The Diminishing Returns of Obsessive Customer Focus
Because not everyone finds a way out of the loop of reactive product development.
In hopes of finding the next big idea, many turn to their most loyal users for feedback and inspiration. And often enough, that feedback leads to useful improvements.
And yet, useful improvements do not always add up to the desired results, especially when growth is a problem and the market is saturated with similar solutions.
In some cases, growth problems are caused by a limiting spotlight vision, where product organisations continue to focus on the needs of a small segment of users even when it reaches a point where it no longer yields meaningful returns.
Building solutions that have growth potential requires a research approach that addresses the needs of the entire past and future user base, including the silent majority, quiet churners, and untapped potential.
In this article, I talk about spotlight vision, when and how to switch focus, and provide six research ideas to consider when ready to broaden the view.
The vocal minority vs. the silent majority
Imagine a stage in a dark theatre illuminated by a single spotlight. This spotlight represents your active customers who are reaching out with their feedback and requests.
Just like in theatre, what is visible is what is easy to pay attention to.
And customer requests are easy to pay attention to; for any mature company, there will be plenty of them.
The problem with spotlight vision is that it can lead to a skewed understanding of the customer base as a whole. When only a small fraction of an area is visible, it is easy to fall into the trap of believing that what is visible is all that there is—or that what is visible accurately represents what is hidden.
When, in fact, it is not usually the case.
Not only are individual customer requests frequently misguided and influenced by personal biases, but they do not properly reflect the needs of the majority.
When Microsoft was building a new version of Windows back in 2013, the meteoric rise of smartphones was all the rage and getting all the attention. To embrace the trend, Microsoft concentrated on the touch-screen experience when redesigning its user interface.
That meant that when Windows 8 launched, it was great on mobile devices but a failure on the desktop. “On a regular PC, Windows 8 is Mr. Hyde: a monster that terrorises poor office workers and strangles their productivity,” as usability expert Jacob Nielsen very colourfully described.
While Microsoft was not wrong to consider the mobile experience, they failed to correctly prioritise the silent majority, who kept using desktop computers in parallel. This miscalculation caused a backlash so significant that Microsoft was forced to revert back to an older and more familiar interface with Windows 10.
To avoid the pitfall of making a few people happy at the expense of the rest, product managers can proactively broaden their area of visibility during discovery.
Establishing a broader view does not mean neglecting the needs of the minority or the people who are actively reaching out with feedback; it just means validating new insights against a wider user base.
While no method is ideal, doing validation surveys using probability sampling gives results that represent the existing user base more reliably. Probability sampling means that participants are selected randomly, giving every user, no matter if they are vocal or silent, an equal chance of being heard.
For sound decision-making, it is important to have diverse and inclusive data in place that does not rely on customer requests alone.
This means not only leveraging quantitative data but also doing market research and generative interviews with a wide range of users from different demographics, backgrounds, and usage patterns.
While diverse research takes time, and relying on product analytics alone may seem like a quicker alternative, it has downsides. Product data can tell you what people are doing, but not why they are doing it or how they are feeling about it. Product data also does not show what people do outside of your product or what other solutions they need besides yours to get their problem properly solved.
Proactively reaching out and talking with customers is unavoidable, particularly if the goal is to improve product-market fit or profitability.
The quiet churners
But there is more in the shadows than just existing users. The unhappiest people are likely not among your existing user base but among the people who have already stopped using the solution.
For every customer who voices their concerns, there are about 25 unhappy customers who leave instead, according to research done by thinkJar. That means around 96% of disappointed customers churn quietly without leaving behind clues as to why.
There are a variety of reasons why customers churn, and many of those have nothing to do with the product. However, analysing the pains and patterns of former users could provide a dense concentration of insights that existing (mostly somewhat satisfied) users cannot offer.
By understanding the unsatisfactory experiences of former customers, product managers can make changes to increase the retention of existing and future users.
It is more difficult to study non-customers, but the return on investment could be substantial too. Frederick Reichheld, the creator of the NPS, conducted research that demonstrated that raising customer retention rates by 5% can increase profits by 25% to 95%.
When retention is a concern, do not expect the existing (somewhat happy) customers to have the answers; talk with users who have recently churned.
A common strategy for systematically staying on top of quiet churners is to regularly conduct exit surveys and interviews with people who have recently stopped using the product or service.
Also, analysing churned user data can reveal shared characteristics and trends, which can be leveraged to identify current customers at risk.
The untapped potential
The largest group of people to pay attention to are not your existing users or even churned users, but potential users—the people who have not used the product yet.
Your current customers are already paying. In order to start and continue paying, a customer must be at least somewhat satisfied with the solution.
When the priority is to grow the user base, satisfying those who are already satisfied will probably have diminishing returns. Even the most engaged customer is unlikely to sign up twice.
For growth, it is the future users that need to be convinced.
Compared to users who are already sold on your solution, potential future users can have different ideas or expectations for the product. And they are comparing your solution against the alternatives, which is an important context to consider when developing the offering.
For example, one product I worked on had a feature that did not get remarkably high engagement from active users. Considering feature usage only, it should have been killed.
But the same feature made potential customers go “wow” during sales demo calls, contributing to closed deals more than any other feature on the platform.
It was not only a selling point; it was a differentiator.
Understanding potential users’ experiences and desires is important, particularly when user base growth is a challenge (but retention is not).
Usually, potential users are studied through market research. This means conducting surveys, interviews, or focus groups to gather insights on the preferences, pain points, and desired features of people who are not using your product.
But to gain truly unique insights, try observing people using their current solutions and/or competitors to see where they struggle and what they value, and deduce from that what they need. This approach, known as ethnographic research, allows for the richest understanding of the potential user’s context and needs.
The stage
If we turned on the lights in our imaginary theatre and cancelled out all the spotlights, the stage would look something like this:
While existing customers (especially the vocal minority) play a role in making a product successful, they represent only a fraction of the past and future user base as a whole.
Asking your existing customers what they want to see in their product and then delivering on those improvements is by no means wrong. In fact, listening to your most loyal customers is essential for making good, honest, and practical improvements.
However, the risk to be aware of is getting too focused on existing customers and overemphasising customer requests just because they are easy to pay attention to.
Creating a product that resonates with a broad audience and attracts new customers requires research that considers the needs of the entire past and future user base, including the silent majority, quiet churners, and untapped potential.
Strategic spotlights
Spotlights serve a purpose. Without spotlights, there is no focus. Without focus, we would be too overwhelmed to get anything done.
The goal for any efficient product organisation should not be to eliminate spotlights but to make smart choices regarding where to spend attention.
That requires zooming out before zooming in.
One way is to look at high-level metrics or conduct big-picture generative studies before zeroing in on a particular problem or opportunity. Where does it hurt the most? Is it profitability? Is it retention? Is it growth?
And narrow down from there.
It is impossible to do everything and please everyone.
And precisely because it is impossible, it is important to have good high-level metrics and research in place that helps with decision-making.
Spend your attention where it matters, not where it is convenient.
That, of course, is going to be easier said than done most of the time.
Be bold and get creative.
