How Do You Make Sure What You’re Building Is Something That Will Solve The Problem?
As product managers, we’re in charge of making sure the product solves the customer’s problem.
But what do you do when the customer doesn’t even know there’s a problem? Or if they do, how do you make sure that what you’re building is something that will solve it?
This is where customer insight comes in.
Customer insight combines qualitative and quantitative data collected from customers to help inform product decisions. It can be collected in many different ways, including surveys and interviews. Still, most importantly, it should be used to inform decisions early on rather than just as validation after the fact.
To help understand why customer insight matters so much, here are five ways customer insights drive product decisions:
- Be explicit about how customer insights drive product decisions.
- Each part of the solution should be there for a reason.
- Customer insight can help prioritize features based on pain points and desired outcomes from previous products or competitors’ offerings.
- Customer insight should be used along with competitor research to inform strategic decisions about future releases or new products.
The problem is that there are so many ways to solve any given issue, and it’s very easy to get lost along the way. We often focus so much on building something quickly that we forget our initial purpose for building it in the first place — which is usually to solve a real customer problem or need.
Maayan Galperin,
Product Manager
