Feature Development for Growth: A Double-Edged Sword
Written by: Sayan Ghosh from Product Engineering
At Circles.Life customers are at the core. We continuously work to create new products and features while improving existing ones, based upon customer feedback. Be it the ease of use, the design, mode of payments, or product delivery everything is up for innovation, change, and disruption. The mission behind every product and feature is “Giving Power Back to the Customer”.
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Customers require comprehensive solutions to their problems. New features and products are results of solving such customer problems, often creating tangible products and services from just an abstract idea. This requires organizations to be bold, creative, entrepreneurial, and agile.
Innovation & Growth
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Innovative solutions to customer’s problems result in “Insanely great” products which in turn result in insane Growth — something without which a business cannot sustain for long. When an organization starts working on creating several “insanely great” products, it has entered the “Growth Phase” of business. The very phase Circles is going through.
As anyone would agree, the development of “Growth” products generally requires significant resources. The demand and market for the product and feature are essential considerations. Delivery and distribution of another. Getting any of these wrong can affect the outcomes greatly and hinder the associated growth of the product — and thus the organization. Also, where new products can cause high spikes of delight for the customers, but if not done right, can cause a lot of confusion and poor experience. Risk is high in the growth phase — new products can be “double-edged swords”.
Take, for example, our Telco Data rollover, Unlimited XP, Multi-SIM, Roam Boosts, IDD Boosts, and Unlimited Data products. We not only needed to have clean execution but had to monitor and tweak the user journey based upon continuous customer feedback we received within a few days of launch. Needless to mention that some products were built within crazy 15 hours end to end. This required fast, efficient and precise ideation, grooming, and execution: the very definition of the growth phase for any organization — or growth as it should be referred to from here on out.
Product Development — the Circles Way
To get product development right in growth: everything takes a back seat in front of customer experience and satisfaction. At Circles, we genuinely believe in giving power back to the customers. While growth (ARPU) is significant for a Digital Telco to sustain in this competitive market, we never have and never will compromise on customer experience. Quality is the most critical aspect of all products, no matter how strict the deadlines.
People at Circles are only able to achieve this because of how all the teams work as one. Everyone contributes ideas to improve products/features, ensuring they are seamless to use. As aligned with our core value to “Be Open-Minded & Respect All views”.
Innovation at every step becomes important as growth features need faster development and execution while meeting all the industry standards & regulations. You need to be Bold. Dare to Innovate.
While we do follow the Sprint planning, development, testing phase and execution processes, we are always on the lookout for launching faster than ever before — without compromising on any of the key aspects. When it comes to growth, the regular script needs not to be followed literally.
Here at Circles, while we celebrate big/small wins at growth, we share equal responsibilities of failure and continuous improvement. We make sure we are humble enough to each & every individual during our journey. Be HUMBLE. Act with Integrity.
While emotions run high on a growth team’s blood, we have to be practical. We have to take risks but calculated. Reduce the risk by having the talent and the experience needed to achieve the growth goals. Every single point of risk needs to be called out and discussed with mentors and the broader team to overcome and mitigate. Everyone has to come together and work more smartly, irrespective of their role. Work Hard. Work Smart. Take Ownership.
For individual team members, growth track not only helps in professional development but also teaches members how to tackle any sort of crisis. You have help, guidance and camaraderie to get you through. Keep on Learning. Keep on Growing
Growing with Crisis
The COVID pandemic was a crisis for Circles as well, as a people and as a company. Without the experience, attitude, guidance, and the support of our Founders and Leadership, our Growth phase might have been in jeopardy. Circles through these unprecedented times only because of all the teams coming together to fight it out; with the core values in mind and customers at heart. The teams did it with the same passion and smile as any time, something our 2020 feature and product list would attest to. Strong businesses and teams survive such times, and Circles has proven to be both strong and robust — with people working on growth playing an important role.
We took on the necessary risks, innovated enough times, with enough agility to keep up with all our targets. Yet we are not done. Keep a lookout for more amazing digital products and features coming your way soon.
About the author: Sayan is one of the Engineering Manager at Circles.Life. He is passionate about new product-feature launches, managing growth, CX, platform & operations for the entire Telco BSS stack. He leads the BSS backend team, closely works with CS, product, data & marketing, and ensures optimal time to market with top product quality.
