Listen to Their Stories, Dig into Their Decisions

Building and marketing a product is a lot like owning a house. Purchasing the home is just the beginning. There will always be lightbulbs to change, grass to mow and taxes to pay. And there will always be strategic improvements that could make your property more appealing to future buyers—from structural things like a new roof to aesthetic fixes like updated hardware.

Likewise, a product’s life cycle requires constant attention and iteration. Your work doesn’t begin and end when customers buy your product. It starts far before that and lasts much longer. For customers to choose your product (and your company) and remain loyal, product managers and product marketers are responsible for the complete product experience (CPE).

I first wrote about this concept in my book Lovability. The core idea behind the CPE is that your product includes every customer touchpoint, even if some of those touchpoints are invisible to them. It encompasses everything from how the product is marketed to interactions with the customer support team, the actual technology, and the internal policies that govern your organization.

The best product teams think about the CPE during every stage of a product’s life cycle. This mindset requires you to consider the pain customers feel before they even start looking for a solution and think about the value they get from your entire organization—not just the product itself—once they choose you. When you’re working in this kind of environment, every decision is evaluated against how it will affect your ability to deliver a CPE.

The two groups most critical to thinking holistically about the customer experience are obvious: product management and product marketing. The product manager is deeply invested in the product life cycle, from setting the strategic vision for what will be built to defining and prioritizing features. The product marketing manager is responsible for communicating the benefits of that product to internal teams and customers, from product training to leading go-to-market efforts. One ensures the product solves a real problem while the other explains why it is better than any other alternative.

So, what is the ideal working relationship between the two roles? How does the CPE fit in? I have seen it firsthand, both earlier in my career and now as co-founder and CEO of Aha!, where we speak with teams daily about product planning, best practices for building roadmaps, and strategies for go-to-market success.

Most companies that get this right do it with a formal product team. This is a cross-functional group that represents the different functional areas you see in “The Complete Product Experience” graphic, excerpted from Lovability. The product manager leads the product team, guiding conversations around the why, when, and what of the product. The product marketing manager has a vital role in guiding the team as well. Together, the two can reorient and rally the organization around an integrated approach to product.

Planning

Goal-first planning ensures that everyone is aligned on delivering a CPE. When everyone in the organization understands what the high-level strategy is, it reduces friction. People can make decisions and evaluate requests more objectively against defined company goals. There is a “true north” for the team, which leads to consistency for customers.

The product manager sets and communicates the strategic vision for the product. Extensive research is conducted before the actual product roadmap can be built—including gathering ideas and input. The product marketing manager uses the product vision to define the go-to-market strategy. This is needed to deliver something new, such as the launch of a product, expansion into a new market or simply introducing enhanced functionality to an existing customer base.

Communication

The product manager leads the product team communication, a cross-functional internal effort. The product marketing manager leads go-to-market and guides ongoing customer communications, coordinating with team members to prepare for the next launch and develop customer-facing marketing activity. There can be a tendency to see this communication as proactive and unidirectional but, really, the product manager and product marketing manager both are product experts and connectors. They are responsible for soliciting and looking for patterns in conversations from teammates who might provide as-yet-untapped opportunities to improve the CPE.

Roadmaps are an important tool in steering those conversations. People understand the greater context for their work when provided with this visual representation of how the product plan will support overall business goals and a timeline for what and when the team delivers. Besides sharing each other’s roadmaps and discussing plans often, product managers and product marketing managers should create a shared calendar or Gantt view to quickly see how changes might affect the overall organization’s ability to sustain the CPE throughout the product life cycle.

Feedback

The product manager focuses on what users want to achieve when using the product. The product marketing manager homes in on what people (both external and internal to the company) need to understand about the product before customers make a purchase and while they’re using it.

The product manager captures feedback from executives, teammates, partners, and customers, then incorporates it into future releases. The product marketing manager may look for insights from prospective customers and current users through educational efforts—for example, product demos to internal teams and presentations to customers. Product marketing managers often are at the front of the effort to capture customer success stories as well. Product management and product marketing should share their learnings with each other so they can continuously improve what is being delivered.

A Strong Foundation Is Key

The importance of a strong product team cannot be stressed enough. Thinking holistically about your product and the entire customer experience is how you create lasting value for your customers and your business. If your organization is not taking this approach, make it a priority to collaborate closely on strategy, plans and timing. Regular meetings and open communication channels between product management and product marketing are key to delivering a winning CPE. Push yourself to move beyond focusing on the technical bits of features and design to cultivate a long-term, mutually beneficial relationship—one in which your customers love every interaction with your product and your company.

Learn More

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Lovability shares what Aha! co-founder and CEO Brian de Haaff knows from a career of founding successful technology companies and creating award-winning products: Love is the surprising emotion that product builders cannot afford to ignore. The national bestselling book also reveals the secret behind the phenomenal growth of Aha! and the engine that powers customer love—a set of principles named The Responsive Method.

The following is a preview of Lovability, made available exclusively to Pragmatic Marketer readers.

Redefining Product

In the era when digital, app-based, cloud-based, and internet-based products dominate the marketplace, lots of companies are giving into the temptation to turn the customer experience over to technology. On the surface, this makes sense because it limits “costly” person-to-person interactions. That is a grave mistake. Customers want human interaction, and increasingly, they are making it a deal-breaker.

A 2016 Accenture Strategy report, “Digital Disconnect in Customer Engagement,” found that 83 percent of U.S. consumers prefer dealing with human beings over digital tools to solve customer-service issues. Twenty-three percent have left a service provider in the past year due to poor customer service, at an estimated cost of $1.6 trillion. Not enough attention is being paid to managing all customer touchpoints.

In any business, but especially in technology, your product is not just the software or hardware that you ship or the basic service that you provide. It is not just the bits or even the tangible item that the clerk hands over the counter or that arrives at the customer’s home. The product is the complete experience and the relationship you and the customer share. That creates loyalty, trust, and love. That is your product. That is the Complete Product Experience (CPE).

It is time that we redefined what we mean when we talk about product. From the point of view of the executive, marketer or product manager, there are two versions of the word.

• Product: What the customer thinks they are paying for.
• CPE: The totality of what the customer really values and is expecting from a product over the long term.

Today’s customer expects every touchpoint with the technology and the company that sells it to be a meaningful one that creates value. The software-as-a-service (SaaS) world offers a perfect example: software delivered via the cloud, as SaaS is not purchased but rented. Customers pay for it a month or a year at a time. If you understand that, you are more likely to think about delivering it like an ongoing service instead of a one-time sale. Remember, the last S in SaaS stands for service.

In that world, you do not just make a sale and walk away any more than you would if you rented a house to someone. You form a relationship with the user of your service. If you want to create lasting value for that customer—and lasting value for your business—you must maintain a mutually beneficial relationship. That takes personal contact, responsiveness, and attention to every stage of the CPE.

Building on Love

From the beginning, we wanted to build Aha! according to our own values. The home-run approach frequently leads to businesses that are miserable places for customers and employees alike. Obsessed with building valuation and pursuing the next round of funding, founders often delay focusing on the CPE, building customer value, or helping employees grow. Worse, by the time their ideas flourish and create value, founding team members own little or none of the company they started and have been replaced or moved on to pursue other opportunities.

We wanted to build something that real people with real needs would find value in and pay for. That was why we self-funded the company and never offered the service for free. Our only goal was to turn our vision into value for our customers, ourselves, and eventually, for any employees we hired. Company valuation was not even part of our vocabulary.

That focus paid off fast. Through experience, customer devotion, hard work, and some good fortune, we built a product that customers really wanted. And after a few months, we noticed a pattern. Again and again, customers were using the word love to describe both our product and their experience when they needed help from us. Something extraordinary was happening—we were touching people, not just professionally but personally, inspiring an intense passion and loyalty that we had not expected. We named that quality lovability.

When we look back—not only at Aha! but at dozens of other business success stories—it is obvious that lovability is the only metric of success that really matters. If your customers love you, they will not only remain fiercely loyal but also will become your most powerful marketing asset. Lovability is the greatest predictor of business success. So, what is lovability?

Lovability is an inspirational state in which your CPE exceeds expectations to such an extent that your customers feel deep affection for what you provide them and actively work to contribute to your long-term success.

Lovability restores the customer to their proper place in the business hierarchy as the reason we are in business. It is the most important organizational metric because customer love runs downstream to create loyalty, retention, profitability, and growth. Setting your target on lovability also simplifies decision-making. When faced with a choice, you simply ask, “Does this make our product and company more lovable?” If it does, proceed. If not, think twice.

Lovability From the Ground Up

There is no magic to lovability. Anyone with the right mindset can build a lovable product. But building it requires the basic skills, the intrinsic motivation, and a purpose beyond mere growth.

Stay curious. To get to genuine lovability, keep digging and understand your customers’ real needs and motivations. You must get not just what they’re trying to do but the motivations behind their actions, and that means finding joy and meaning in helping them. It means loving them back.

Start with utility, especially when your potential customer has a lot of pain or frustration. It does not matter how much fun your product is to use if it doesn’t solve a problem and is not reliable. Aim for hope, satisfaction, care, confidence, and trust. To have a chance to build something extraordinary, you must at least step to The Lovability Line.

The Lovability Line is the point where customers start judging your company less on rational criteria and more on emotional ones. From here on, they become more emotionally invested in what you do and how you do it. It is up to you to sustain that love by adhering to your values and continuing to deliver an extraordinary CPE.

That leads us to the Law of Lovability: The more building blocks of lovability your product delivers, the greater the odds that your customers will find it lovable.

If a company consistently experiences eight to 10 of the building blocks, you are earning intense customer love and loyalty. Think Apple, Minecraft, REI, Southwest Airlines, and Tesla—brands with passionate, lifelong customers. Companies with five to seven building blocks can be loved, but the emotions will be volatile and changeable. This group includes companies like Facebook, Google, Salesforce, Slack, and Zillow. With fewer than five building blocks, lovability is impossible.

No matter where your organization is on the scale, lovability is neither static nor guaranteed. It takes purpose, commitment, and works to keep delivering a CPE and sustain that love. When you have it, you have earned it.

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“What is most important to you?” This was the subject line of an email I recently received from an account manager at a financial management software vendor. Inside the email was a list of 10 potential features. My instructions were to highlight the feature enhancement that I deemed most important and send back my reply. There was only one thing wrong with this approach and it irked me.

We rely on this product every day—it is important to our business. So of course our team had told the account manager (many times over the past six months) about the one major improvement that we would really benefit from.

And yet there I was with a mass email full of ideas. I dutifully highlighted the most important enhancement and sent back my reply. Even though it was frustrating, I understood why the software vendor was trying to gather customer feedback—to help with 2018 planning.

It was not all bad though. The experience also drove me to write this article on what I consider to be best practices for gathering customer feedback. I immediately took note of several issues that the email revealed.

The product team was clearly not soliciting feedback from customer-facing team members (such as the account manager) on an ongoing basis. This was also a one-off email request, which meant that gathering product feedback was seen as an isolated event as they headed into 2018 product planning. No wonder the product was evolving at a slothful pace.

Gathering customer feedback should be a constant. We took this into consideration when we built Aha! (which, as you probably know, is product roadmapping software). And we use our own product to capture customer ideas and manage them as well. We continuously review customer input. Every week our product team reviews dozens of new ideas and feedback submitted to our “ideas portal” at https://big.ideas.aha.io/.

We review everything that is submitted and do our best to respond to as many ideas as possible. Some are promoted to our roadmap and others are not. Many receive a reply if the functionality or a work-around already exists, and all ideas are categorized and updated to reflect their status. This is an integrated approach—idea management is woven into our product roadmapping process.

But I know that not all companies approach gathering feedback in this way. Most do not have a unified way to capture customer requests in the first place. Others simply do not have a clear product strategy, so there is no clarity around which ideas matter most. It is hard to evaluate ideas when you do not know where you are headed.

You may work at a company like this. But even if yours does not make continuous customer feedback a priority, you can lead the way in 2018.

Here are five best practices for gathering product feedback:

Make It Easy to Give
As I mentioned, our product management software has idea management built in. So we use our own ideas portal for this. It is easy for customers to share feedback online whenever it comes to mind. But your company might not be using product management software yet. If not, choose a consistent method for gathering feedback that works for your team—tagged support tickets and satisfaction surveys are common options.

Then, you must make the agreed-upon method known across your company. When folks inevitably circumvent the process by sending direct notes or verbally sharing, gently steer them back to ensure consistency. A consistent process is also helpful for when you want to create reports that show trends around functionality requests.

Evaluate Objectively
You need to establish the objective metrics you will use for reviewing ideas and communicate those metrics to everyone involved (sales, engineering, etc.). This allows you to speak the same language when it comes to evaluating ideas and saying no. You can use scoring with custom metrics or a “jobs to be done” framework that links to your customer personas and strategic product initiatives for the next quarter.

You will also want to set status categories that you will use to organize feedback so there is no confusion about next steps. We use clear and actionable statuses such as “under consideration,” “unlikely to implement,” “likely to implement,” “planned” and “already exists.”

Set a Response Goal
We having a saying at Aha!: “Why wait?” Responsiveness is part of our culture and I believe all companies can benefit from responding to requests quickly. After all, delaying will not make those requests go away and you cannot afford to keep revisiting the same issues. You need to quickly analyze feedback and ideas as they come in and allow your goal-first strategy to guide you in making decisions around what to pursue.

This urgency helps us deliver product enhancements each week that make our customers happy. It also guides our “zero unreviewed ideas” policy. We try to review and process customer feedback within eight hours of receiving. That is our goal for being responsive. Set your own and, just like the preferred method for sharing, communicate the goal for response time to the entire team.

Ask, Ask, Ask
You cannot build a great product if you do not talk to users. The good news is that people usually want to tell you what would make the product better. At Aha!, we talk to customers all day long, on live product demos and with our ultra-responsive customer success team (all former product managers), who engage with customers one-on-one. We encourage our team to show curiosity to uncover the “why” behind the feedback: Ask, ask, ask.

If there is not a way for you to directly contact your users, create opportunities to do so through teams who interact with customers every day. Set up recurring meetings and encourage those teams to share feedback on behalf of customers using the method you have settled on.

Include Leaders Too
Communicating with customers to understand their needs is not solely product management’s realm. Everyone in the organization needs to be listening. This means company leaders should be involved in customer conversations too. Identify customers with relevant use cases or who represent your core user base (or markets you wish to grow into) to make the best use of their time.

Find opportunities to include leaders in relevant conversations. In the last few days, I met with several customers, including one of the world’s largest financial software providers and a major healthcare company. I worked to better understand how they were using Aha! and what they wanted to see us add to the product next.

There is no need to wait—you can get started today. It may not be easy at first, especially if you are working within a loosely defined strategy or slogging through layers of internal dysfunction.

If you want to build something that truly matters and makes a difference to your customers, then you cannot afford to leave gathering feedback to an annual mass email. It is not easy for busy product teams to prioritize gathering customer feedback and prioritizing the ideas quickly. But I believe that it is essential to create long-term customer delight and a winning position in the market.

How do you approach gathering customer feedback?

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What does a VP of Product do, what are they responsible for and how is success measured? Brian de Haaff, CEO and co-founder of Aha! talks about it and discusses how to be a successful product leader.

I get a lot of emails every day. Some are from job candidates. Many are from customers. There is also plenty of junk as well.  So when I get a thoughtful question from a friend, it stands out. The other day, I received just such an email. A friend working at an emerging B2B software company emailed me for some advice. He asked, “What do you recommend I do to become Vice President of Product?”

I took a few moments to consider the question before I responded, because each company has its own approach to building products. As the CEO and co-founder of Aha!, a roadmapping software for product managers, I have an opportunity to interact with a wide swath of organizations. In the past three years, I’ve spoken to more than 100 VPs and at least 1,000 companies about product management. Some are more sales-driven and others are technically oriented. No two companies are the same. But I’ve found a few commonalities that transcend specifics of industry or place.

All product leaders start out optimistically believing that they can make their product and team great. Although they are expected to make the right strategic decisions, most do not have enough time in the day to accomplish everything they need to do. But the most successful people have a clear vision of where their product is headed and allow customers to help shape how they get there. These successful leaders have a plan based on clear goals and work on what creates the most value. They are not afraid to gently ignore the rest. In many companies, that person is the VP of Product.

In the end, my friend’s question was deceptively simple. Knowing that I could not possibly zero in on exactly what he needed to do at his company, I decided to think about what a VP of Product really does.

What is a VP of Product Responsible for?

Exactly what does a VP of Product do? What would the first 90 days on the job look like and how is success defined?

One way to answer that is to look at the various responsibilities that fall under the VP of Product job description. These responsibilities tend to be the same no matter what type of company it is or what type of product you’re producing.

Represent the Customer

The VP of Product brings the customer into the organization. It is not enough for the team to prioritize the features needed to make the customer happy; the VP of product must consider the complete product experience. That means considering the customer at every stage of product development.

Set Product Strategy

It is the VP’s job to ensure that the entire company understands the vision and direction for the product. Yes, this is a shared responsibility with the CEO and other executives, but the VP of product has a unique responsibility to communicate and reinforce that strategy across teams.

They need to run sessions with the product team and customer-facing teams, as well as sales, support and the executives. But it is not enough to set up meetings and sit back. They need to truly understand what each party is hearing and thinking, and then bake those learnings into their strategy.

Success comes when they can improve plans based on what they learn and create internal alignment and excitement. I know this because I did it while working at one of the largest tech companies in the world. I spent a lot of time (more than I would have liked, actually) meeting with every group that had a major stake in the direction of the product portfolio. At these meetings I asked about their aspirations for the product and spent time explaining the strategic alternatives that we had to choose from. These meetings helped refine the roadmap and led to an important acquisition to expand the types of customers that we could serve.

Ask Hard Questions

Building a great product is not a popularity contest. You have to ask the tough questions that nobody else wants to ask. A great Vice President of Product keeps the customer in mind while questioning how planned work relates to the product’s purpose and goals. When the rest of the team is doing the work, it is the VP’s job to ask, “Are we building what matters?”

The exact question will be more nuanced and likely quite a bit longer. For example, at the large tech company above I asked, “Why are we focused on rolling this new product out to the entire sales team when we have not proven we can sell it with a smaller expert team first?” A bit longer, yes. But the essence is the same.

Bring the Company Together

Great products are the result of a team effort. That is why the VP of Product acts as a cross-functional leader, bringing the organization together to meet business goals. A good VP helps their team understand why they need to work across the business to make the product—and, ultimately, the customer experience—better. But what does that look like?

Well, it’s important that this person is one of the company’s best storytellers. You heard that right—the VP of Product needs to be able to spin a yarn. I held annual sales kickoff events and put energy into media and analyst outreach. I knew that a compelling narrative would energize the team, giving them something to rally around when things got challenging. The resulting interviews and articles got internal teams excited and gave them something to share with customers.

See the Future

There is no such thing as a crystal ball, and the VPs of Product have the experience (and the scars) to prove it. However, they can draw on a deep knowledge of their product and the industry to predict the future. It’s their responsibility to set the product and the company on a course to stay relevant and valuable.

The ability to look ahead pays dividends. Truly seeing the future leads to key investment decisions, including which products to mothball and which businesses to partner with or acquire. The idea of doubling down on experience and product knowledge might steer some people toward a myopic worldview. But the best VPs, the ones who always seem to be one step ahead, have an insatiable curiosity. They read a lot, listen more than they speak, engage in activities outside of their industry, and draw on all of that information for insights and predictive decision-making.

So what’s the verdict, how do you become a VP of Product?

So, what did I tell my friend—the one whose email prompted all of this? When I finally replied, I outlined these core responsibilities. First, I explained that there is no single path to becoming a VP of Product and that the day-to-day work will vary depending on the company. I also noted that the role  requires immense fortitude—but that the rewards far outweigh the hard days in between. I also encouraged him to start building these skills now in his work in product management.

You may not have a VP of Product within your organization, but you probably have someone who does this kind of work. Whatever you call this person at your company, we all know that a big title comes with big responsibility. And that responsibility can topple a product when it is not taken seriously. If you love product management, the role of VP of Product is an exciting challenge—one that allows you to shape not only your product, but your entire company.

VP of Product Resources

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