airfocus-logoGlossary
airfocus search exit

Try for free

Product Management

Customer-Driven Product Management

CONTENTS

Instead of creating a product with only the opinions of internal team members and stakeholders as guidelines, Customer-Driven Product Management builds every aspect of the product around what they have learned about their ideal customers.

This approach to product management also works to strengthen the communication and collaboration between internal sales, service, and development teams, as the insights gained by one team need to be shared and understood by all internal team personnel. A Customer-Focused Product Manager would be the team member assigned to overseeing this wide-scale collaboration.

What is Customer-Driven Product Management used for?

Next to Product-Driven Product Management, Customer-Driven Product Management is used to better understand the customer journey and create a better-performing product.

This process is generally broken down into four action steps:

1. Identifying customer biases

Rather than using the internal team’s inherent assumptions and biases about a given market, identifying these biases and where they come from is a key first step when embarking on any Customer-Driven Product Management approach.

This means that, instead of relying on generalities or vague ideas on what your target market needs, conducting an analysis of market conditions is a must. That ensures that you’re drawing inspiration from facts, not assumptions.

2. Interviewing your target audience

By interviewing several members of your target audience, you can create a streamlined customer journey (and, in turn, end product) that represents the standard customer experience.

This involves thoroughly understanding their needs, pain points, and preferences.

This step should answer the following questions: 

  • What problems is your product going to solve for your target audience? 

  • How have your customers tried to solve this problem on their own? 

  • What are your competitors lacking that would turn these customers towards your product instead?

3. Reporting on customer experiences

Observing and reporting on customer experiences in real-time will provide you and your team with the first-hand knowledge necessary to create a product that succinctly solves the challenges they face.

Which parts of the experience are frustrating or confusing? Which steps of the customer journey makes them lose interest in the product or hesitate about their purchase? By observing and reporting on this information, you can refine both your product and the general customer journey.

4. Collaborating with your customers

With the previous stages behind you, it’s important to continue collaborating with customers throughout the design process.

While this does not mean having customers design the product in lieu of your team, it does mean keeping a feedback loop open. You want to know how likely they are to use the product in its current iteration, how intuitive they find the product to be, and if there are any areas of the product that they find confusing or lacking.

During this final step, customer opinions make it so you know you are launching a finished product that accurately and easily meets the needs of your ideal audience.

The challenges of Customer-Driven Product Management

Customer-Driven Product Management requires a significant time investment, discipline regarding keeping wide-scale collaboration at the forefront of every design decision, and humility. 

While bringing a product to market may seem comparatively easy when customer feedback isn’t factored in, the enhanced accuracy and product-effectiveness it provides make the potential challenges more than worthwhile.

eBook

All You Need To Know About Product Management

Read now
CTA eBook image background
airfocus eBook All You Need To Know About Product Management

General FAQ

What is the difference between Product-Driven Product Management and Customer-Driven Product Management?
Product-Driven Product Management means to develop a product first, then conduct market research and factor in the customer journey. Customer-Driven Product Management takes the opposite approach, instead letting customers guide the development process and basing the product around their feedback.
What internal benefits does a Customer-Driven Product Management approach have?
Companies that offer Customer-Driven Product Management are shown to have 82% of employees who enjoy their work, vs only 20% at non-customer centric companies, according to Survey Monkey.
airfocus eBook All You Need To Know About Product Management
eBook
All You Need To Know About Product Management
Read now

Glossary categories

Agile

Agile

Feedback Management

Feedback Management

Prioritization

Prioritization

Product Management

Product Management

Product Strategy

Product Strategy

Roadmapping

Roadmapping

Experience the new
way of doing product
management

Try for free

Book a demo

airfocus modular platform

Experience the new
way of doing product
management

airfocus modular platform
Top rated
on major platforms
g2 badge users love us
g2 badge leader fall 2024
GetApp badge category leader
software advice badge
capterra shortlist badge
proddy roadmapping
crozdesk quality choice
Company
All rights reserved. contact@airfocus.com
DEFR