How a Customer-Centric Organization Works with Product to Influence Roadmap

Transcription

1 How a Customer-Centric Organization Works with Product to Influence Roadmap MEGAN EDWARDS Quantcast MARA LAM Box GAURAV KOTAK Gainsight JEFF COLEMAN SurveyMonkey

2 Meet Your Panelists LILA MEYER Gainsight MEGAN EDWARDS Quantcast GAURAV KOTAK Gainsight JEFF COLEMAN SurveyMonkey MARA LAM Box

3 Mara vs. Dan Sumo Match!

4 Topics Methods to gather customer product feedback at scale How CS team can make the case for specific enhancements Methods to help PMs get to know customer use cases and needs When to involve PM in customer conversations

5 #1: What method works well to gather customer product feedback at scale?

6 Surveys (of course!) Periodic relationship surveys Check for feature awareness Use open text frequency analysis Connect back to usage data and health to prioritize follow up and deeper insight Unaided Awareness Transactional surveys After a feature is used After a support ticket is closed Use a different survey for users where you think there s likely higher feedback value so you can prioritize your resources Aided Awareness

7 Customer Insights Research Team State of the Market Research Brand Awareness, Market Segmentation & Pricing State of Customer Research Measuring Customer Loyalty, Customer Satisfaction & Informing Product Development NPS Follow Up Interviews Custom Research for Product Scoping: understanding customer needs, defining their requirements for product & usability research Cancellation Interviews Presents data back to Product Team & Individual PMs

8 Customer Community Feedback and Support at Scale Collect - Both customers and internal employees post on community. Seed topics before launch Recognize active customers Collate Community requests linked with JIRA tickets in Gainsight Communicate PMs, community manager transparent on community what, when, why Now looking for full-time community manager to scale Monitor response times and self-help rate

9 The Role CSMs Play CS <3 Product Qualification Discovery, discovery, discovery How, what, when, where, why? Submission Requests are entered into a streamlined submission process that is the single source of truth for customer product feedback Process allows for company wide visibility and engagement Action Ensure closure of the feedback loop with internal teams and customer

10 #2: How can the CS team successfully make the case for specific product enhancements?

11 Backing Up Your Requests Different Perspectives Quantify the value or priority of the request Lean on your customer facing teams to help qualify and translate Connect data to stories, business strategy, and client feedback Analyze support data (for example) to identify root causes Look for common themes 80% solution/workaround is good enough (sometimes) Align internally and present to product with a unified voice

12 #3: What method works well to help Product Managers get to know customer use cases and needs in-depth?

13 Find the right contact to explain what they need and why First, we need to really understand the use case Far too often I find that our understanding is fuzzy. So we can t ask the right questions or summarize effectively why Product should come in Locate multiple contacts to triangulate the need, and select the best representatives Put the client, contact, and use case into business context Explain how the feature enables an outcome and why it matters to the client s business Prepare for the session as you would for an EBR, so that the time is focused where it s most valuable

14 Customer Advisory Board Typically once a quarter: virtual and in-person 2 types of discussions Buy-a-feature Deep-dive into a topic Selection process Right blend enterprise / SMB; new / old Strategic Power users / advocates What s in it for customers Their requirements heard / prioritized Red-carpet treatment Networking

15 F2F Customer + Product Interactions Your place or ours? Hosting customers at HQ Executive Innovation Center Opportunity to show Box as a company and a solution Customer/Product Advisory Boards Networking and mind-share Customer On-sites and Roadshows Real life connection of feature requests to business needs Opportunity to hear from a wide spread of business representatives, champions and sponsors

16 Customer Hackathon Addressing Customer Requests Head On Measure team brought together 15 large clients to present the business challenge they needed most help with. Product & Engineering lead a 24-hour hackathon and presented ideas back to the clients, who voted on which were best. Product outlined release timing and kept clients in the loop. Top voted project was in production w/in 2 weeks, and 5 others followed over the next quarter.

17 #4: When should you bring PM into conversations with customers?

18 Discover, Qualify, Contextualize Rinse and repeat But, what is the customer really trying to accomplish? Is this a training opportunity? Is there a different way to answer the request with existing products/features? How is the customer accomplishing X request today? Prep and enable your PMs to have the most productive conversation How does this request help the broader business?

19 Q & A

20 Additional Questions Most important factors for prioritizing customer input? How does product communicate w/ the rest of your org about the roadmap in order to set customer expectations appropriately? If product team says we can t build this request, how do you respond to customers? When there is customer risk around product needs, who owns the risk?