What is Customer-Focused Product Management?

Many companies fail to adequately meet market demands because they ignore the benefits of user-centric – also referred to as customer-focused – product management. In this article, you’ll learn how focusing on the customer will help your company build products that users truly value.

What is Customer-Focused Product Management?

Customer-focused or user-centric product management uses the customers’ needs and pains as a starting point for product development. Rather than creating a product in a cloistered room and then marketing it to the general public, customer-focused product managers base every component of the product on what they’ve learned about their customers.

Customer-focused product management also calls for intimate collaboration between sales, service, and product development teams. Products are not developed in one part of the company and then sold by another. The insights gained by sales personnel are extremely valuable to people working to develop the products. Typically, a customer-focused product manager would oversee this wide-scale collaboration.

Product-Focused Product Management 

Far too many companies focus their product development efforts on the products themselves. They think they can develop a unique product in accordance with their brilliance and then convince the public to buy it. The typical product-focused routine looks something like this:

1. Brainstorm brilliant ideas.
2. Create an awesome product.
3. Use marketing schemes and sales tactics to convince people to buy your product.
4. Rake in considerable profits.

Unfortunately for these hapless entrepreneurs, the world simply doesn’t work this way. Valuable products aren’t created in a vacuum. They’re developed following customers’ stated needs and pains. A product that’s been developed without customer input will rarely attract enough buyers to turn a profit.

Many of these product-focused companies don’t recognize the error of their ways until they reach the final steps of their plan. They bring the product to market with complete confidence, only to discover the demand simply isn’t there. You can avoid finding yourself in this embarrassing and costly position by committing to customer-focused product development from the start.

How to Build a Customer-Focused Product

A customer-focused model begins with an intensive investigation into a potential customer’s user journey. You need to understand where users experience pain and frustration, then consider ways to alleviate that pain.

The benefits of taking such an approach are enormous. Instead of launching a product blindly, you’ll be bringing a tried and tested product to market. The risk is significantly reduced since you’ve already ensured your product is aligned with user needs and expectations. You can probably count on significant sales right from the day of the launch. In the business world, this type of assurance is invaluable.

Step-by-Step Guide to Building a Customer-Focused Product

Vague notions are never enough when it comes to developing a product. You need a concrete plan that will lead your company to success. Here’s a step-by-step guide that shows you exactly how to make the most of the user-centric approach. If you follow it precisely, you should develop the types of products that perform well on the market.

Step 1: Identify Assumptions and Biases

While this step isn’t always necessary, it’s often a good place to start, especially if you’re new to customer-focused product development. When considering a new product, many people allow their assumptions about the market to affect their decisions. To a certain extent, this makes sense. After all, the initial idea for the product likely came from a sudden hunch or a spark of inspiration, not a careful analysis of market conditions. When it gets down to the nitty-gritty, however, it’s best to check these assumptions at the door.

Remember, your product will have to succeed in the actual market, not the market you perceived. This means vague ideas and generalities will never be enough. You need to understand what customers and users think. Your assumptions and biases will only interfere with your understanding.

Sometimes, it can be helpful to explicitly acknowledge any assumptions before you start investigating and interviewing users. Some people even choose to write them down. That way, you can make a conscious effort to dismiss those presumptuous hypotheses while conducting your research.

Product development should be a science, not an art. Your job is to gain a comprehensive understanding of user’s needs based on the data and information they share with you. Your personal opinions have no place in the laboratory of consumer data.

Step 2: Investigate the Customers’ User Journey

To provide customers with the products they’ll use, you need a detailed understanding of their experiences. It’s never enough to draw overarching conclusions from scattered pieces of information. You need to systematically investigate users until you have a comprehensive understanding of their needs.

Every user has their own experience with technology, which we call the “user journey.” By listening to several users describe their experiences, you can create a composite user journey that represents the typical customer experience. This is the overarching trend on which you’ll base your product development.

Within the user journey, you should be most interested in the places where users experience pain or frustration. These points of pain represent the areas where your product could make a difference. Once you’ve identified the source of a typical user’s pain, you can design a product that will successfully alleviate it.

The only way to create a reliable representative user journey is by talking to actual users. With all your assumptions set aside, you need to ask users about their experiences. Listen carefully, and make sure you’re taking detailed notes. These are the tidbits of information from which you’ll design a marketable product.

Your interviews with users will only be successful if you ask the right questions. Here are some examples of the types of questions that usually prove fruitful:

• When did you last encounter a problem with this technology?
• Can you describe exactly what happened?
• What attempts have you made to solve the problem?
• What further issues have stemmed from the initial problem?

These questions will compel the customer to provide specific information about their experiences. They’re not leading questions, and the interviewee will give an honest answer that’s free of any influence from the interviewer’s baises.

Leading questions, meanwhile, can prove useless or even harmful to the investigation. Avoid these questions at all costs:

• Would you buy a product with this new feature?
• What is your opinion of this novel idea?
• Would you use something like this?

The problem with these questions is obvious. They represent the product-based approach that we’ve already marked as counterproductive. The interviewees are likely to give you the answer you were craving, which won’t do anything to further your understanding.

Remember, you’re not trying to sell your ideas. Your only goal is to gain an accurate understanding of a typical user journey.

Step 3: Observe and Report

As useful as it is to hear users describe their experiences, it’s even more important actually to observe them in action. Make an effort to watch users as they interact with the technologies in question. The first-hand knowledge you gain will allow you to create a product that’s directly aligned with the challenges users face.

While observing, you should be on the constant lookout for users experiencing points of pain or frustration. Recognize when people are taken out of their activity flow precisely or forced to wait for something that could have happened instantly. Make a note of the minor issues that crop up over the day. Every challenge that presents itself represents a problem your future products could resolve.

This step of the process requires sympathy on the part of the investigator. You need to relate to the emotions of the person feeling the pain or frustration. By identifying with the snags they experience during the user journey, you’ll make it easier to develop products that meet their needs.

While observing, it can be helpful to take detailed notes. You can draw from these reports later when forming a final understanding of the typical user journey. There are three aspects of the journey you should be especially interested in recording:

• Where in the journey the user encounters the pain
• How severe the pain is
• How the user attempts to overcome the pain themselves

By gathering information on these critical aspects of the user journey, you’ll develop products that help. This is vital since valuable products are the only ones that reliably sell.

Step 4: Design Alongside Your Customers

Once you’ve got a complete understanding of the principal problems customers encounter during the user journey, it’s time to start developing a product. Even the development process itself should not happen in an insulated environment. The customers have gotten you this far by providing you with the information you needed. Their feedback will be just as vital during this final stage.

As you consider features and tweak specific components, ask users if they’d likely use the product. This is the stage where the product itself figures into the equation, the part where the product and the customer finally come face to face.

While you should involve customers in the development process, you should never let them design the product for you. The company’s designers are still the ones with the expertise to create something functional and easy to use. You should show prototypes to customers and ask them if the proposed product would solve their problem. You can then fine-tune the prototypes by following their responses.

During this final stage, it’s essential to watch out for false compliments from interviewees. Some people, especially those who are agreeable by nature, might say they like a prototype just for the sake of giving a positive response. This is where social intelligence comes into play. A savvy product manager will parse out the genuine enthusiasm from the false praise.

Once this process is complete, you should have created a product that meets the demands of consumers. This product is much more likely to succeed than one that was made without user input. Thanks to the customer-focused approach you’ve taken, you’ll be able to bring the product to market with confidence and high expectations.

Need to brush up on your product design skills ahead of your PM interview? 

Read PM Exercises’ guide to the top 8 product design questions to help you prepare.

Why Don’t Organizations Use Customer-Driven Product Management?

Despite the obvious advantage of the customer-driven approach, many businesses stick with the product-centric models that are so fatally flawed. Their intransigence is largely due to insecurity. Human foibles keep them from doing what’s truly in their best interest. These are the two main reasons companies forego customer-driven product development.

Reason 1: It Requires Discipline

Creating a product and bringing it to market without customer involvement is easy. The customer-driven approach, on the other hand, requires hard work, meticulous record-keeping, and scrupulous attention to detail. Some businesses simply don’t want to put in the effort.

Reason 2: It Requires Humility

People like to think they’re smarter than everyone else. It feels good to assume you’ve come up with a brilliant idea. It takes a lot more humility to recognize that you’ll never know what people unless you ask them.

Get Started With User-Centric Product Management

A user-centric approach allows you to develop products that provide real solutions to persistent problems. Since they are designed according to customers’ needs, these products generally perform well on the market. In the end, a customer-driven approach brings greater profits while keeping users happy and engaged with your products – a win-win for any PM.

Have any questions or want to learn more about user-centric product management before your big PM interview? Check out PM Exercises’ extensive interview-prep resources, including self-guided interview questions, online courses, and private PM coaching to a community of over 100,000 professionals just like you.