Businesses need to be ahead of the curve in an ever-changing market to keep their products competitive. However, even when companies have a product-led growth approach to their business, consumers’ needs and expectations must be at their center. And here, product experience plays a crucial role.
But what exactly is product experience?
Product experience is part of the user experience, and it focuses on the customer journey stages within the product itself. So, for your product to be successful, your consumers must positively perceive it and have excellent interactions with it.
But how can companies align an excellent product experience with a customer-centric approach to secure product success? This article will show you the five essential aspects you need to consider.
#1. Use product experience management software
Understanding what your customers need and how they feel about your product is critical for decision-making and should happen continuously. So, one of the best ways to keep the pulse on your customers, put their feedback in context, and collaborate with them is by using product experience management software.
This tool is excellent for bringing the customer voice into your product development process through integration, optimization, analysis, and product data distribution to every channel in your business’s portfolio. As a result, you will be able to drive constant innovation to your business.
#2. Consistently work on employee engagement and collaboration
Product experience demands synergy between product teams and customer-facing teams. However, for synergy to happen, you need to have high employee engagement, which means employees are passionate about their work and motivated to achieve your company’s goals. So, to achieve product success, you need your people’s commitment, contribution, quality, and smooth collaboration.
An ever-changing product that needs to be adapted to customers’ needs requires seamless interaction between teams. For example, product development is permanently fueled by the profound insights coming from customer support teams as they have daily interaction with customers. The insights gathered on this level of operation are helping product teams sharpen product features and refine and update products.
#3. Clearly define core responsibilities between employees
To achieve synergy and collaboration, your team’s duties and obligations must be clearly defined and linked to the bigger picture. Putting them on paper will help your development team, sales staff, or customer service representatives understand their day-to-day responsibilities.
However, being explicit and practical about it and connecting it to the work of the greater business machine will make them work more smoothly in practice. Consequently, make sure you clearly define their core responsibilities:
- Development. Product experience teams work with development teams to focus on a company KPI and the users’ perspective. Because customers often want features that differ from the company’s core goals, product experience teams also ensure the right people are kept informed.
- Sales. Your sales staff must be on the same page with customers and developers to deliver genuine, consistent, and easily understandable value.
- Customer service. Most customers do not distinguish a direct experience with the product and the experience of engaging with your customer service, as they are discreetly connected. Customer service is here to save, revitalize, and reinvigorate a product experience when users face challenges. These, in turn, can become opportunities for optimization through your product experience team.
#4. Focus on customer engagement
For your business sustainability, you don’t only need your customers to love your product, but you need them to be loyal to it in the long run. Consequently, you need to keep their interest in your product high enough to ensure continuous adoption. In this sense, one of the ways to secure that is by providing your customers with information on your product’s workflow, advantages, core functionalities, and relevant features.
In addition, it is essential to consider personalization and develop custom-made messages and hotspots with different segments in mind. A personalized product experience is vital to creating engagement. Ultimately, implementing a holistic customer engagement strategy improves consumer relations and engagement and benefits businesses looking to increase conversions.
#5. Secure consistent, personable, and optimized product info
Product-specific information that resonates with customers should be consistent, personable, and in line with their expectations. For this reason, give your customers rich, optimized, current, and curated data through every channel.
Next, make sure you fix sloppy mistakes and ensure all product-based content is where it needs to be (landing pages, in-product copy, onboarding copy, etc.). Also, for maximum relevance and effectiveness—personalize. Lastly, make optimization your daily task because if your product-based content is left alone for a longer period, things can start going downhill fast.
Bottom line
Getting customers to love your products is the most critical determinant of business success. Consequently, product experience should be your go-to approach for development, as it brings exceptional clarity to the inseparable connection between a superb product and a loyal customer. Caring about a performant product means taking care of customers’ interests, as they depend so much on each other. The only way to draft a perfect roadmap, offer a great product, and keep scaling it is if you listen to your customers.
