The World Doesn’t Need Another Product

Does the world really need yet another product?

In isolation, I think the answer is… no.

What people really need is a way to solve problems.
People don’t need products, they need solutions to their problems.

When you think of things from that lens, it changes everything.
Because there are multiple ways to solve problems.

Sometimes, solving a problem requires software.
Other times, it requires training.
In some cases, it means hand-holding and offering support.
In other cases, it just means lending an ear.

It’s really important to be clear about the problem that you are solving.

For example, at Fellow, we solve the meeting problem. Organizations spend too much time in too many meetings that don’t deliver value. Ineffective meetings are a massive problem.

Solving complex problems like this require a very holistic approach; it’s not just about building a product.

Solving problems like this is very much a team sport. Marketing and sales educate customers about the problem being solved and Product teams build a product to solve those problems. Customer success is critical because they make sure that customers are able to utilize a product to its full potential. In other words, solving the problem requires the whole organization to work together.

Now, the most important part: the virtuous loop.

The best companies in the world empower their customer success teams to bring insights from their customers to their product teams. Organizations need to make it clear for product teams so they can viscerally feel and understand customer problems. And this channel needs to continuously be nurtured as a company scales and has many more staff involved in the process.

The importance of keeping this channel alive is something I think about all the time. This is easy to do when you are a small startup, because everyone is mostly aware of what goes on in the company and by default everyone is closer to customer problems. But as the company starts growing, more separation starts to happen. Departments start to form, and product teams move further away from the customer.

They may see customer issues as a hindrance to building the product or something that needs to be “dealt with” so they can go back to building the product.

Sometimes, when product teams first see customer requests, they make the mistake of viewing them as issues and complaints. The bugs, deficiencies, wants, and requests can feel overwhelming. But in reality, having access to these communications and hearing customer problems is the biggest blessing for any company. Half of the battle is understanding what problems to solve for customers. These communications should be celebrated.

Sometimes customers don’t need that extra feature. What they really need is for the product to do a more seamless job at what it already does. Sometimes they need more handholding on how to implement the product within their organization or more help understanding why the product offers a better alternative to the status quo. This is why it’s so important to deeply understand customers and their problems.

At Fellow, we encourage everyone to take time out of their week to listen to customer calls and take part in customer support because listening to and participating in these interactions keeps us educated on the customer problems that we are solving.

When organizations focus on solving customer problems, they can be successful at having a real impact on the world. And so it’s critically important to celebrate customers’ willingness to tell businesses about their problems.

Because if customers didn’t have these problems,
then we wouldn’t exist.