Product Collective (A Pendo Community)’s Post

From a Google VP: You shouldn’t care about Product Excellence. There is only 1 metric that you should care about, and that is retention. Let say: -> You’ve built a product that is super sleek -> You’ve build a beautiful UI -> You’ve even sprinkled in some gamification AND -> Your NPS is off the charts. People LOVE the experience. BUT users don’t come back. In this case: You failed. It turns out, if users don’t get VALUE from it, doesn’t matter how pleasurable the experience was, they won’t come back. But you could have a product that is terrible. Pain to use. It’s clunky, buggy and even crashes (in the extreme cases). Your product teams get constant negative feedback. Your customers even swear at you - and their feedback is painful to hear. Ouch. BUT. Your users keep coming back. They keep coming back because the product solves a DEEP problem in their lives. Your product still delivers a tremendous amount of CORE value. This is what matters. This is the only thing that matters. ——- I was afraid of posting this because it can be taken in the wrong way. But this post isn’t to encourage you to build terrible products that are awful to use and frustrate your users. The point is to DEEPLY understand the CORE value that your product delivers and make that your North Star. NPS or "experience" should never be your North Star, your North Star should be the CORE VALUE you deliver. If you do that, your users will return over and over again.

From a Google VP: You shouldn’t care about Product Excellence. There is only 1 metric that you should care about, and that is retention. Let say: -> You’ve built a product that is super sleek -> You’ve build a beautiful UI -> You’ve even sprinkled in some gamification AND -> Your NPS is off the charts. People LOVE the experience. BUT users don’t come back. In this case: You failed. It turns out, if users don’t get VALUE from it, doesn’t matter how pleasurable the experience was, they won’t come back. But you could have a product that is terrible. Pain to use. It’s clunky, buggy and even crashes (in the extreme cases). Your product teams get constant negative feedback. Your customers even swear at you - and their feedback is painful to hear. Ouch. BUT. Your users keep coming back. They keep coming back because the product solves a DEEP problem in their lives. Your product still delivers a tremendous amount of CORE value. This is what matters. This is the only thing that matters. ——- I was afraid of posting this because it can be taken in the wrong way. But this post isn’t to encourage you to build terrible products that are awful to use and frustrate your users. The point is to DEEPLY understand the CORE value that your product delivers and make that your North Star. NPS or "experience" should never be your North Star, your North Star should be the CORE VALUE you deliver. If you do that, your users will return over and over again.

From a Google VP: You shouldn’t care about Product Excellence. There is only 1 metric that you should care about, and that is retention. Let say: -> You’ve built a product that is super sleek -> You’ve build a beautiful UI -> You’ve even sprinkled in some gamification AND -> Your NPS is off the charts. People LOVE the experience. BUT users don’t come back. In this case: You failed. It turns out, if users don’t get VALUE from it, doesn’t matter how pleasurable the experience was, they won’t come back. But you could have a product that is terrible. Pain to use. It’s clunky, buggy and even crashes (in the extreme cases). Your product teams get constant negative feedback. Your customers even swear at you - and their feedback is painful to hear. Ouch. BUT. Your users keep coming back. They keep coming back because the product solves a DEEP problem in their lives. Your product still delivers a tremendous amount of CORE value. This is what matters. This is the only thing that matters. ——- I was afraid of posting this because it can be taken in the wrong way. But this post isn’t to encourage you to build terrible products that are awful to use and frustrate your users. The point is to DEEPLY understand the CORE value that your product delivers and make that your North Star. NPS or "experience" should never be your North Star, your North Star should be the CORE VALUE you deliver. If you do that, your users will return over and over again.

From a Google VP: You shouldn’t care about Product Excellence. There is only 1 metric that you should care about, and that is retention. Let say: -> You’ve built a product that is super sleek -> You’ve build a beautiful UI -> You’ve even sprinkled in some gamification AND -> Your NPS is off the charts. People LOVE the experience. BUT users don’t come back. In this case: You failed. It turns out, if users don’t get VALUE from it, doesn’t matter how pleasurable the experience was, they won’t come back. But you could have a product that is terrible. Pain to use. It’s clunky, buggy and even crashes (in the extreme cases). Your product teams get constant negative feedback. Your customers even swear at you - and their feedback is painful to hear. Ouch. BUT. Your users keep coming back. They keep coming back because the product solves a DEEP problem in their lives. Your product still delivers a tremendous amount of CORE value. This is what matters. This is the only thing that matters. ——- I was afraid of posting this because it can be taken in the wrong way. But this post isn’t to encourage you to build terrible products that are awful to use and frustrate your users. The point is to DEEPLY understand the CORE value that your product delivers and make that your North Star. NPS or "experience" should never be your North Star, your North Star should be the CORE VALUE you deliver. If you do that, your users will return over and over again.

From a Google VP: You shouldn’t care about Product Excellence. There is only 1 metric that you should care about, and that is retention. Let say: -> You’ve built a product that is super sleek -> You’ve build a beautiful UI -> You’ve even sprinkled in some gamification AND -> Your NPS is off the charts. People LOVE the experience. BUT users don’t come back. In this case: You failed. It turns out, if users don’t get VALUE from it, doesn’t matter how pleasurable the experience was, they won’t come back. But you could have a product that is terrible. Pain to use. It’s clunky, buggy and even crashes (in the extreme cases). Your product teams get constant negative feedback. Your customers even swear at you - and their feedback is painful to hear. Ouch. BUT. Your users keep coming back. They keep coming back because the product solves a DEEP problem in their lives. Your product still delivers a tremendous amount of CORE value. This is what matters. This is the only thing that matters. ——- I was afraid of posting this because it can be taken in the wrong way. But this post isn’t to encourage you to build terrible products that are awful to use and frustrate your users. The point is to DEEPLY understand the CORE value that your product delivers and make that your North Star. NPS or "experience" should never be your North Star, your North Star should be the CORE VALUE you deliver. If you do that, your users will return over and over again.

From a Google VP: You shouldn’t care about Product Excellence. There is only 1 metric that you should care about, and that is retention. Let say: -> You’ve built a product that is super sleek -> You’ve build a beautiful UI -> You’ve even sprinkled in some gamification AND -> Your NPS is off the charts. People LOVE the experience. BUT users don’t come back. In this case: You failed. It turns out, if users don’t get VALUE from it, doesn’t matter how pleasurable the experience was, they won’t come back. But you could have a product that is terrible. Pain to use. It’s clunky, buggy and even crashes (in the extreme cases). Your product teams get constant negative feedback. Your customers even swear at you - and their feedback is painful to hear. Ouch. BUT. Your users keep coming back. They keep coming back because the product solves a DEEP problem in their lives. Your product still delivers a tremendous amount of CORE value. This is what matters. This is the only thing that matters. ——- I was afraid of posting this because it can be taken in the wrong way. But this post isn’t to encourage you to build terrible products that are awful to use and frustrate your users. The point is to DEEPLY understand the CORE value that your product delivers and make that your North Star. NPS or "experience" should never be your North Star, your North Star should be the CORE VALUE you deliver. If you do that, your users will return over and over again.