Haresh Bhungalia is the CEO of Casepoint, a technology company focused on solving for data and business workflow challenges.
In the early days of building a startup, founders often have a very specific vision for the problem statement they are looking to solve. That’s how funding gets secured—with a clear direction that people can easily buy into.
But, today, as startups face unprecedented risk, it’s important not to get too attached to that vision. The key to building a resilient organization is to remain open to the idea that the product might change over time to meet customer needs. And, in many ways, that’s the ideal outcome.
In fact, some of the most successful organizations in the world are built around this exact idea. With the right framework in place, a customer-first product development strategy can help companies remain viable over time and open up new opportunities.
Customer Engagement Over Customer Success
Typical SaaS customer success largely looks like interacting with customers electronically—on the platform, through email and via NPS feedback. In today’s environment where customers demand more from vendors and competition is high, however, these methods fall short.
Modern customer success requires a framework shift, especially for organizations with enterprise-level clients. Now, companies must center customer engagement over customer success, featuring client advocacy that’s proactive, high-touch, personalized and highly responsive.
Relationship-first customer success requires that organizations interface regularly with customers to sort through pain points and needs. Most importantly, it looks like taking customer feedback and funneling it to be able to respond quickly with the product functionality customers need to succeed. Ultimately, it’s about letting customer engagement drive the product roadmap.
Creating A System To Prioritize Product Development
It’s impossible for growing companies to consider each customer when planning product activity due to resource constraints (time and personnel). Plus, acting on competing priorities can pull the product in too many directions. The most effective way to manage this challenge is to group customers by their ideal customer profile (ICP) rank, which, in turn, determines their influence on the roadmap.
One group might be outside the current ICP—those that randomly found success on the platform or reflect an outdated ICP. Typically, this bracket is low touch and won’t influence the product. Another group might be on the edges of the ICP but remain valuable to the company, so they receive mid-touch engagement yet have minimal impact on the product.
The last group represents enterprise customers squarely within the ICP with room to grow on the platform. These customers undoubtedly influence product development. Account managers should be trained to bring their feedback internally to product development. These accounts are high touch, requiring monthly (or more frequent) check-ins.
This model ensures that resources are allocated appropriately and the product roadmap doesn’t get clogged up. Instead, companies can make the biggest product impact for their core ICP customers.
Balancing Interests Of Customers And Stakeholders
Taking in customer feedback is one thing but translating it into something material is another—and doing so is a balancing act. Sometimes, important (high-paying) customers can take the roadmap too far, resulting in bespoke tech that doesn’t serve the larger ICP. Organizations must pair customer feedback with customer research to ensure external validity.
Enterprise customer success also requires engagement with all customer-side stakeholders—from the decision-maker (budget owner) to the users to security personnel. Sometimes, these subgroups will have competing priorities. Maybe users love the platform, but it doesn’t meet the company’s security requirements. Maybe focusing too heavily on security means that business KPIs suffer.
Meaningful customer engagement that drives product development demands a holistic approach. Account managers should spend time with leadership to understand their goals and pain points, but they should also focus on users. The primary objective is to keep the business owner happy, but keeping users active and satisfied is a key part of that equation.
Again, no one customer or stakeholder should drive the product roadmap. Companies must look for emerging themes in customer and stakeholder feedback to filter priorities.
Remain Open To Change
Through this process, tech businesses will undoubtedly uncover new opportunities. Recently, at Casepoint, a theme emerged in our own customer engagement data: Many of our clients were struggling with FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) workflows. We saw an opportunity within our existing platform to build out those capabilities—and we took it. We created a FOIA management solution to serve current clients, which will also help us attract more customers within our ICP that share those same challenges—showcasing exactly how customer engagement can drive product development, growth and profitability.
Similarly, if a customer is struggling with the product, that’s also an opportunity to improve it not just for that customer but for the rest of the ICP. By working with the client, companies can root out the underlying problem: Is it a user education problem? Is it the way the product is configured? Could that task take three clicks instead of five?
A functional customer engagement-product development model is built on the belief that customers are the eyes and ears of the company. Customers are in the product every day. They know what’s working and what’s not, and responding to their feedback will not only keep them satisfied but improve the customer experience for all.
Key Features Of Customer-Driven Product Development
Every organization is unique, which means that building a successful customer engagement program that drives product development isn’t a one-size-fits-all model, but every successful program does have the same core components.
First, it requires strong alignment across the organization: Account managers need to be on the same page as product, engineering, sales and executive leadership. A strong connection between account managers and product managers is particularly critical. Second, it includes a tiered system for prioritizing customer feedback to allocate resources appropriately, plus mechanisms for balancing feedback across customers and stakeholders. Finally, it requires open-mindedness, curiosity and empathy from leadership to create a culture in which the company feels empowered to act on customer feedback and seize new opportunities.
Conclusion
By adopting these customer-centric strategies, organizations can keep their finger on the pulse of market demand and remain agile in the face of changing customer needs. Ultimately, centering customer engagement helps companies shape and enhance a product roadmap that drives competitiveness, longevity and long-term profitability.
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