The Unsung Heroes of Product Strategy: Customer Support Teams
Customer support is often the first point of contact when issues arise, providing a unique perspective on a product’s real-world performance. While product managers rely on various sources of evidence, such as analytics and market research, customer support offers insights that even customer interviews cannot provide. Support teams witness genuine customer reactions during critical moments, understand the urgency behind specific requests, and grasp customers’ intentions in these scenarios.
Why Customer Support Should Influence Your Product Strategy
In my experience, feedback from customer support has significantly influenced strategy and direction. For instance, while leading a product team for an applicant tracking system, insights from customer support revealed that the feature’s onboarding process was intricate, leading users to require guidance on calendar integration and sending invites to multiple candidates. This revelation reshaped our understanding of the module, prompting us to reallocate resources to improve the user experience.
The Insights Customer Support Can Provide to Product Managers
Customer support can provide valuable insights into:
- Frequently occurring bugs
- Suboptimal user experience
- Gaps in product understanding
- Business-specific use cases
- Wish lists and feature requests
- Potential reasons for churning
- Usage trends
- Feedback on pricing
How Customer Support Insights Differ Between B2B and B2C
The insights gathered from customer support can vary significantly depending on whether a product adheres to a B2B or B2C model. B2C products often interact with a vast number of end-users, allowing support teams to discern wide-ranging trends and patterns related to user problems, preferences, and behaviors. In contrast, B2B products typically communicate with a single representative from the customer organization, which can lead to some details being overlooked or lost.
Why Customer Support is Instrumental in Product Strategy
When devising a product strategy, product managers strive to align customer needs with business objectives. Customer support insights can influence acquisition, retention, and expansion strategies. For instance, Calendly’s support team might identify businesses expressing interest in lead routing rules for their sales teams, which could inform product managers and marketers to tailor their strategies to target this specific audience segment.
How to Integrate Customer Support into Product Strategy
To integrate customer support insights into product strategy, product managers must learn how to prepare, organize, and distill these learnings. This involves:
- Listing out broad themes to explore
- Gathering insights across multiple support channels
- Interviewing customer support
- Consolidating issues in a Google sheet
- Categorizing feedback based on initial themes
- Analyzing compiled customer support insights
Pitfalls and Traps to Avoid
When engaging with customer support, it’s essential to remember that you’re aiming to address overarching challenges faced by your customer base, rather than individual tickets. Some guidelines to keep in mind include:
- Avoid overreacting to isolated feedback
- Recognize that customer emotions can amplify perceived problems
- Filter feedback from non-ideal customers
- Prioritize feedback in line with your vision
- Be mindful of translation bias
By leveraging customer support insights, product managers can create a more attuned ear to the voice of the customer, ensuring their strategies are anchored in real-world issues rather than hypothetical scenarios.