Better Product Managers, and Product Management

With KISSmetrics and KISSinsights both in pretty heavy usage, I’m seeing a lot of support emails and survey responses, and by far my favorite type start with:

“It seems like I should be able to do…”

These are great because they reveal customers’ expectations and the way someone is thinking about the problem that your product solves.

This is what comes next, after customer development interviews and getting a first version of the product out there – making sure the experience makes sense.  You lay the groundwork for this with your initial research, but you won’t get everything right on the first try.  Certain workflows will just feel awkward.  Certain features — which no one remembered before — will suddenly emerge as glaringly absent.

There are times when a customer says “It seems like I should be able to…” and you disagree: you had a reason to not do it that way.  That doesn’t mean you should capitulate to what the customer wants; it also doesn’t mean you should ignore them.

Why you need to understand expectation mismatches

It’s a good opportunity for you to say “We’re not doing it that way … and here’s why.” In my experience, that usually kicks off a really useful conversation that helps me better understand customer needs.  (or, yes, about 5% of the time it leads to people swearing and ranting -but that’s about par for the internet)

They may be masking underlying problems. People who “expect” a product to work one way may have very valid reasons why it can’t work your way — the new way requires access to files they don’t have, requires them to install software but they’re on locked-down corporate workstations, etc.

It’s a silent dealbreaker. If something is blatantly broken, customers won’t hesitate to let you know.  But if it’s just not-quite-right, most people won’t complain – they’ll just stop using your product.  They may think “oh, it must just be me…probably other people wouldn’t mind this” — in fact, I’ve heard plenty of people say exactly that in usability testing sessions before.

Getting more “It seems like I should be able to do…” feedback

Whenever it makes sense, I try to ask “What would you have expected?” or “What did you think you’d be able to do?” in reply to more general support questions.

Also: [SHAMELESS PLUG AHEAD] I use KISSinsights to try to “catch” this kind of feedback when I think a page is “not quite right” (or even/especially if I think it’s awesome).

(All 3 of these questions are available in the free plan.)

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