This is part 1 of 3 on the likely impact of Chat GPT in the product operations domain and how product people might use it.
ChatGPT has created quite a bit of buzz since its release in November 2022. Responses have ranged from Elon Musk saying, ” We are not far from dangerously strong AI” to Mark Cuban’s, “My 13-year-old just asked ChatGPT to write a trash talk about his buddy’s favorite NFL team and texted it to him. Things have changed forever.” So, what is ChatGPT, (if you don’t know already), and how can it be utilized in product management and, specifically, product operations?
TLDR
- ChatGPT is an artificial intelligence chatbot that can answer questions, write essays, and much more.
- Product Managers, (or PMs), should leverage ChatGPT for many tasks like product performance monitoring, customer support, process optimization, and more.
- Data Analysis is a key area that PMs should utilize ChatGPT, as it can perform the more mundane work and allow the PM to simply fact-check and move on to more important decision-making.
What is ChatGPT?
ChatGPT is a chatbot, or a virtual assistant, that you can ask questions and it will provide answers. To illustrate, we asked ChatGPT to define itself in the way you would explain it to a 5-year-old. Here’s the answer:
“ChatGPT is a computer program that can talk to you and answer questions like an intelligent robot friend. It was taught lots of things by some brilliant people, so it can answer many questions and have conversations with you.”
Full disclosure: that’ll be the only time this article will contain content generated by ChatGPT.
ChatGPT was created by OpenAI, an organization focused on developing artificial intelligence in San Francisco, CA.
What Can ChatGPT Be Used For?
ChatGPT can do far more than answer simple questions. For example, people have already begun using ChatGPT for language translation and writing essays, (what it can produce in mere seconds is astounding). Some users have used asked ChatGPT to teach them how to code, (lessons in python have been eye-opening).
Large language models, like ChatGPT, are forecast to become increasingly powerful and sophisticated. Competitors to ChatGPT are already being rolled out, and the reality is, AI chatbots like ChatGPT are here to stay.
ChatGPT and Product Management
ChatGPT can be a powerful tool to add to the product manager’s kit. The tool can be used to create survey questions to gather customer feedback, generate product descriptions, articles, and other marketing content, and even help with backlog prioritization.
In addition to assisting with core product management functions, it can also help with product operations (prod ops) practices. While product operations responsibilities vary depending on the organization, they typically include the following:
- Product performance monitoring: prod ops teams monitor key metrics to ensure the product is performing as expected and identify opportunities for improvement.
- Customer support: prod ops teams provide ongoing support to customers to ensure their satisfaction and resolve any issues they may encounter.
- Product improvement: prod ops teams work with development teams to identify and prioritize product improvements based on customer feedback and business goals.
- Process optimization: prod ops teams streamline processes to improve efficiency and effectiveness.
- Knowledge management: centralize and organize information, making it easier for product operations teams to access the information they need to do their jobs effectively.
- Data analysis: prod ops use data to inform product decisions, such as analyzing customer feedback to inform product roadmaps.
ChatGPT and Product Management Data Analysis
Ah, yes, data analysis. The bane of existence for some Product Managers (or PM’s). The thought of poring over page interactions or reading customer reviews makes some PMs want to find a different career. Not because we don’t enjoy it; but because it’s time-consuming and ripe with error. While some may loathe it, data analysis is where we begin to see trends that help us deliver better products for our customers.
What if we could delegate the task of retrieving and analyzing data to help us make product management decisions faster?
At a high level let’s imagine you have an extensive customer feedback collection. You could pass that data set to a tool like ChatGPT and ask it to summarize it. Ask it to list the top 5 pieces of negative feedback and the top 5 pieces of positive feedback. This information can inform the product team how your product is enjoyed and what the detractors might be. That’s much easier than reading reviews line by line. And you’ll have derived insights in a matter of minutes, not hours. That will aid in making decisions faster and offer you a strategic advantage.
Similarly, you could partner ChatGPT with your customer support function, to create better customer experiences. The tool excels at providing potential answers for human review. And if your customer support function is using it, you now have another data point to leverage. The queries in ChatGPT then indicate what’s wrong with the current experience. You’ll draw actionable insights using that data, helping you make more informed decisions.
Expect these tools to be something other than lightning in a bottle. The device is 90% accurate (and that’s generous). The product person’s job becomes fact-checking instead of researching from the ground up.
Product people, specifically those in the product ops domain can use tools like this to automate tedious tasks in their day-to-day environment. The less time they’re spending on tasks like gathering data, cleaning & parsing the data, and developing sophisticated ways to tease out the patterns in the data, it can be offloaded to an AI tool like ChatGPT. In turn, this will allow the product person to focus on the part of our world that can’t be replaced by a machine: intuition, stakeholder management, and customer empathy interviews.
Conclusion
ChatGPT, (and similar forms of AI), should be viewed as a tool that product managers can utilize. Data Analysis is just one, clear-cut example of where and how. But there are many other ways ChatGPT can assist PM’s, when used correctly.
In the next installment of this series, we’ll explore ways Chat GPT (and others) can assist in task automation and predictive analytics. In the comments below, let us know how you’re using these tools to augment your work in the product domain.
