Customer support is the unsung hero for many products. It acts as the first line of defense when unforeseen issues arise. Customer support personnel experience customers’ frustrations and challenges firsthand, offering a unique perspective on the product’s real-world performance.
Product managers use various sources of “evidence” to glean insights about their products, such as analytics, market research, surveys, and sales inputs, to name a few. However, customer support provides access to insights not even customer interviews can offer.
Support teams witness genuine customer reactions during critical moments when a product’s performance is paramount. They understand the urgency behind particular requests and have a keen sense of edge cases the product might not address adequately. They also grasp the customers’ intentions in these scenarios.
To put it simply, customer support has the most direct exposure to the voice of the customer in real-time. This is why they should play a crucial role during product strategy discussions.
Table of contents
- Why customer service should influence your product strategy: An example
- What insights can customer support provide to product managers?
- How customer support insights differ between B2B and B2C
- Why customer support is instrumental in product strategy
- How to integrate customer support into product strategy
- How often should PMs gather insights from CS?
- Pitfalls and traps to avoid
Why customer service should influence your product strategy: An example
In products I’ve personally been involved with, feedback from customer support has significantly influenced strategy and direction. For instance, while leading a product team for an applicant tracking system — software designed to assist organizations in sourcing and hiring talent — I evaluated our recently launched interview scheduling module.
The feature’s low usage suggested that it wasn’t resonating with our customers. Our customer interviews indicated that recruiters preferred their scheduling tools.
However, insights from customer support painted a different picture. They pointed out that the feature’s onboarding process was intricate, leading them to guide many users through calendar integration and sending invites to multiple candidates.
Furthermore, the majority of our customers used Microsoft technologies and sought integration with Outlook. Our scheduling tool was primarily compatible with Google Calendar and iCal, causing users to avoid it.
This revelation reshaped our understanding of the module, prompting us to reallocate resources to improve the user experience. This decision yielded significant benefits in the subsequent quarter.
What insights can customer support provide to product managers?
In numerous organizations, customer support is often perceived as merely a team that maintains the status quo. Yet, given the sheer number of interactions they have with customers, support representatives are frequently a source of valuable insights.
To truly recognize the contribution of customer support to product strategy, you must first understand the range of insights they offer. Leveraging insights from customer support can help product managers identify things like:
- Frequently occurring bugs
- Suboptimal user experience
- Gaps in product understanding
- Business-specific use cases
- Wish lists and feature requests
- Potential reasons for churning
- Usage trends
- Feedback on pricing
Frequently occurring bugs
Support can pinpoint areas of the product that are defect-prone and demand intensive troubleshooting. For instance, in recruitment software, customer support might address a multitude of resume parsing challenges due to the diverse resume formats.
Learn more →Suboptimal user experience
Customer support is adept at spotting product workflows that regularly perplex users or lack intuitiveness. Especially in products designed for self-service, customer support can shed light on where the product is lacking and the challenges users face.
For instance, our support team frequently highlighted how our interviewing module was less than satisfactory due to insufficient integrations.
Gaps in product understanding
There are times when users avoid a feature either because they don’t grasp its relevance or fail to maximize its potential. Support teams are well-positioned to identify these instances.
For example, when we introduced the “Requisitions” feature (an internal approval request to initiate hiring for a role) in our applicant tracking system, a significant segment of our SMB customers never engaged with it. Support provided insights that each organization had its unique workflow, and many were uncertain about aligning the feature with their processes.
Business-specific use cases
Customer support can underscore business or industry-tailored requirements in diverse sectors they regularly serve.
For instance, our support representatives noted that when interacting with government agency staff, they frequently encountered inquiries regarding the background references module and the need to capture official documents during job applications.
Wish lists and feature requests
Support teams are often privy to customer desires and requirements. Support leads can enumerate direct customer requests or highlight product areas needing enhancement.
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For example, our support representatives often relayed frequently requested integrations and potential automation solutions that could simplify tasks.
Potential reasons for churning
For organizations offering priority support to select enterprise clients, these support teams develop a profound grasp of client needs and desires. Should these clients decide to discontinue their service, support typically knows the primary reasons.
For instance, our representatives alerted us when a client considered switching to another provider in search of recruitment software combined with a payroll and benefits management suite.
Usage trends
Support can rapidly discern which features are responsible for the majority of user challenges. For product teams, gauging the success of a new feature often involves merging their analytics with the nature of incoming support queries.
Feedback on pricing
On occasion, a customer might express interest in a feature not included in their current subscription, leading support to suggest an upgrade. In these interactions, customers often seek clarity on different subscription tiers and share their perspectives on pricing, value propositions, and the reasons behind their upgrade decisions or hesitations.
How customer support insights differ between B2B and B2C
The insights garnered from customer support can vary significantly based on whether a product adheres to a B2B or B2C model.
For B2C products, customer support teams often interact with a vast number of end users, especially if the product has achieved product-market fit and is in a growth phase. This extensive interaction allows them to discern wide-ranging trends and patterns related to user problems, preferences, and behaviors. Directly interfacing with users, B2C support teams can provide nuanced insights into real consumer-product interactions, pinpointing areas of dissatisfaction or confusion.
In contrast, with B2B products, the individual purchasing the software often differs from the actual end user. Product teams typically communicate with a single representative from the customer organization responsible for account-related discussions. While this representative consolidates feedback from internal product users, some details might get overlooked or lost.
However, support teams gather raw, unfiltered data straight from all end-users. This direct interaction grants them an unobstructed view of the specific challenges or deficiencies users encounter. Interestingly, it also imparts them with specialized domain knowledge and introduces them to intricate workflow use cases—information invaluable during product planning.
For instance, during my tenure developing a recruitment product, our support team detected multiple issues users faced with resume parsing and form customizations —c hallenges we wouldn’t typically uncover when liaising with our primary business contacts.
Why customer support is instrumental in product strategy
When devising a product strategy, product managers strive to align customer needs with business objectives.
A well-rounded product strategy usually addresses three principal aspects:
- Acquisition — How can we attract more users?
- Retention — How can we retain our current users?
- Expansion — How can we persuade existing users to purchase more?
Customer support insights can influence each of these areas.
To elucidate with an example, let’s consider Calendly, a renowned appointment-scheduling tool.
Acquisition
Customer support can shed light on absent features or potential competitive threats based on their interactions. For instance, Calendly’s support team might identify businesses expressing interest in lead routing rules for their sales teams. They might also frequently hear mentions of competitors like Chilipiper.
Armed with this information, product managers and marketers could tailor their strategies to target this specific audience segment, refining their product offerings and messaging.
Retention
Support agents, with their pulse on user sentiments, might spot patterns signaling impending churn. For example, they might note Calendly users lamenting the absence of an integration with a specific CRM.
Product managers could harness this feedback to delve deeper, and if a tangible link is established, they might emphasize building more integrations and aligning with popular tech ecosystems.
Expansion
Support staff might observe enterprise clients seeking features like single sign-on (SSO), enhanced branding options, and role-based access controls. Such insights can steer product teams toward a more enterprise-centric approach in their strategy, positioning these users toward a higher-value subscription tier.
How to integrate customer support into product strategy
Customer support can funnel an abundance of feedback to product managers. Given the volume, it can be daunting to process and shape this feedback into a coherent strategy. Therefore, product managers must learn how to prepare, organize, and distill these learnings.
Here are steps to consider when integrating customer support insights into your product strategy:
- List out broad themes you’re planning to explore
- Gather insights across multiple support channels
- Interview customer support
- Consolidate these issues in a Google sheet
- Categorize the feedback based on your initial themes
- Start analyzing the compiled customer support insights
1. List out broad themes you’re planning to explore
Create buckets like:
- Common complaints and defects
- Potential reasons for churn
- Feedback on specific features
- Insights for acquisition teams
- Wishlists from both power and regular users
Consider the product areas needing more transparency. For a grocery delivery service, for example, this could encompass registration and authentication, marketplace search functionality, coverage of grocery stores, product listing diversity, checkout experience, and delivery feedback, among others.
2. Gather insights across multiple support channels
Prepare to capture from your support footprint, which might span multiple channels such as:
- Email helpdesk
- Phone helpline
- Live chat
- Social media
Determine how and where tickets are documented. Ideally, all incoming issues should be recorded and consolidated in customer support software for easier analysis. However, if not all feedback is documented, you might need a hybrid approach: examine logged tickets and gather qualitative feedback from support agents.
3. Interview customer support
Even with documented issues, direct conversations with customer support reps can offer deeper insights and context. If your support team is sizable, consider sending out a survey and then engaging in detailed discussions with a select group. Focus on areas with recurring feedback, and always document your findings.
4. Consolidate these issues in a Google sheet
Your spreadsheet should include the following columns:
- Date created
- Customer identifier
- Issue title/description
- Issue theme
- Resolution time
- Support source (e.g., email, phone, chat)
- Customer rating on support provided
- Urgency
Export all data from your support software and combine it with feedback from surveys and interviews:
5. Categorize the feedback based on your initial themes
While manual tagging is an option, tools like SheetGPT can automate this process with decent accuracy. However, it’s good practice to randomly sample and validate the results.
For phone support that offers textual transcripts, consider exporting these to another Google Sheet. Then, use tools like SheetGPT or ChatGPT’s Code Interpreter plugin to quickly organize and summarize the feedback.
6. Start analyzing the compiled customer support insights
Reflect on questions such as:
- Which themes frequently appear in wishlists?
- Which tickets had prolonged resolution times?
- What recurring issues surface in the defects category?
- Which competitive threats pose immediate concern?
- What are the most frequently reported issues?
- Which features are commonly requested?
- Are there non-functional performance concerns (e.g., speed, privacy, uptime)?
- How can feedback inform improvements in the current product design?
- How can we prioritize these insights on our product roadmap?
- How can insights refine our market targeting?
- How do these insights relate to market trends and the competitive landscape?
- How can feedback enhance product usability?
- Which insights can mitigate customer churn?
- How can feedback influence our marketing or sales approaches?
- How can insights streamline our user onboarding process?
Use these reflections as foundational inputs during product strategy brainstorming sessions.
Sharing a concise summary of these insights with leadership and peer teams can be beneficial for collective understanding.
How often should PMs gather insights from CS?
Engaging with customer support shouldn’t be reserved for strategy document submissions. Regular interactions can enrich a product manager’s perspective, especially after the launch of new features.
Some best practices include:
- Establishing a dedicated Slack channel for real-time discussions with support leads.
- Crafting a Looker dashboard to visualize ticket volumes by category.
For support interviews, a quarterly cadence is a good starting point, aligning with the evolving roadmap. Additionally, a robust product strategy should also consider how the product team can enhance customer support processes. Keep this in mind when gathering feedback.
Pitfalls and traps to avoid
While delving into the vast array of customer support tickets and feedback, it’s easy to become overly focused on specific issues. As you navigate through this process, it’s crucial to remember that you’re aiming to address overarching challenges faced by your customer base, rather than individual tickets.
Some guidelines to keep in mind include:
- Avoid overreacting to isolated feedback
- Recognize that customer emotions can amplify perceived problems
- Filter feedback from non-ideal customers
- Prioritize feedback in line with your vision
- Be mindful of translation bias
Avoid overreacting to isolated feedback
Each piece of feedback represents just one perspective. As a product manager, your focus should be on overarching themes rather than reacting impulsively to singular issues, unless it pertains to a straightforward concern like a legal infringement. Resist the urge to implement changes based solely on one-off comments.
Recognize that customer emotions can amplify perceived problems
Tune into the language customers use. Exaggerated feedback requires cross-validation. Understand that emotions can drive certain responses, so it’s essential not to accept every comment without scrutiny.
Filter feedback from non-ideal customers
Not all feedback holds equal weight. Evaluate comments through the lens of your ideal customer profile (ICP). Pay attention to the source of feedback. If it originates from users employing your product in unintended ways, their feedback might not align with your product strategy.
Prioritize feedback in line with your vision
As you navigate through customer support insights, ensure you emphasize areas consistent with your company’s broader strategy and vision. Even if certain suggestions seem attractive, they might not align with your product’s long-term objectives.
Be mindful of translation bias
When interpreting feedback shared by customer support teams, be aware of potential biases. Representatives might inadvertently emphasize or minimize certain concerns based on their personal views. Broad statements like “everyone is demanding this feature” or “the payment process is consistently failing” warrant further investigation and data validation.
Conclusion
Customer support, often relegated to the sidelines, is a treasure trove of insights for product teams. Their firsthand experience with user challenges and unfiltered reactions is unparalleled.
However, harnessing these insights is no small task. Product managers need a proactive approach, not just in capturing or examining feedback, but in discerning what truly matters. This entails establishing robust systems and honing the skill of asking pertinent questions.
A close collaboration with customer support equips product managers with a more attuned ear to the voice of the customer, ensuring their strategies are anchored in real-world issues rather than hypothetical scenarios.
Featured image source: IconScout
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