Month: July 2022

We spotted this from an interview of Instagram’s Kevin Systrom – the known product wisdom is to listen to customer feedback always and tune the product accordingly. But there is always a difference between what the customers say and what they do. They might say they do not like feature X, but they might be using it often. Or, they might say that they love a particular feature, but might not be using it at all. This scenario is not an exception – it occurs more often than many of us realize. 

With all the amplification effects of social media, it is a challenge to ignore what customers ‘say’ and focus on what they ‘do’ with the product. But it is extremely important to measure and understand how your customers interact with your product. That is the signal. What they say about your product, is mostly just noise.

If you are working on a product / service and are trying to work on a list of ‘to-do’ items derived from customer feedback, apply the ‘word or action’ filter – and work on those feedback items that come under ‘action’. Not just because actions speak louder than words – in this case, words do not mean anything at all.

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“In the factory, we make cosmetics. In the drug store, we sell hope.” – Charles Revson, Founder of Revlon (Source)

It is a lesson that is easy to forget, particularly in the world of software, where we mostly try to sell what we make. Well, think again. Is your marketing message tuned to what you make or to what people want?

You do not have to sell what you make. You just have to sell what people will buy. Sounds crude, but works all the time.

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Sometimes, you will see that users of some popular product/service are “inventing” new uses for existing features, to help them achieve something that they need. When that happens, it is a clear indication that a product/service that does just that “newly invented” piece potentially has a solid number of users right off the gate.

Let us take some examples: real time status updates – before Twitter, users were trying to use offline messages in messenger services – “stepping out for lunch” – an indication that a real time status update service was needed. Foursquare (with its check-in feature) is another example.

We do have two examples that are open right now – Reddit’s AMA (Ask Me Anything) is probably a good standalone service. And the fact that Pinterest is used to pin things that are not really pinnable – there are many services waiting to be tapped there.

Any more ideas that you can think of?

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