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In any product team, engineers play a crucial role in bringing ideas to life. Their technical expertise and problem-solving skills are instrumental in creating innovative solutions. However, amidst the complexity of algorithms and code, they lose sight of the most crucial element – the customer.
Engineers always focus on the technical aspects of their work like architecture, framework, design, etc. While these are undoubtedly important, they must not forget the ultimate goal – creating products for the customers. People always say that engineers should think from the customer’s shoes to understand the customer’s pain points. They need to go a step back and think why am I building something in the first place? What problem am I trying to solve? If they could find answers to these questions, then they would have clarity in what they are building and why.
How can engineers start thinking from customers’ perspective?
The customer-centric approach will not only improve product quality but also lead to innovations. Here are a few key practices you can adopt for this approach:
Identifying real needs
Customers won’t articulate their real needs explicitly. For example, if I mention I need to slice a loaf of bread, it means I’ll require a bread knife. Here, the knife is the requirement and not the bread slice. We need to carefully evaluate the customer needs and convert them to features. This understanding will help in prioritizing the features and building a more valuable product. Consider the success story of Swiggy, they created a platform that connects customers and hotels, offering a whole different food delivery experience and bridging the gap. This customer-centric approach made them successful.
User-centric design
Let’s take the example of the iPhone. Apple designed the phone considering all aspects of the users. Be it touchpad, navigations, menu, battery, screen, etc. By prioritizing simplicity and ease of use, they transformed the smartphone industry and set a new standard for user-centric design.
Our team will interview selected customers as a process during the idea brainstorming to gather real-time usage and take on new product ideas. They will ensure to share the designed screens with the customers during the interview to evaluate the user experience. We did drop some of our ideas based on these data and of course, got some new use cases as well.
Enhancing user experience
It is not sufficient to design a good user experience but also equally important to enhance the same time to time to keep the customers happy. Engineers who consider the customer’s perspective can design products that are intuitive, responsive, and visually appealing. From seamless navigation to thoughtful interactions, every aspect of the user experience contributes to customer satisfaction and loyalty which in turn end up in customer retention and increase.
Use the product
All the above can be validated by using the product ourselves. This can give us invaluable insights into the customer experience. This will help us identify the pain points of the product and discover any difficulties or frustrations faced by the customer. When we use the product daily, we come across patterns and workflows that could help in spotting the opportunities for improvement. By this, we can validate the product’s performance in practical and real-world needs.
We ensure that our team uses the product for all the documentation needs internally across the organization. We also have channels where they can share their feedback and suggestions with the product team directly. This will help the product team to understand challenges from the user perspective.
Product Quality
Ensuring the product quality is yet another area to make the product a success. Only high-quality products build trust and foster loyalty with the customers. Having a clear and tightened quality process will help achieve the desired standards. Engineers can think of automation wherever possible. This has to be overseen and improved continuously to ensure the product is on par with the market needs.
We conduct internal events to involve all the team members to identify any quality issues within the product. This is a quarterly event we conduct to create awareness among the team about why the quality of the product is crucial for its success.
Driving market relevance
In today’s competitive world, staying relevant is important to survival. By aligning technical skills with customer needs, engineers can create products that stand out in the market and drive business success. For example, Tesla continuously enhances its electric vehicles to meet the evolving needs and expectations of its customers. From extending the battery range to enhancing autonomous driving capabilities, Tesla’s commitment to customer satisfaction drives its continued success and makes it a top player in the automotive industry.
Embracing feedback
It is always important for the engineers to connect with the customer-facing teams. This will help them understand the real problems faced by the customers. Customer feedback is the most important thing in the process of product development. Engineers who think from the customer’s perspective are always open to feedback and incorporate the same into their work. This feedback loop ensures that the product meets customer expectations and aims to address changing needs over time.
We have an open feedback portal for all our customers to directly share feedback with us. This feedback is open and other customers can upvote any feature/suggestion that is listed here. We ensure to include the feedback with a higher no of votes into our product roadmap. In this way, we accommodate the customer’s asks.
In conclusion, adopting these practices leads to building a more intuitive and customer-focused product. I hope this article has given you some motivation and encouragement to start your journey towards the customer-centric approach.
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