Aligning Product Development with Customer Needs

The Paradox of Growth: The Bigger You Get, the Less You Know I came across something that stuck with me: When companies scale, they gain users — but lose understanding. Not because they stop caring, but because their customer feedback starts living everywhere — support tickets, sales calls, forums, surveys, social media, and app store reviews. That thought really made me pause. I’ve seen this firsthand. When a company is small, every piece of feedback feels personal — every bug report or review has a face behind it. But as you grow, those voices scatter across platforms and departments. Support sees the frustration, sales hears the hesitation, leadership sees the numbers — and somehow, everyone’s looking at the same customers, but no one’s hearing them anymore. That, in my opinion, is the quiet cost of growth. This is the problem Enterpret is solving — by helping teams stay in tune with their customers even as they scale. Here’s how it works: → It collects real-time customer feedback from 55+ channels — support tickets, sales calls, social media (X, Reddit, Instagram, Facebook), app store reviews, community forums, surveys, Slack, and more. → It analyzes all that feedback using AI and tells you exactly what to fix or build next. → It maps everything through a customer knowledge graph that connects feedback, complaints, and requests by channel, user, and payment data. → It even provides a chat interface where you can directly ask questions, and AI agents that flag bugs or issues automatically. That’s why teams like Notion, Perplexity, Canva, Chipotle, and The Farmer’s Dog use it — to make sure customer voices never get lost in the noise. In my view, the real lesson here isn’t about using more tools — it’s about staying close to the people you build for. Here’s how I’d approach it: ✅ Centralize every piece of feedback — even if it’s messy. ✅ Look for patterns instead of isolated complaints. ✅ Use AI systems like Enterpret to uncover the “why” behind what customers say. Because in the end, growth shouldn’t make you deaf. It should make you listen better — just faster. How does your team make sure you’re hearing what customers really mean, not just what they say? #CustomerFeedback #AIProducts #ProductStrategy #VoiceOfCustomer #Enterpret #Leadership

The PMs who win in the next wave won't be the ones who figured out how to prompt to build. They'll be the ones who figured out how to run 10x the customer learning with the same team. Here's why that matters right now. AI has handed engineering teams a jetpack. Cursor. Codex CLI. Claude Code. The delivery side of product development — build, specify, launch — is being automated at a breathtaking pace. But as Andrew Ng recently pointed out, the real bottleneck today isn't coding. It's discovery. While everyone raced to accelerate shipping, the question mark moved upstream. We now have the ability to build faster than we've ever been able to learn. And building fast on the wrong insight isn't speed — it's just expensive mistakes, sooner. The good news: the same AI revolution is quietly making discovery dramatically more powerful too. A few of the emerging use cases: 1️⃣ Analyzing feedback at scale. What used to require a researcher and two weeks can now be done by a PM in an afternoon — feeding thousands of NPS verbatims, support tickets, or app reviews into an AI and getting back a structured synthesis of themes, patterns, and verbatim quotes. 2️⃣ Automating feedback rivers. Tools like Reforge Insights, Enterpret, and Kraftful now continuously monitor customer feedback across every channel and surface actionable signals without anyone having to manually triage. 3️⃣ AI-moderated user interviews. Platforms like Reforge and Listen Labs are making it possible to run interviews at a scale that was never feasible with human moderators — turning what used to be 10 interviews into 100. 4️⃣ Discovery via prototypes. With vibe-coding tools like Lovable, v0, and Bolt, PMs can now build functional prototypes and gather real behavioral data — heatmaps, drop-offs, in-product surveys — before a single line of production code is written. 5️⃣ Natural language metric analysis. Ask your database a plain-English question, get a chart back. No SQL. No waiting for a data analyst. The feedback loop between a hypothesis and an answer just collapsed from days to minutes. The teams that wire these workflows together won't just be better informed. They'll develop a sharper product intuition — the kind that David Lieb (Founder of Google Photos, Partner at YC) described as "the world's most sophisticated machine learning model ever created." Join me Thursday, March 5th at the Lean Product Meetup with Dan Olsen in Mountain View, CA where I'll be sharing the exact 10 AI discovery workflows I now rely on to help me decide what's worth building faster 👉 https://lnkd.in/gfrJVsd3

Recently, a founder approached me for guidance on his Enterprise SaaS startup aimed at Financial Services. He wanted my feedback on his idea to gauge if it would work for banks and financial institutions. His reasoning? He believed I would have strong insights into the space since I've worked with many banks as my customers. I asked him how long he’d been building the product. He said about a year. Then, I asked him how many banks or NBFCs he had spoken to for feedback. He said he hadn’t approached any yet, as he was still refining the product—relying on feedback from people like me to shape it. Here’s why this approach is broken: 1. Banking is vast. Having banking clients doesn’t mean I understand every nuance of the industry. Banking is so diverse that even lifelong bankers don’t know it all. It’s like assuming an engineer can fix every electronic device at home just because they’re an engineer. Relying solely on someone with indirect experience won’t give you the full picture. 2. The most valuable feedback comes from your end buyer. The person within the bank who ultimately signs the cheque is the one whose opinion matters most. While feedback from industry experts can be insightful, it should only supplement your primary research with potential customers, not replace it. Co-creation with your customers is the best way to ensure that your product aligns with real market needs. Talk to your potential customers directly, show them your product as you build, and keep refining based on their feedback. This approach helps avoid the painful realization, months or years later, that your product doesn’t resonate with the market. The essence of this approach is outlined in "The Lean Startup" by Eric Ries, a must-read for founders looking to build something customers actually want. #startups #business #entrepreneurship

⚖️ My Tuesday truth: Leaders don’t get to avoid hard decisions Recently I found myself in one of those classic leadership tensions. We had a customer who was pushing for accelerated delivery of a feature they believed would unlock huge value for them. It was clear in conversation with them how much it mattered. At the same time, our product team was deep in a roadmap prioritization debate, trying to balance stability, scalability, and the broader market needs. And on our own team, I knew they were stretched, holidays were coming, and morale mattered too. Customer needs Company needs Team needs All important. All urgent. And in that moment, none of them pointed to the same answer. The instinctive move for most leaders is to try to satisfy everyone. Go slower. Gather more data. Avoid the choice. But what I remembered in that conversation is that the only way through tension like that is with perspective, not avoidance. I could not just look at what felt right in a conversation with a passionate customer. I also could not just defer to the product roadmap or shield my team from discomfort. If I was going to lead well, I had to see all sides clearly and make a choice that reflected what was best for the long game, even if it meant short-term frustration on one side or the other. So we chose a path that balanced all three needs as fairly as possible: we committed to an interim solution the customer could use now, and we aligned our internal roadmap with clear criteria that justified where things landed and why. That took honest, candid conversation. It took trust. It took shared perspective. Leaders make hard decisions not by finding the perfect answer, but by seeing the whole field of needs and choosing what aligns with your purpose, values, and long-term outcomes. 🔍 The only way to get that right is by broadening the view versus narrowing it. 🚀 Here are three simple action steps for leaders facing this tension (which I assume is most of us) 1️⃣ Gather the right inputs, not just the loudest ones Talk to customers who feel the impact most deeply. Talk to your team who will execute it. Talk to peers who bring different operating perspectives. 2️⃣ Frame the decision in terms of outcomes, not activities Ask: What does success look like for all three stakeholders? Then evaluate options based on how much each choice advances the meaningful outcomes, not just short-term satisfaction. 3️⃣ Communicate with both clarity and empathy Explain not just the what but the why of the decision. Clarify the rationale and trade-offs. Leaders who explain context build alignment even when the answer isn’t perfect for everyone. 🌟 The best leaders don’t avoid hard decisions. They find the perspective that makes those decisions worthy even when they’re difficult. #Leadership #DecisionMaking #CustomerSuccess #HardChoices #StrategicLeadership #Perspective #Balance #TeamAlignment #CreateTheFuture

Surveys can serve an important purpose. We should use them to fill holes in our understanding of the customer experience or build better models with the customer data we have. As surveys tell you what customers explicitly choose to share, you should not be using them to measure the experience. Surveys are also inherently reactive, surface level, and increasingly ignored by customers who are overwhelmed by feedback requests. This is fact. There’s a different way. Some CX leaders understand that the most critical insights come from sources customers don’t even realize they’re providing from the “exhaust” of every day life with your brand. Real-time digital behavior, social listening, conversational analytics, and predictive modeling deliver insights that surveys alone never will. Voice and sentiment analytics, for example, go beyond simply reading customer comments. They reveal how customers genuinely feel by analyzing tone, frustration, or intent embedded within interactions. Behavioral analytics, meanwhile, uncover friction points by tracking real customer actions across websites or apps, highlighting issues users might never explicitly complain about. Predictive analytics are also becoming essential for modern CX strategies. They anticipate customer needs, allowing businesses to proactively address potential churn, rather than merely reacting after the fact. The capability can also help you maximize revenue in the experiences you are delivering (a use case not discussed often enough). The most forward-looking CX teams today are blending traditional feedback with these deeper, proactive techniques, creating a comprehensive view of their customers. If you’re just beginning to move beyond a survey-only approach, prioritizing these more advanced methods will help ensure your insights are not only deeper but actionable in real time. Surveys aren’t dead (much to my chagrin), but relying solely on them means leaving crucial insights behind. While many enterprises have moved beyond surveys, the majority are still overly reliant on them. And when you get to mid-market or small businesses? The survey slapping gets exponentially worse. Now is the time to start looking beyond the questionnaire and your Likert scales. The email survey is slowly becoming digital dust. And the capabilities to get you there are readily available. How are you evolving your customer listening strategy beyond traditional surveys? #customerexperience #cxstrategy #customerinsights #surveys

Founders, are you building product correctly? As founders, it’s easy to get pulled into thinking about how our products might look in a slick promotional video, imagining all the ways they could "wow" an audience. But here’s the reality: sustainable success is rooted in solving real problems, not just creating marketable moments. A flashy demo might generate short-term buzz, but what keeps users coming back is a product that fits their lworkflows and goals. If we’re building for the customer, our focus has to shift from "How will this feature look?" to "How will this feature help?" Here are a few actionable steps for founders to make sure their product development stays grounded in customer value: 1. Talk to Your Users Regularly: This sounds obvious, but it’s surprising how often it’s overlooked. Get into the habit of scheduling regular conversations with both loyal customers and recent adopters. Ask open-ended questions that let you uncover not just what users want but why they want it. 2. Focus on Solving Pain Points, Not Adding Bells and Whistles: It’s tempting to add features because they seem cool or have a high "wow factor" in demos. But before committing, ask yourself: does this feature directly address a specific pain point? Is it making the product better or just flashier? 3. Design with Iteration in Mind: Building a product isn’t about getting it perfect the first time; it’s about continual improvement. Make sure your team has room to iterate, experiment, and adjust based on feedback—don’t lock them into something just because it looked good in a marketing draft. 4. Measure Success Through Customer Retention, Not Just Acquisition: A flashy feature may attract first-time users, but a product that truly solves problems will keep them coming back. Focus your KPIs and metrics on retention and user satisfaction, not just on the top of the funnel. 5. Think Like Your User, Not Just Like a Founder: It’s easy to fall in love with your own ideas, but users ultimately decide whether your product thrives. Ground yourself in their perspective: what’s essential to them, what frustrates them, and how your product can make a meaningful difference. At the end of the day, the best marketing doesn’t come from a video—it comes from a product that meets needs so well that users feel compelled to share it. Build for impact, not for optics.

One of the most effective ways we've built product ownership and accountability at Human Managed is also the most straightforward: put developers in the room with customers throughout the build lifecycle -- during discovery, POC, and demos. Too often developers get handed requirements, rarely witnessing the impact of what they build. We've been there before. In setups like that, teams optimized for velocity rather than value, decisions got made without real context, and the product was never quite right. When we shifted our engineers to hear the problem firsthand -- to see the friction, feel the moments of customer delight vs. confusion... When they have to answer customers' questions directly... When they experience their demo land (or miss) -- it shifts the mindset from features to outcomes. I shared this in a recent Forbes Technology Council expert panel on developer ownership -- and am glad to see it included among other practical ways to foster a culture of autonomy and accountability. 📸: a snap from a recent customer session -- our dev team, on-site, absorbing user feedback firsthand. 👇 Link to the article in the comments.

Our designer Rishikesh spends an hour every day watching users get stuck. Every morning at 10 AM, he watches session recordings on 4x speed, looking for the moment users pause too long, click the same button twice, or try the same action again. Here’s a tiny example from last week. Users wanted to download their finished deck. But instead of clicking the download button, many of them were typing "download" into the agent. That is a product failure. The user should not have to ask the agent to do something the interface already supports. So Rishi made a small change: when users typed keywords like "download," we automatically surfaced the download button right where they needed it. The result: agent and support requests about downloading dropped to zero. Last month, we caught 14 patterns like this. Most were invisible in our analytics dashboard. This is why we watch users get stuck. Not because we enjoy watching people struggle. Because this is where the roadmap often hides. A support ticket tells you what a user could articulate. A behavior trace tells you what they actually experienced. The best product insights are often not in what customers say they want. They are in what customers keep trying to do despite your product fighting them. Founders/product teams: what is one thing your users keep trying to do that your product keeps fighting them on?

That’s the thing about feedback—you can’t just ask for it once and call it a day. I learned this the hard way. Early on, I’d send out surveys after product launches, thinking I was doing enough. But here’s what happened: responses trickled in, and the insights felt either outdated or too general by the time we acted on them. It hit me: feedback isn’t a one-time event—it’s an ongoing process, and that’s where feedback loops come into play. A feedback loop is a system where you consistently collect, analyze, and act on customer insights. It’s not just about gathering input but creating an ongoing dialogue that shapes your product, service, or messaging architecture in real-time. When done right, feedback loops build emotional resonance with your audience. They show customers you’re not just listening—you’re evolving based on what they need. How can you build effective feedback loops? → Embed feedback opportunities into the customer journey: Don’t wait until the end of a cycle to ask for input. Include feedback points within key moments—like after onboarding, post-purchase, or following customer support interactions. These micro-moments keep the loop alive and relevant. → Leverage multiple channels for input: People share feedback differently. Use a mix of surveys, live chat, community polls, and social media listening to capture diverse perspectives. This enriches your feedback loop with varied insights. → Automate small, actionable nudges: Implement automated follow-ups asking users to rate their experience or suggest improvements. This not only gathers real-time data but also fosters a culture of continuous improvement. But here’s the challenge—feedback loops can easily become overwhelming. When you’re swimming in data, it’s tough to decide what to act on, and there’s always the risk of analysis paralysis. Here’s how you manage it: → Define the building blocks of useful feedback: Prioritize feedback that aligns with your brand’s goals or messaging architecture. Not every suggestion needs action—focus on trends that impact customer experience or growth. → Close the loop publicly: When customers see their input being acted upon, they feel heard. Announce product improvements or service changes driven by customer feedback. It builds trust and strengthens emotional resonance. → Involve your team in the loop: Feedback isn’t just for customer support or marketing—it’s a company-wide asset. Use feedback loops to align cross-functional teams, ensuring insights flow seamlessly between product, marketing, and operations. When feedback becomes a living system, it shifts from being a reactive task to a proactive strategy. It’s not just about gathering opinions—it’s about creating a continuous conversation that shapes your brand in real-time. And as we’ve learned, that’s where real value lies—building something dynamic, adaptive, and truly connected to your audience. #storytelling #marketing #customermarketing

While it can be easily believed that customers are the ultimate experts about their own needs, there are ways to gain insights and knowledge that customers may not be aware of or able to articulate directly. While customers are the ultimate source of truth about their needs, product managers can complement this knowledge by employing a combination of research, data analysis, and empathetic understanding to gain a more comprehensive understanding of customer needs and expectations. The goal is not to know more than customers but to use various tools and methods to gain insights that can lead to building better products and delivering exceptional user experiences. ➡️ User Research: Conducting thorough user research, such as interviews, surveys, and observational studies, can reveal underlying needs and pain points that customers may not have fully recognized or articulated. By learning from many users, we gain holistic insights and deeper insights into their motivations and behaviors. ➡️ Data Analysis: Analyzing user data, including behavioral data and usage patterns, can provide valuable insights into customer preferences and pain points. By identifying trends and patterns in the data, product managers can make informed decisions about what features or improvements are most likely to address customer needs effectively. ➡️ Contextual Inquiry: Observing customers in their real-life environment while using the product can uncover valuable insights into their needs and challenges. Contextual inquiry helps product managers understand the context in which customers use the product and how it fits into their daily lives. ➡️ Competitor Analysis: By studying competitors and their products, product managers can identify gaps in the market and potential unmet needs that customers may not even be aware of. Understanding what competitors offer can inspire product improvements and innovation. ➡️ Surfacing Implicit Needs: Sometimes, customers may not be able to express their needs explicitly, but through careful analysis and empathetic understanding, product managers can infer these implicit needs. This requires the ability to interpret feedback, observe behaviors, and understand the context in which customers use the product. ➡️ Iterative Prototyping and Testing: Continuously iterating and testing product prototypes with users allows product managers to gather feedback and refine the product based on real-world usage. Through this iterative process, product managers can uncover deeper customer needs and iteratively improve the product to meet those needs effectively. ➡️ Expertise in the Domain: Product managers, industry thought leaders, academic researchers, and others with deep domain knowledge and expertise can anticipate customer needs based on industry trends, best practices, and a comprehensive understanding of the market. #productinnovation #discovery #productmanagement #productleadership