Expanding My Product Manager Toolkit Beyond Software
For a product manager at a technology company, most challenges have the same solution: better software. When I joined Hello Alfred back in late 2017, after more than five years as a product manager at pure-play tech companies, I learned very quickly that software was just one of the tools I would need to build a product that successfully connects the digital and real worlds.
Hello Alfred is a home management platform, led by a team of people (known as “Alfreds”) who visit our clients’ homes every week to take care of a variety of tasks, including grocery shopping, tidying up, and other household to-dos. It’s all supported by a suite of digital products, but it’s a real-world, physical service that takes place inside our clients’ most intimate spaces. I got to see up-close the unique challenges of the product when I spent the day shadowing James, one of our Alfreds in NYC.
It’s important to note here that every new employee at Hello Alfred — at any level within the company — shadows an Alfred as part of their onboarding. It’s especially critical for the team members who design and engineer the software that our Alfreds use everyday. There is no better way for us to learn about our product and deeply understand what makes it unique than to do the job of an Alfred ourselves. As James and I hopped from grocery store to dry cleaner to pharmacy to various clients’ homes, I was eager to find every possible way to improve our software. By the end of the day, I walked away with some humbling conclusions.
1. Some problems shouldn’t be solved with software.
In every home, James left a handwritten note, summarizing what he did and adding personal touches, such as wishing one couple a happy anniversary. This is a clear opportunity where my team could make our Alfreds more efficient by digitally recreating and sending these notes as push notifications. But we’d miss the opportunity to show our clients that Alfreds are human — one of many “features” of our product that are more powerful when left analog.
2. Some problems can’t be solved with software.
During one home visit, James noticed that a client had put the duvet cover on sideways. Assuming they must have been in a rush, he decided to take the extra time to take off the cover and put it on correctly. Nothing in our home visit protocols or the instructions in his app told James to do that. What makes Hello Alfred’s service exceptional is the way it draws on the Alfreds’ judgment and intuition. Software can’t replace that.
3. Many problems can be solved with software.
On our last client visit for the day, James loaded the dishwasher with one of the last dishwasher pods in the box. At the time, the process was for James to message our Ops team, which then notified the client that he was almost out of pods. In the year since, we’ve created software that empowers James to notify the client directly with a recommended action and in-app prompt (e.g., “Do you want to purchase more pods?”). Note though, that it’s still James’ call, but we’ve built the tools to make that call easier and more efficient.
The primary challenge for our team at Hello Alfred is to build technology solutions that support a fundamentally human service. It requires us to deeply understand the tradeoffs between creating tech to leverage human capabilities and overwriting those capabilities entirely. It requires us to improve the product using a variety of tools, in addition to better software. It requires applying traditional product methodologies, like experimentation, to operations outside of the product team. It requires learning to “ship” new workflows and operational processes in the same way that traditional PMs ship new features.
Perhaps most important, I’m still learning each day how to craft a digital product that supports and empowers us to make Hello Alfred a uniquely blended product-service that accomplishes far more than what software alone could do.
Are you a PM, engineer, or designer who’s looking to expand your toolkit? We’d love to hear from you. Take a look at our jobs page, message me on Twitter (@taykcrane), or email me at taylor@helloalfred.com.
