Use customer obsession to debug your Product...

Here is a quickie...

Remember — Customers are always right (CAAR) as I will keep coming back to this.

We use customer obsession/centricity/awareness when it comes to new prod development or enhancement in the existing ones.

But here is a tip that has saved my life more often than I give it credit for.

Use the same approach to debug any issues with the system, whether it is user churn, low engagement, or just not hitting the targets.

Broadly speaking there can be only 2 factors that can make or break any system, internal or external.

Internal for me are — System Issues (Bugs, unavailability, bad onboarding, clunky UI )

External — Market forces, Economy, Public Sentiment, etc.

For this article, I just want to focus on a use case, where you have seen a major churn or low engagement from users. and also will play a bit of analyst answering some questions to keep the flow going.

Framework -

Keeping CAAR in mind, let's start if there is any issue with our own system.

Always start with internal metrics, system performance, system logs, error logs, and then go to external.

Start with what you can control.

Here is how it may play out in real life.

1. Hey John (analyst) have you been able to check which technology we are experiencing the churn in? — Hey Umang, yes it is in Android App.
2. Umang — Is it an isolated event? or a gradual decline? John — It's not isolated and it has happened earlier as well
3. Umang — can you please check the occurrences earlier? and see if there is a pattern to it? John — well yeah, there is a pattern, it always seems to happen the night of our sprint deployment.
4. Umang — Also, can you please also check if there are any paths where this churn is being detected? John — sure. Umang — I will speak to the tech team till that time.
5. Umang — Hey Gavin (tech head), can you see if there is an exception or any error that we have been introducing with every deployment? Gavin — let me check, well yes there is this automation test that keeps on failing, but we have set it to low priority and hence is not a deployment blocker.
6. Umang — let's speak to our QA — Britt, Hey Britt can you please put a light on this test? Britt- Yes this is a null screen on onboarding.
7. Umang — When does it appear? Britt — When you log back in after the 2FA.
8. Umang — John does our data correlate to the bug reproduction scenario? Umang — sure it does?
9. Well, then we know what is the reason.