How Product Managers Can Learn to Understand Their Customers

If you want to be successful as a product manager than you are going to have to be able to create products that solve problems for your customers. In order to do this, you are going to first have to understand your customers – what are their wants and needs? What You'll Find Inside: HOW TO MOVE FROM CUSTOMERS TO PARTNERS WHAT PRODUCT MANAGERS NEED TO KNOW ABOUT CUSTOMER LOYALTY WHY PRODUCT MANAGERS NEED TO LEARN TO LOVE THEIR CRAZY CUSTOMERS PRODUCT MANAGERS DON’T LIKE SURPRISES: KNOW YOUR PRODUCT’S CUSTOMERS! In order to be able to answer questions like this, you may find out that you are going to have to fire some of your customers – they are just too expensive for you to try to keep happy. Ultimately you want to change the relationship that you have with your customers and move towards being seen as more of a partner than a vendor. In some cases, one of your customers may start to use your product too much. In these cases you'll need to be able to find a way to tell them to stop using it. You'll be able to do this if you've found a way to have a real relationship with your customer. However, along with this comes the risk of perhaps finding out too much about a given customer. Once you have a customer, you may not have them forever. Customer loyalty is a fickle thing that product managers need to understand. One way to increase loyalty is to customize your product and engage in some niche marketing. All customers are not created the same and so product managers need to take the time to understand their differences. This means learning to love the crazy ones or realizing that you may be selling primarily to grandparents. Take the time to study product managers who know how to do this right and in the end, make sure that you don't end up surprising your customers – nobody likes that!