Importance of Customer Surveys

Understanding customer needs and developing a good product which provides value to the customers at the same time is the biggest problem most of the product teams face. Luckily, this is also the most important way for product managers to make a difference :)

As a product manager we are in the center of everything. Some managers say that we are the CEO of the product, but I think it does not cover our role for a product. I prefer to define myself as a bridge between all internal and external stakeholders.

On a typical day we face lots of questions from all stakeholders. While taking these questions we should also transform them into our logic “How to decide which feature will provide higher value, how can we reject this feature requests, which features are more compatible with product vision etc.”. After we understand the problem, we need to be careful about transferring the problem with stakeholders. Yes we know our product, but great knowledge of the product will not provide true implementation at the end of day. We need to know what customers really need, not what they are telling us as a problem.

There is one good thing that we already know about our internal team members and their motivation. Well! Can we say that we know our customers the same way we know our team? Do the customers feel like we know and understand their problems?

For improving our product and implementing new features which provide value to customers there is only one solution, we need to know our customer base better.

Competitor analysis and industry searches can help locate your product in the market, but sometimes you need to dive into the requests coming from customers. The requests can be urgent and blocker for some of the users. To be able to select valuable ones from a long list of requests requires good knowledge. If you are new at the company or product you need to learn some insights from the real source.

Reading documents, searching on the internet, watching training videos will not provide this insight, trust me :)

At one of the companies I worked for, we realized that our customers were not using our product as we expected while checking weekly product metrics. We prepared some action plans to increase usage such as changing the dashboard according to user roles, developing actionable widget etc. but these were all our solutions without knowing the real cause. So we started arranging weekly customer meetings. That was a great chance for me to both understand the problem and the customers’ motivation deeply.

I compiled some of our questions and made it generic so you can apply directly for your product. You can find important headlines and example questions as follows:

1.Learn about your customers typical day at work

Examples:

• What is the biggest problem that you are experiencing at the workplace?
• Can you please list the top 3 challenges you face on a busy day?
• Can you please briefly tell us about a typical workday? When do you start work, stop work?
• How many other products do you use in a day?

2. Try to find pain points you can solve with your product

Examples:

• What do you like and dislike about your work? Can we help you improve it?
• When do you need to use our product? What is a typical process?
• Which days do you need to use our product more? And why?
• Which problems are you facing most that our product can not cover?

3. Ask about their improvement ideas about your product

Examples:

• If‌ ‌you‌ ‌had‌ ‌a‌ ‌magic‌ ‌wand‌ ‌in‌ ‌your‌ ‌hand‌ ‌and you‌ ‌have‌ ‌one‌ ‌chance‌ ‌to‌ ‌add‌ ‌a‌ ‌solution/feature/service‌,‌ ‌what‌ ‌would‌ ‌it‌ ‌be?‌ ‌Please‌ ‌describe‌ ‌it.‌
• Do you find our product easy to use?
• Can you please tell us about the last time you experienced a problem?
• How much does having this problem cost you in time, money, or happiness?

4. Let them explain their product usage flows and habits

Examples:

• Is there any feature, if added to our product, that may increase your usage?
• How much time do you spend on a daily /weekly/monthly basis? / If your usage is less than XXX, please describe the reasoning ie. too busy, the product is not user friendly, etc.
• Can you please tell us two pages that you like most and two pages you dislike most? And why?
• Have you ever incorporated any data provided by our product into your business decision processes? Can you please tell us about the data and how you transformed it into the decision?
• Can you please tell us about your routines on our product? Is there any idea that may make the routine easier and faster for you?

5. Try to learn about competitors

Examples:

• Which other similar products have you tried/used? And can you please compare it with our product?
• What was your experience with other similar products?
• What would a competing product need to offer to make you switch?

The customer survey was an excellent experience for me. I really enjoyed meeting with customers and seeing our product from their perspective. I have established bonds with some customers. Thanks to this, we’ve collected some great improvement requests and feedback from them. In these customer meetings, I realized that we can achieve our goal of being a bridge between internal and external teams with this type of field work.