Suresh Kannan is Model N’s Chief Product Officer. He has over 25 years of experience in product development and management.
Leaders pour their hearts and souls into building companies that solve real-world problems, but sometimes, acute focus on growth and innovation cause executives to lose sight of their original goal: helping customers. Customers drive business—they must be at the center of every strategic decision. Even the most groundbreaking products fall flat if they don’t align with customer needs at the appropriate time.
According to McKinsey, companies that embrace customer experience-led growth drive revenue. The organization has observed that businesses that improve customer satisfaction by 20% boost cross-sell rates by 15%-20% and share-of-wallet by 5%-10%. A key component of experience-led growth is customer-driven innovation.
Product teams can’t just create what they think customers want. They need actual customer input. To gain this critical insight, leaders must engage with users to shape a product that solves real market needs. Nearly 90% of businesses believe having a complete view of their customers across channels and platforms is important, but only 31% have achieved this goal.
Creating multiple touchpoints allows companies to gather direct feedback to guide product development. In my career, I have seen firsthand the benefits of this strategy. Consider the following engagement opportunities you can leverage to enhance your products and improve customer satisfaction.
Customer Advisory Board
Customer advisory boards provide a formal platform to engage with senior decision-makers from your customer base directly. My team brings together about a dozen executives twice a year to discuss our multi-year strategic plan. These meetings help us answer critical questions, including:
- What issues are top of mind for these executives and decision-makers?
- Does our roadmap align with the real-world priorities of the market?
- How can we adjust our product strategy to better address customer challenges?
This insight can help inform investment priorities both short and long term.
Strategic Business Reviews
Including customers in strategic business reviews can give you perspective on their strategic goals. My team conducts quarterly on-site workshops with individual accounts. Through face-to-face discussions and collaborative workshops, you can gain a more comprehensive understanding of customers’ unique requirements and pain points, helping you align your offerings with their needs in real time.
Product User Groups
Executive guidance only tells a part of the story. Product developers need the perspective of everyday users to understand specific, real-world use cases. User advisory groups allow you to gather feedback, discuss pain points and collaboratively explore potential solutions. These regular touchpoints can translate to product innovations that solve customers’ most pressing needs and deliver a better user experience.
Innovation Partner Program
Engaging customers early in the development cycle allows you to leverage industry users’ expertise and stress-test new features. My company’s innovation partner program works with a handful of early adopters before beginning code development for any project.
In a program like this, real users should test all products for real-world business use cases and scenarios. These partnerships give customers direct influence on critical use cases and product capabilities, resulting in market-ready products.
Customer Consortiums
Our customers create industry consortiums to collect and collate feedback on what the company should focus on. My company hosts the consortiums’ discussions at regular intervals, listens to the input and earnestly works to address suggestions in our product updates. This approach has delivered beneficial outcomes and engendered positive reactions from participants.
Achieving this collaboration requires engaging consortium leaders to discuss how your company can facilitate and support the group, such as providing opportunities to convene at conferences or in online communities, and establishing a formal feedback loop. Keep in mind that this is your customers’ consortium, not your company’s. Have an open mind and listen intently to their input so you can be a better partner.
Organic Engagement
Customer conversations don’t always need to be formal events. While product-focused interviews are helpful, everyday activities and interactions can also provide critical feedback. Analyze customer service support tickets and sales conversations for common themes. Evaluate platform data to understand how customers use the product in daily operations. This information can uncover topics that might not emerge in scheduled discussions.
My product managers hold monthly open forums where customers can ask questions, learn about ongoing work and discuss specific tickets or issues. We gather themes from these events to explore more deeply.
Collating information from all of these touchpoints can provide a comprehensive look at what customers need. When you can fulfill their specific requests, customers feel heard, understood and valued.
Building Relationships
These engagement initiatives drive product innovation and build stronger customer and user relationships. Providing multiple channels for feedback can encourage open communication, create transparency and reinforce your dedication to your partners. Through well-rounded input, you can stay abreast of current industry conditions, emerging issues and evolving needs that can help deliver a transformative product that exceeds expectations.
Customers are an organization’s lifeblood, so let them lead you. Embracing customer-driven innovation can strengthen loyalty and empower you to anticipate and respond to market shifts, giving your company a competitive advantage and bolstering long-term success.
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Suresh Kannan is Model N’s Chief Product Officer. He has over 25 years of experience in product development and management. Read Suresh Kannan’s full executive profile here.
This article was originally published on Forbes Technology Council.
