Product Managers Should Obsess About Customers

Having lots of new product ideas and a good funnel of potential features for your existing product is great. However, this rich funnel won't keep your company afloat and won't allow you to scale and grow if you don't truly understand your customers. In the tech industry, product life cycles are short and many products are disposable six months later. In addition, competition is fierce so good ideas will be picked up sooner or later. Given this reality, how can companies keep up pace and create value that truly matter to their customers? By building a customer-centric culture including a product team that is obsessive about its customers.

The problem is that many tech organizations are tech-focused. As such, they work hard to hire and keep tech talent. But what's the point of building something if it's the wrong thing? Instead, I believe that "truly understanding customers" should have priority over creating technology for technology sake and that product managers should be accountable for activities that will help them connect with customers at a deep level.

Here's how product managers can develop deeper bonds with their customers:

(1) Get out of the building: PMs should have opportunities to meet and observe customers in their natural work environment. This will allow them to understand how the customers' accomplish certain necessary tasks and what problems or barriers exists. They should also have opportunities to build relationships in more relaxed networking-type settings so they can seek to understand customers' fears, motivations, beliefs, values and desires. These experiences will allow PMs to go beyond the surface and the typical persona chart. Head of Product teams should enable this to happen.

(2) Introduce customer goals: a certain amount of time per week should be dedicated to interacting with customers. I don't want to be prescriptive here but it should be more than 1 hour per week and it should be set as a goal that is measured.

(3) Break down silos: often times sales, customer success and/or marketing have an abundance of customer information but it is kept within the silos. It is also relayed to PMs as third party anecdotal information. Organisations should have a forum where members of all three functions can meet and share their customer experiences. Evidently, PMs cannot only receive this information third-hand, they do need to speak to customers directly.

Product Managers should have customer-centric goals and be obsessive about making deep connections with customers to create product experiences that truly matter . When hiring new product managers, organisations should not overlook soft-skills in relationship-building, customer development and interviewing skills. Look for product managers who show that they truly care about customers to the point of being somewhat obsessive.