Tips for Customer-Centric Product Development

Your Product Managers are talking to customers. So why isn’t your product getting better? A few years ago, I was on a team where our boss had a rule: 🗣️ “Everyone must talk to at least one customer each week.” So we did. Calls were scheduled. Conversations happened. Boxes were checked. But nothing changed. No real insights. No real impact. Because talking to customers isn’t the goal. Learning the right things is. When discovery lacks purpose, it leads to wasted effort, misaligned strategy, and poor business decisions: ❌ Features get built that no one actually needs. ❌ Roadmaps get shaped by the loudest voices, not the right customers. ❌ Teams collect insights… but fail to act on them. How Do You Fix It? ✅ Talk to the Right People Not every customer insight is useful. Prioritize: -> Decision-makers AND end-users – You need both perspectives. -> Customers who represent your core market – Not just the loudest complainers. -> Direct conversations – Avoid proxy insights that create blind spots. 👉 Actionable Step: Before each interview, ask: “Is this customer representative of the next 100 we want to win?” If not, rethink who you’re talking to. ✅ Ask the Right Questions A great question challenges assumptions. A bad one reinforces them. -> Stop asking: “Would you use this?” -> Start asking: “How do you solve this today?” -> Show AI prototypes and iterate in real-time – Faster than long discovery cycles. -> If shipping something is faster than researching it—just build it. 👉 Actionable Step: Replace one of your upcoming interview questions with: “What workarounds have you created to solve this problem?” This reveals real pain points. ✅ Don’t Let Insights Die in a Doc Discovery isn’t about collecting insights. It’s about acting on them. -> Validate across multiple customers before making decisions. -> Share findings with your team—don’t keep them locked in Notion. -> Close the loop—show customers how their feedback shaped the product. 👉 Actionable Step: Every two weeks, review customer insights with your team to decipher key patterns and identify what changes should be applied. If there’s no clear action, you’re just collecting data—not driving change. Final Thought Great discovery doesn’t just inform product decisions—it shapes business strategy. Done right, it helps teams build what matters, align with real customer needs, and drive meaningful outcomes. 👉 Be honest—are your customer conversations actually making a difference? If not, what’s missing? -- 👋 I'm Ron Yang, a product leader and advisor. Follow me for insights on product leadership + strategy.

Being more user-centric doesn’t mean you say “we care about our customers”. Being user-centric means you have systems in place to make sure nobody ever neglects their customers. If I'm trying to help a team become more user-centric, I invest in: * Make it easy to schedule weekly user interviews * A feed integrated directly with customer feedback channels. * A place to categorize, search, and store user interviews and user insight reports * A way to track and follow-up with customers who asked for certain features to both conduct further research with them and tell them if it was built These systems make it easy to talk to customers and incorporate their voices in everything we build. That helps us build the right thing the first time around. I’ll toss some other articles and resources into the comments if you want to dive in more. What are some of your favorite methods to bring you closer to your customers? 

Here’s the truth: you can spend weeks in spreadsheets, obsess over personas, and debate ICPs until the next fiscal year… but if you’re not actually talking to your customers, it’s all just guesswork. 🤷♂️ I recently had the opportunity to speak with Adam Robinson, who shared how he and his team built RB2B by doing the non-scalable things first—getting on the ground, understanding their customers deeply, and building relationships. Only after mastering this foundation did they start thinking about scale. 🚀 So, if you want to build a world-class product, company, or team, take a page from Adam’s playbook: 1. Set up regular, no-agenda calls. Skip the pitch; just ask what’s keeping them up at night. These raw insights are gold. 2. Build feedback loops into your process. Make it easy for your team to capture and share customer insights weekly. 3. Be where they are. Whether it’s LinkedIn, industry events, or even niche forums, find out where your customers hang out and spend time there. You’ll learn more by listening to their actual conversations than any report can tell you. Remember: Customers won’t tell you what to build, but they’ll show you what matters. Real success isn’t built in data silos; it’s built in conversations. Who’s ready to do the non-scalable to make scalable success happen? 🌟 #CustomerFirst #BuildWithPurpose #GTMstrategy #ProductMarketFit #Leadership