How to Listen to Your Customers Without Giving Away Control

For many Product Owners and Managers, there’s an important choice that must be made:

Do we listen to our customers or do we keep control of where the product goes?

This choice is a false one, as it relies on an assumption that is simply not true.

The reason Product people see this as a choice that must be made is because they believe that listening to customers means giving away control of the product.

Fortunately, that’s not the case at all. You can listen to your customers AND retain control of your product with a few simple tweaks to your current feedback process.

1. Create a Product Feedback Policy

A Product Feedback Policy (PFP) is a simple document that helps to set expectations from day one. The PFP sets out your feedback process so that customers who provide you with feedback understand how it will be used.

The important part for the context of this article, however, is that it explains that sometimes you’re going to say ‘no’ to your customers’ requests. If your customers can easily access your PFP, then you can safely assume they’ve read it, and even if they haven’t you’ve done all you can to set expectations.

When the time comes that you have to turn down a request, your customer won’t be as angry because you warned them up front that you may say no.

If you don’t yet have a PFP, then I recommend writing one. It doesn’t take long at all and is an invaluable document to have at your disposal.

You can find a template and example here.

2. Balance Strategy and Demand

Essentially, most product decisions come down to strategy or demand — either your product strategy tells you what to work on, or your users do.

But you don’t have to choose one or the other and then just stick to that choice. You can, and should, attempt to balance both sides of the equation.

For example, let’s imagine that your strategy tells you that you should be working on improving your UX for the next few months. Now, you might already have an idea of what you need to do to improve your UX and so you could simply knuckle down and get on with it.

However, your users probably know what they want from the UX more than you do. So an alternative would be to go and collect some extra feedback specifically about the UX improvements. This way you can be sure you’re building the right thing, but still end up building the improvements you originally wanted to make.

This kind of compromise enables you to listen to your customers and still keep control of the direction you take your product in.

3. Say ‘No’

Listening to your customers simply means paying attention to what they have to say. It doesn’t mean agreeing to build every single thing they ask for.

A lot of SaaS companies find it difficult to say ‘no’ to their customers. They don’t want to upset or anger them, they don’t want to seem like they aren’t really paying attention.

This can often result in companies choosing to ignore feedback altogether. They bury their heads in the sand and hope it goes away.

Actually, though, saying ‘no’ isn’t really that difficult, especially if you’ve set expectations with your PFP.

The key to saying ‘no’ to your customers is to be upfront and honest with them. If you simply say ‘no’ and leave it at that, then yeah, they probably will get pretty angry. If, however, you explain why you aren’t building what they want, then at least they have a reason. Even the most demanding customers would find it hard to stay angry with you.

Plus, make it clear that when you say ‘no’ you might be meaning ‘not right now’. If you think that their idea is something you might return back to, then explaining that can go a long way to helping foster understanding and acceptance.

Conclusions

You don’t have to choose between listening to your customers and retaining control of your product. It’s possible to do both of those things at once.

There are three main steps you can introduce into your existing feedback process to ensure that you take your customers’ feedback on board while simultaneously deciding which direction you take your product.

You need to set expectations with a PFP so that customers understand the process. You need to use your product strategy to decide on direction, but also use feedback to enhance what you’re planning to build next. And finally, you need to learn how to say ‘no’, by being open and transparent when you communicate with customers.

Doing all of the above will enable you to make the product decisions you want to make plus provide you with the useful insights that come from customer feedback.

It’s a win-win.

Receptive helps you to balance customer demand with your product strategy. Why not get started today?