1/ An another thread, @RahultheWaffle asked me a question about how we use customer-driven techniques (from medium.com/@Johnmont_6796…).
2/ When I say “aggregate data” I’m referring to things like those surveys of developers you read that say 33% of them are using thus and such a framework or language, or that 15% of customers are dissatisfied, or telemetry/analytics data that says 10% of people clicked on a link
3/ Data like that points you in a direction, but it doesn’t tell you the full story.
4/ Most good product managers will complement survey data with a customer conversation or two – maybe attend an event and talk to some people casually or email with their “insider” users.
5/ Doing 1:1 customer interaction at scale means using a structured system with every product manager so that you’re continually interviewing and testing hypotheses to identify the underlying reasons.
6/ I’m fortunate to have over 100 product managers on my team, doing this all the time – we conduct over 5,000 customer interviews every year using this method.
7/ But you can do it with one person – a customer interview often doesn’t take more than 20 minutes and you can learn a lot if you apply structure and share what you learn broadly.
8/ You may want to read @tloudermilk and Jessica Rich’s book, The Customer Driven Playbook. smile.amazon.com/Customer-Drive…
