Human stories over story points

Almost every company has a core value that describes putting the customer first, being customer obsessed, etc. The ability and conviction to truly do this varies drastically from one company to the next, and only becomes harder as more processes inject themselves into how products are built. Suddenly, as a product manager, the percent of your time doing work that is second or third order from the customer increases. You lose sight of what matters, your team becomes more confused, things begin to slow down, and you spend more time talking about story points than the actual people you are building for. It’s painful. But it doesn’t have to be this way.

Throughout my career, over and over again, I have found that there is no substitute to speaking directly with customers. Hearing the pain in their voice, the frustration in their face, and the joy when something solves their problem in an unexpected way. It’s like oxygen for any product team and without it there is a huge struggle. The practical advice I have for product managers thirsty for more customer interactions is…

1. Spend time doing support every month. Spend at least one day per month sitting with your support team actually answering inbound issues. Your support team is your frontline dealing with all of the unexpected, confusing customer experiences and nothing is more humbling than answering questions from frustrated customers. It’s a good forcing function to ground yourself in what actually matters and not getting lost in the latest fancy new feature.
2. Review key moments from CS and sales calls. There’s only so much time in the day and you can’t be on every customer call, but tools exist to help with this. Work with your CS and Sales teams to use software that allows them to easily capture key moments from calls where the customer gives product feedback and expresses deal blockers in their own words. Ideally, review the key themes at least once a week and watch key clips every morning. Even if you only have a team of five having two customer calls each per day, that’s over 50 hours of customer calls every week that are likely filled with gold that you are ignoring today or putting undue pressure on your CS team to summarize and share.
3. Arm your CS team with questions to ask. While sales conversations are more are often more commercially minded, CS calls are more aligned to going deeper on opportunities to improve your product experience. Help them by providing key questions that you want them to ask for each segment and persona. They can essentially become the most effective research team you have because of the trust they’ve built with your customer champions.
4. ‘Customer love’ highlight reels. This one is my favorite. As product managers, we become conditioned to only hear bad news. It can be draining over time, so it’s important to pause and recognize the positive feedback you’re receiving from customers. Often the best product strategy is doubling down on making the things customer love even better instead of the endless journey of fixing functionality gaps. Find a tool that allows you to capture and create a highlight reel of these positive moments from calls and make sure everyone on your product team watches it once a week. There’s no better way to start a Friday morning in my experience!
5. Whenever it’s possible, go visit your customers. We’ve dialed this back since COVID, but there really is nothing better than seeing your customer in-person, in the environment they spend their days. Truly understanding a day in their life and seeing the small role your product plays in that gives you a healthy perspective. Most people don’t want to spend time using products all day, so actually understanding everything about those few moments you have to surprise and delight them is so powerful.