need to know when to fire a customer

    We work so hard to build a customer base that we despair at the thought of ever losing one. But sometimes, your relationship has run its course, and it’s smarter to let them go.

    red fire digital wallpaper
    Photo by Cullan Smith on Unsplash

    hen you build a product, you work so hard to attract those first customers. Cracking into a marketplace is difficult, and even when they have one foot in the door, it’s hard to keep them. Figuring out how to attract and retain customers consumes a huge amount of our time in the product world.

    That being said, you also need to learn how to fire them.

    I can already hear the objections: “Fire them? What about that hard work?”

    Well, for your business to accomplish its mission, learning when and how to fire customers is a key skill. The truth is that both the business and its customers change over time. Sometimes, that change means that the partnership between the two has run its course. When this happens, you have a choice. Either you recognize the time has come and help that customer get to where they need to go, or you try to hold on, kicking and screaming.

    Let’s eliminate the second option right now. Trying to keep your customers while they are kicking and screaming will leave scars. The effort, like blindly answering and accepting feature requests or requests for proposals (RFPs), to keep them is going to drain both you and your company. The cost is significant, causing companies to lose resources, headspace and may eventually move you away from your mission.

    One day, you’ll look up and be unable to recognize your own company. If you’re a mission-focused company, then that type of change is non-negotiable. Keeping customers isn’t worth giving up on your original vision.

    To avoid letting this happen, you have to be willing to fire customers. You need to do two things to fire them effectively:

    1. Identify customers that don’t fit your point of view.
       
    2. Send them on their way with some kindness and grace.

    As leaders, and especially those of us who are mission-driven, we must be able to identify and part with those customers who no longer serve us well. Not only does doing so enable us to lead with razor focus, but it also helps signal to our colleagues that we are committed to the work itself.

    In this article, I want to point out how you can identify customers who aren’t aligned with your mission. I will also address some ways to end the relationship without burning bridges permanently. Although some of these things are counterintuitive, they’re all designed to make sure that you, as a leader, are staying focused on what’s most important to your business.

    Identify Customers That Don’t Fit

    Earning that first dollar is challenging for a business, and keeping it is even harder. For founders especially, these dollars are an affirmation that your vision is viable, and every customer that you gain feels like a success.

    Once you’ve got a sizable customer base, the job turns from just acquiring any customers to acquiring the right customer. I understand that the word right is doing a lot there, so let’s break it down.

    The right customer is the one that fits your mission and vision. You solve a problem for them, so they’re willing to pay you for that solution. They’re excited to grow with you. These criteria may seem simple, but they don’t describe every customer that you have. Some are neutral, and some are actually the wrong customers.

    Neutral customers aren’t enthusiastic supporters of your brand, but they’re comfortable enough with your service. They tend to slip in and out out of your revenue stream. They may eventually turn into the right customer and discover a passion for your product. Crucially, though, their indifference means that they don’t put pressure on you to change like wrong ones will.

    Wrong customers want your company to do one of two things:

    1. Go backward. The folks who push you in this direction are most likely older customers who joined when you first started. They liked your product in its early stages but don’t like what you’re doing now or where your product is headed. You’ll notice this customer talking about the old days a lot.
       
    2. Change your mission. This group is likely to talk to you about everything except what your product is trying to do. Get ready for feature requests that overwhelm your team, tickets for your customer success operators that are far removed from your use cases and plenty of other distractions.

    These groups are not mutually exclusive either. The person who wants to go backward can also push your team to go in another new, unnecessary direction too. Either way, the result is bad for your company. Going backward is as bad as spending time trying to accommodate every single request you see, no matter how small. Both strategies will put you out of the game.

    Identifying these customers is important so that you can make your offloading process clear. Build a profile of a hypothetical problem customer so that you can identify red flag behaviors. Some things to look out for are improper or inactive feature use or a customer that complains often and contributes little to the bottom line.

    You can set up user personae and include one for the problem customer. These personae, once uncovered, should be referenced with the customer experience team (customer success, customer support, support engineers, internal product and design) often to adjust and iterate as the mission changes.

    Segmenting your customers will help you get a better handle on how to serve them all.

    Helping People Move On

    Now you have a good idea of how to identify those customers who don’t align with your vision. Once you’ve determined this, it’s critical that you transition them to someone who will provide a better fit. So, how do you help them move on?

    Let’s start with what you shouldn’t do — just dump them. These customers, whether ideal or not, have shown you the respect of paying for your services or products. They put their faith in you, and even if they’re no longer a match for your business, dumping them either explicitly (by just cutting them off) or implicitly (by ignoring them) is a bad idea. Not only is it rude to treat someone this way, but you’re also running the risk of damaging your brand’s reputation.

    So, what should you do? First, you need to understand them. Then, you shift those customers to their next place rather than unceremoniously dumping them.

    UNDERSTANDING

    Now that we know who these customers are, it’s worth understanding just how the relationship got to this place. This is counterintuitive because we’re often just focused on engaging with the customers that are the best fit for our product. Nevertheless, we can learn a lot from a disaffected customer.

    There is more than likely messaging on your platform or marketing that speaks to the customers that didn’t fit. Asking these customers questions over the phone or by survey like “What confused or frustrated you?” will give you a hint as to what made them think that your product solved their problem. You now know what to remove in order to avoid attracting this type of customer. The data you get from the customer, whether from surveys or phone calls, will also give you some insight into the next step.

    SHIFTING

    The customers have told you what they’re looking for. Now, it’s part of your job to find out where to direct them. There are competitors (yes — your competitors) that may fit their needs better. You may also be able to recommend a solution that won’t charge them. Moving those customers to other places in your niche has two effects.

    First, it strengthens your standing in the marketplace by focusing on just the customers that work for you and your business. Second, you can start to divert them before and during the onboarding process to avoid the trouble these customers can cause down the road.

    Not all customers are for you, but that doesn’t mean you should abandon them altogether. Pointing customers who no longer fit your brand to a competitor who might makes you a leader in your space and improves your influence, strengthening the overall ecosystem. Don’t downplay the long-term benefits of doing so, either. Your competitor can become your greatest partner as the seas change.

    The same goes for moving the customer off of your platform to something free. You’re building trust with that customer that may pay off big time in the future. Even as they’re leaving your service, they’re likely to remain an evangelist for your brand. Plus, getting these customers out of your pipeline frees space for the ones you need to pay attention to.

    Fire Customers With Respect

    These aren’t one-time actions. Identifying and moving those customers should be a continuous process. Every time you make space for the right customers, you are on the path to growth.

    I know it’s hard, as the customers who started with us or the ones we’ve gained along the way are important to us. They trusted us. That being said, it’s worth returning the favor by helping them continue on their journey.

  • Beware the tyranny of customer feedback

    Beware the tyranny of customer feedback

    man in grey crew-neck t-shirt smiling to woman on counter
    Photo by Clay Banks on Unsplash

    The customer is always right – right?

    This adage – one that many of us grew up with – is a guiding principle of product development. If we can just listen to the customer – if we just give them what we want, our path to product success can’t be too far off.

    Isn’t that customer obsession? Wasn’t Amazon where it needed to be? Well, no.

    In fact, quite the opposite. Just blindly listening to customers is a surefire path to stay mediocre, or worse. It holds you hostage, forcing you to follow through on these blind promises you’ve made and, if you succeed, you end up with a bloated product. If you fail… well, goodbye trust.

    Using open feedback systems, driven by customer desire, is not customer obsession. It’s customer abdication, and it holds you back from being clear-eyed about the decisions you will eventually make when doing customer development. Here is why:

    • The Ferrari Problem – customers want eye candy and aren’t thinking about how you’ll need to maintain it, or if it matters.
    • Customers have no context – they don’t know their market and live in a completely different world than you do.
    • Maintenance – systems which are open-to and guided-by customer feedback tend to need high maintenance to keep them useful. What tradeoffs are you willing to make to add confidence to the system?

    Let’s explore these problems in-depth, and talk about how to avoid these problems with tools and concepts that are more likely to bring you better outcomes for your product development.

    Vroom Vroom, I Want a Ferrari

    If I offered you a Ferrari, would you take it? Sure you would.

    Now let’s talk about maintaining the car.

    • Your oil changes are now specialized and cost 10 to 20x what they cost now
    • Any part is now specialized and you’ll need to find a specific mechanic with a smaller margin of error
    • Good luck finding the right gas station

    Did any of this come to mind during the offer? My guess is: no, it doesn’t. My bet is even if you got a Ferrari, you wouldn’t use it. This is what I call the Ferrari problem – when we, as human beings, consider only the “thing” we’re acquiring, and not anything around it.

    Your customers are human beings.  I repeat, they are human. They will spend time telling you about how much they want a feature… and then they’ll never use it. They just wanted it because they thought it’s cool.

    How do you avoid this?

    Focus on the problems – customers are well aware of the problems they need solved. They are your best source.  

    Contextless Customers

    You are probably looking at this on a phone or laptop. If I asked you about the microchip market, you might be able to answer. Let’s ask a few more questions:

    • How about the supply chain?
    • What about the other choices on the market?
    • How about any of the trade-offs necessary to ship this device?

    I don’t expect you to be able to answer these questions unless you are a product manager from a company like Lenovo or Apple, and work in their hardware division.

    You are a customer.

    Now think about your company – my guess is that you are able to answer these questions pretty easily, but your customers can’t. Every time a customer requests something, they don’t ever have this context in mind. In fact, they are just thinking about the problem.

    Instead of just expecting them to tell you what they want, ask them about the world around them. Ask them to tell you stories about how they interact with the product.

    Open System, Open Problems

    I once built a Content Management System (CMS) when I was younger (I am aging myself 😉) and, to my surprise, it worked. The little marvel allowed me to start my first company, The Gamer Studio, and bring on writers to start publishing content.

    So I opened it up to feedback and feature requests, provisioned some usernames and passwords and I thought I was on my way… until it happened.

    The first incident about corrupted data. Then the next, and suddenly it was a hack here, a hack there. For all the my openness to user feedback and feature requests had been well intentioned – after all, I just wanted to build the best product for my users – the reality was that it had led me down a path of feature bloat, technical debt, and a code-base that I had no hope of maintaining.

    I eventually had to shelve it and do the hard work of manually transferring everything to Typepad. Sure, I made a system and opened it up to customer feedback, but I didn’t consider the maintenance costs I was also opening myself up to. I often see the same thing whenever a product team starts using a live “customer voting platform”.

    These are open to all types of influences that run counter to your goal – for example, what happens when there is a voting “brigade” being led a single customer with a disproportionate amount of influence? Or a particularly nefarious competitor looking to skew your insights and roadmap?

    Not only that, but you also fall into the trap of other parties, both external and internally, deciding your priorities based on bad or irrelevant metrics. For example, stakeholders in other teams or organisations using non-significant (or even, strictly speaking, irrelevant) vote counts to push an agenda. A CEO running a meeting and saying “It’s the top-rated feature request” when it has 17 votes has a particular sting to it.

    Instead of voting on features, if you need to have customers vote on anything, let them vote and comment on problems. Put this at the beginning of your discovery process to help shape your research.

    The Theme Remains: Focus on Problems.

    Customers are a fantastic resource to understand (valuable) problems. However, defining solutions is where we run into more troublesome problems.

    Take the solutions out of your customers’ hands, and give that responsibility back to your team.

  • Building a better relationship between customer success and product

    Building a better relationship between customer success and product

    gray computer monitor
    Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash

    If I asked you about your relationship with your customer success team, what would you say?

    Whenever I ask product teams this question, I’m generally surprised by the answer: that there isn’t one. And if there is, it’s barely hanging on. Often, the relationship is very back and forth, with CS handing off customer problems — or even worse, solutions — to the product team. Then the product team places them either very high (bug or critical error) or low (enhancement) in the queue because they originated outside of the typical product development process.

    This breeds resentment and the two teams rarely address it. The status quo remains unchanged and the opportunity for better alignment and communication is lost.

    Does this sound familiar?

    As a product executive and consultant with over ten years of experience, the customer success team is often the first team I talk to when trying to understand a business and its customer base. When the relationship between CS and product works well, important customer information, including qualitative feedback, feature requests, and emotional reactions to the roadmap, makes its way to the product team to inform their strategy. 

    Ultimately, a strong relationship with your colleagues in CS will give you a much higher success rate when launching products. And all of this for free.

    How do you build such an alliance? Well, I put the onus on us, the product team, to manage the relationship and bring out the best in the teams around us. Product isn’t just a translation service — it also is a diplomatic one. 

    Here are three ways you can repair and improve that relationship with your customer success team:

    1. Hear them out
    2. Bring them into the research process
    3. Be transparent

    Hear them out

    Typically, your customer success team is going to be the lowest paid and the least listened-to team in the building. Their job is often a taxing one — customers frequently yell at them, and they work on the front lines of frustration, listening to customers vent at their lowest moments of using the product. 

    Your job as a product leader is to take the opportunity to sit down with them and listen to what they have to say. If the relationship I described before sounds familiar, they will likely have a lot to say.

    How should you frame this conversation? I’m a big fan of the team retro process laid out by NOBL here. A team retro gives you and that team at least 60 minutes to get things completely on the table. Remember, the retro process isn’t about blame; it’s about level-setting and improving, so make sure you use that time to get a clear lay of the land. Both teams more than likely have some misconceptions about the work the other does. It’s finally time to clear them up.

    Bring them into the research/product development process

    I think the biggest distinction that the product team should communicate with the CS team is that they have a good understanding of the emotional state of reactive customers, but aren’t always clear about the problem set of proactive customers. That is the difference between research and inbound. Making that distinction clear with your customer success team is the start of engaging them with the product development side of the house, instead of “break/fix.”

    Something as simple as inviting your customer success team to the research outlines and asking them about common customer frustrations can give you a world of information — not just about what the customer wants, but opportunities to get help, even in the way they process inbound. 

    Also, make sure each product team has a customer success advocate on board. They don’t have to go to every meeting or engage in every conversation, but it helps keep the team involved and may lead to useful insights when the build begins. 

    Be transparent

    You’ve already built some serious inroads if you’ve been doing the above two methods regularly. The next step is to be transparent. This involves a potentially big change in your product strategy: inviting the customer success team in to talk about it. 

    New hires coming in to shake things up? Let the customer success team know. Doing some sort of tech debt initiative and new features are temporarily suspended? Bring them on board. Keeping the customer success team aware of all the big movements from your perspective will build trust and help mend any damaged fences.

    Remember to continue to do the retro as well. Once isn’t good enough — make it a regular occurrence to encourage consistent engagement and communication.

    Customer success and product can work well together

    Our customer success teams are on the front lines keeping things running smoothly every day. We have an opportunity to use that expertise to make better decisions about the products we bring to market, and how our product development serves customers. The way we get there is by making sure that we stay open, bring them along, and continue to build trust through transparency. 

    Building the right products is a team effort, and when we all work together, great things happen.