You don't have a product

Why Listening to Customer Pain Points Should Drive Product Creation

With every new wave of innovation, we see a hype cycle. This hype brings back the old monster of focusing product development on the addition of features without thinking first in what real value they have. Lots of incipient companies creating software products fall into the trap of building a feature rich Frankenstein they think is going to dazzle and impress but that ends up scaring customers away. While innovation and creativity are important, you need to make sure your product development considers the critical aspect that truly determines a product’s success: someone needs it, wants it, and they are willing to part with their precious money for it. In the B2B world, this is the real measure of a product's value. Products need to address pressing customer pain points to garner tangible commitment from companies to invest in it.

But wait, I really think my Frankenstein is great

Feature-centric development can be alluring. Developers and product managers find themselves captivated by the prospect of implementing the latest technological advancements and trendy functionalities. While such features may be exciting and create initial buzz, they do not necessarily translate into long-term business success. The key issue lies in the disconnect between what developers think is 'cool' and what customers genuinely need.

You may also have initial success. In many instances, companies pour resources into building feature-rich products without a clear understanding of the target market or the specific problems their customers face. This often leads to the creation of products that, despite their technical brilliance, fail to resonate with the intended users and develop long term value. With a lack of substance, your software monster will be short lived, and it may even gather a pitchfork mob when it gets discarded.

So, what would you little maniacs “need” to do first?

Loosely quoting from a eighties classic movie where a pair of teen boys created their “perfect Frankenstein”, focus on listening to customer pain points.

This involves engaging with customers, understanding their challenges, and identifying areas where the product can make a tangible difference. It is only by deeply understanding these pain points that your developers can craft solutions that are not only technically sound but also highly relevant to the customer’s needs.

How?

Make your product team spend time with your customers and have them validate ideas early. If you have a close partnership with one of you customers, you can involve them in your ideation stage. You can use an event to bring your innovative ideas and then listen closely to their feedback. There will be a key moment in these conversations where you will hear how they'd tweak something that you presented to fit a problem they have, or they will plainly tell you this is cool but how about X or Y.

These X and Y are the problems they currently have and, in most cases, the ones they are willing to invest in.

Customer feedback and insights should be the driving force behind product development. By prioritizing features that customers need or cannot live without, you will ensure that the product remains indispensable. And guess what, this approach fosters customer loyalty and drives long-term sustainability for your business.

Go back to the basics and then jump ahead

As you start placing your customer pain points at the forefront of product development, the focus shifts to delivering features that are essential. At this stage, the key is to deliver an MVP that already addresses a key customer problem, collect feedback and then think of how you can take that to the next level. This is the point where you can accelerate your delivery and polish your product addressing more related pain points, improving your UI, or improving your system’s performance. But if you want to take it to the next level, this is the time to make the leap forward. At this stage you can take a step back to look at the future of your product and think of how you could reinvent this to, maybe, eliminate a pain point all together, not just mitigate it or improve it.

You don’t need faster horses

The phrase was attributed to Henry Ford: “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” Although, he may have never said it. It is a good reminder that you need to uncover the real problem behind a customer request.

Some customers may ask you about, for example, creating a single pane of glass for having all the information in one place or having a great dashboard that can be used to make better decisions. But, if you continue to peel the onion of finding the real pain point, it may be, for example, that at the source of the problem, it is those who make the decisions, while co-relating this information, are not being consistent or can only do so much, they are not fast enough. Or they are trying to find a problem that should never have happened in the first place. This is when you can get to the real solution: the one that will help you earn the business long term and also the respect of your customers.

Then, you will have a product.