1 min 10 sec read |
If there is one grand rule in knowing your customer, it is that you are not your customer.
Yes, some product folks, often with a Founder cap on, have the perspective of guiding a
product through its lifecycle as an end user. One who has the exact problems that the customer needs to solve. So becoming personally, intimately connected to the product you manage isn't only easy, it's inspiring and essential.
Well, what if you really aren't your end user? You don't have the business experience, passion, technical expertise, [insert other blocker] to be able to really use the product you
manage. Sure, you're all about talking to customers, but you haven't gotten your hands dirty.
Don't let it stop you.
Putting yourself in the position of the end user, like the actual position - hands to keyboard, thumbs to screen - gives you insight you can't get from interviews. Open a new account, go through onboarding, (cough) write a newsletter
about something you're passionate about (cough). Go as far as you can.
Then take notes. Notes that don't stay in a notebook, but notes you can talk about, post in a Slack channel, write on a whiteboard, take action on. This is the place that some of the smallest-in-size and quickest-in-impact ideas come from.
Do you dogfood your product? Are there too
many blockers to do it? What have you learned?
Meghan