Product to Product

Good product managers are customer-obsessed. They build products and features that will solve their customers' problems. But Peter Yang from Reddit argues that great product managers focus on how products make customers feel. Dive into this episode with us as Peter teaches us all about the emotional wheel and how PMs can learn a thing or two from gaming.

It's always a good idea to talk to your customers. But Hinge's Chief Product Officer, Michelle Parsons, thinks we're looking for the wrong things in our user interviews. In this episode of Product to Product, Latif and Michelle dissect how a good product sense might actually make you prioritize quantitative data over qualitative data. Michelle brings a wealth of experiences from her time at Netflix, Spotify, and Kayak. You might want to share this episode with your product friends.

Product sense is more than a gut feeling or intuition. Avrum Laurie, VP of Product at Wealthsimple, walks us through a scientific approach to employing product sense predictably and effectively.

Data is important but it's only one piece of the puzzle. Kristin Chen, the CEO of Top.gg, reminds us that data can only show us where a fire is but not what caused it.  In this episode of Product to Product, Kristin guides Latif through her most noteworthy product management experiences from Soundcloud, Pinterest, and Twitch. Now, as she leads Top.gg, you'll learn how she's deploying product sense as a startup CEO.

Don't get too comfy once you've found product-market fit! Our guest today, Ramli John, warns companies that if they don't keep their thumb on the pulse of their customers they could lose their market. On this inaugural episode of Product to Product's season 8, Latif and Ramli dive into what product sense looks like in a number of contexts. Throughout this conversation you'll hear them cover a range of topics; from customer stories to product-led growth.

(Disclaimer: These episodes were recorded prior to the coronavirus outbreak as well as the Black Lives Matter marches.)

For Abhi Bhatt,  Head of Product at Alexa Identity, who’s worked on innovative and category shaping products (like the first generation Motorola Razr phone and North’s AR smart glasses), early adopters and laggard customers give the most insightful feedback. 

He says product teams need to work backwards when building something that hasn’t been done before. You’ll need to figure out the segmentation and what the customer base will look like. Also, find out what these customers care about. Based on the psychographics and demographics, choose a segment that has the most resonance. Ultimately, product teams should be spending a lot of time with their customers, to the point that they become your “partner” in development.

When it comes to customer feedback, Abhi says quantitative data is like looking in the rear-view mirror. It’s already happened! It reflects on how people are behaving in the sandbox you’ve created. On the other hand, qualitative data points to understanding why they are behaving this way and the motivations behind it. This set of data also pressure tests if you’ve built the right thing for customers. Both lenses need to be applied to your product, whether it’s early and innovative or a mature product.

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(Disclaimer: These episodes were recorded prior to the coronavirus outbreak as well as the Black Lives Matter marches.) 

Ditch the MVP, embrace the MLP and listen to your users, says Veronica Hudson, senior PM at Twilio at the time of the interview (She’s now at ActiveCampaign in the senior PM role.). A product can be viable, but are customers going to use it? She says PMs should figure out what the problem you’re solving is and pinpoint who you can solve it most widely for. The goal of an MLP is to be able to release an open beta and not feel like there needs to be a gatekeeper of who can use it, Veronica adds.  

Also in this episode, listen to how Veronica, who originally worked in NYC’s book publishing industry, finds the evolution of female pop stars like Jennifer Lopez and Robyn to be inspirational.

For Veronica, quantitative and qualitative feedback work hand in hand. She suggests PMs spend time with support teams to learn what hacks they’re teaching users and you’ll find underlying customer problems that the data can’t tell you.

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(Disclaimer: These episodes were recorded prior to the coronavirus outbreak.) 

Fire the customer if you need, says Asheesh Birla, Ripple’s SVP of Product, when talking about the importance of customer segmentation. Asheesh says if your company is going after the wrong customer and fixated on why they’re unhappy, it’s time to re-evaluate if they’re a fit for your product. Instead, the winning Venn diagram in his opinion is this: a customer segment whose pain points your product can easily solve.

Also in this episode, find out how early in Asheesh’s career he volunteered to carry luggage on a work trip for Thomson Reuter’s COO (who was 20 levels higher than him on the org chart at that time!) and how he was able to gain a mentor through that.

For Asheesh, product teams who are too tactical in their daily triage miss the forest for the trees. He says you need to understand whether the landscape is changing in a macro way or if a new competitor is coming in. Your product org may be making incremental changes, but startups need to make massive changes to be successful, he adds.

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(Disclaimer: These episodes were recorded prior to the coronavirus outbreak.)

We’re back with another episode of Product to Product, a podcast brought to you by Roadmunk.

In this episode, Christine Yoon, a Product Manager within Hubspot’s Business Enablement team, says having a solid mission is critical to justifying why an idea is prioritized. This mission is what makes it easier to say no to requests that don’t fall directly inline with the goal.

As a PM, Christine likes to start by using customer journey maps to understand the daily friction points that a user will face. With this understanding, she believes it helps product teams gain empathy when making decisions. Her process with feedback and idea management is to analyze the feedback using a product prioritization matrix and then using an additional filter of weighted scorecards to validate the importance with stakeholders. 

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Hey product people, 

(Disclaimer: These episodes were recorded prior to the coronavirus outbreak.)

We’re back with another episode of Product to Product, a podcast brought to you by Roadmunk.

In this episode, Niki Agrawal, a PM at Bumble, says while users influence most of the problems Niki’s team looks to solve, it’s up to the PMs and stakeholders that have influence to determine what will actually be shipped. With Niki’s team, they also take the input from their BI (business intelligence) group that has more insight into user feedback. 

She adds that their product team collects data through monitoring social media and app store reviews as well as outbound user research.

One of the Bumble features Niki helped launch was photo verification, which came from users wanting to make sure they were safe when meeting people from the app. The process of creating the photo verification feature included receiving feedback through user testing.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.