Give customers what they want, but not what they ask for
Lessons learned re leveraging customer feedback + a framework for making product decisions
Everyone knows to get customer feedback when building a startup, but in practice, it’s difficult to do it right. The reason is that you can’t just blindly “give customers what they want.” If you do, you’ll end up with a mixed stew of features that don’t come together.
However, this same reasoning of taking customer feedback with a grain of salt can also result in you IGNORING important customer feedback for too long.
So how do you avoid these traps?
Every startup is different, but based on my experience co-founding Correlated, here are some lessons learned and a framework I’ve developed based on these learnings.
Lesson 1: Ship iteratively, but not reactively
We all laugh about it, but our first initial product was actually spreadsheets that displayed the results of our backend infrastructure. We used these spreadsheets to understand whether or not we were solving a valuable problem and to further refine our solution.
Going forward, we shipped iteratively in much the same way. We’d get customer feedback, build a scoped down feature, and see if it stuck.
This approach is GREAT because you’re never wondering if someone will use the product you’re building or not. The minute you ship a feature, you’re shipping it for someone who asked for it, and you can immediately test if that feature met their need.
However, there are some serious downsides to this approach if you’re not careful: (1) a reactive process for building product and (2) a preference for incremental solutions to a problem based on the easiest path forward.
Lesson 2: Give the customers what they want, but not what they ask for
As you’re building iteratively and getting customer feedback, you are bombarded with customer requests. You have to say no to most of them, and it’s easy to say no to the wrong ones.
There are often valid reasons to say no to customers. Their request might not fall under what you think is even possible. Their request might be backwards looking. And often, their request is a wish list that they will never use.
However, if you keep getting the same request over and over again, it’s time to give it a look. Don’t write it off. Don’t push it onto “customer education” or “changes in positioning”. Fix it.
Lesson 3: Focus. On. Differentiating. Value. Drivers.
Ok, so you shipped your first MVP. You broadcasted it all over LinkedIn. You’re patting yourself on the back.
Now, users are coming in with small requests. This dropdown looks weird. I can’t rename this field. I can’t do XYZ to the moon!
It is easy to start focusing on optimizations in order to appease users. However, it’s so important to not get distracted and focus on DRIVING VALUE.
Let me repeat that again with more emphasis: FOCUS ON DRIVING CLEAR VALUE.
Now note the word “clear”. It shouldn’t take 3 minutes to explain value. Clear.
The other important focus here is differentiating. You could be building a ton of value for a product area that already exists in the market. That’s not going to get you to hockey level growth. Your solution needs to be differentiated (like, 10x better than existing solutions, or completely net new and clearly valuable).
Ok, now that we have 3 lessons, how can we structure the way we think about customer feedback to make product decisions in the future?
I mapped out a framework to think about customer feedback, but what’s super important is that this is for EARLY STAGE startups PRE-PRODUCT MARKET FIT. Once you’ve hit product market fit, you can optimize, drive expansion, etc etc. But early on, all focus should be on providing value and removing blockers to value.
So let’s walk through this.
First, everything needs to map to the ultimate problem you’re trying to solve. If you’re solving a different problem, you’re making a pivot and should act like it.
Second, you need to take feedback from your target persona. It’s okay to decide your target persona isn’t for you, but you gotta start with building for someone. Don’t just take feedback from anyone.
Third, obviously, you don’t want to build something just because one person asked for it. Rather, you want to see if it maps to a trend. It’s possible one person asks, your gut tells you it’s a trend, and you decide to act without going out there and talking to 100 people. But you want to make sure you’re thinking in trends.
Finally, map the feedback to a category. If people are choosing NOT to use your product, this is a HUGE RED FLAG. It means that they perceive the value to be there, and not where your product is. Similarly, if the feedback is a blocker to success, that’s a big one to solve. Again, value value value.
Other feedback can be prioritized and managed as needed. If you want to start expanding product usage, then go ahead and take on those features. However, be wary if you’re ignoring blockers and reasons that people don’t choose you.
Looping back to the title of this blog post: Give customers what they want, not what they ask for.
Now that you’ve figured out why people aren’t using your product, do you just build exactly what they ask for? Absolutely not!
The problem with customer feedback is that it’s tainted by what they’ve already seen. They’ll ask for an improvement on your product and propose a solution that maps to what they know, but finding the best solution is your job! Instead, drill down on the exact problem the customer is trying to solve with the solution they proposed.
We just recently shipped a new feature: PQL Scoring leveraging machine learning, which wasn’t exactly what people asked for, but is what we believed solved the problem they had: using product-usage data to identify the best leads. It’s been getting great early feedback, and we’re seeing a lot of opportunities to expand on this product area.
Closing it out: when getting customer feedback, focus on why they aren’t using your product and tackle those issues first as they might be indicators of where differentiated value lies. When building the solution, focus on solving the problem, not building exactly what people ask for.