Week 39: Customer focus, the adoption S curve and Dan Brown
Your weekly roundup of all things product management, technology and work life.
Happy Friday everyone! Welcome back to The Millennial Product Manager, your weekly product manager newsletter.
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On to this week’s thoughts and updates:
1. Focusing on your customer is always a good answer
I was on a customer call this week. We started our conversation with a discussion about the features they’re looking for in our products. Which can be a bit nerve-wracking, you do a lot of work as a product manager to make sure these conversations go well and you’re on top of what your customers need.
You can imagine how rewarding it is then when, on this call, you hear a feature that you just released that they want. “Can you support Spanish as a language to chat with?” Of course we can Ms. Customer! Of course we can.
Why were we on top of it with this customer? We had heard from other customers that Spanish was important for their users. We had done our research that showed that supporting Spanish would open up new markets and swaths of users. We did our planning, leveraged our mountain of evidence and made the right call to support it now to meet our customers needs.
We focused on our customers’ needs and it paid off. It usually does.
Does it mean doing everything that your customers ask? Not necessarily. Not everything makes sense, many things are customer specific for example and just aren’t high opportunity.
But more often than not your customers are great at communicating what they need. You just have to get really good at listening and responding.
2. We Innovators always think we’re further on the adoption S curve (we def aren’t yet for AI)
I’ve been making products for a little over 15 years now. I’ve seen a lot of shit go up, down and sideways, but there are still a few constants.
One constant that shows up over and over again is the product/technology adoption S curve.
On this S curve, something I see a lot is that those of us working in tech that live and breathe this stuff every day are on the front of this curve. But most people are in the last two fifths of the curve. And it’s pretty consistently true, since I’ve been alive we’ve had the PC revolution, the internet, mobile, crypto and AI all truck through here. And almost every time, as someone in the Innovators section of the curve, I encounter so many people that believe deep in their bones that we’re farther along the curve than we actually are.
Myself included! Early in my career, I bet on myself and did a startup trying to connect energy efficiency data together in one unified dashboard like Mint.com if you’re old enough to remember that. 😭 That reality still hasn’t materialized…15 YEARS LATER. All of us innovators think we’re later on the curve than we actually are. It’s our burden to bear.
So when I came across the article below, I wish I could say I was surprised but I wasn’t:
Most people still use ChatGPT the way they use Google, mostly keyword search. And in the article, they talk about how most people can see AI take on simpler things like forecasting the weather, but not more complex and human-nuanced things like counseling on God and faith (spoiler alert: AI can do that too!)
We still have a long way to go up the S curve. I suspect it will happen somewhat faster than with other technologies, but we’re still in early innings.
3. Recommended Reading: The Secret of Secrets
Okay okay, I know I usually share something useful in terms of books. But dang it all, this book is super fun and great listening while taking breaks or walks. I’m a sucker for Dan Brown novels, so this one doesn’t disappoint. And as a sign of the times, this book has already been picked up for a Netflix series. I’m 70% of the way through, can’t wait to see how it ends! Probably this weekend 😂
That’s it for this week!
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I’ll be back around this time next week with more useful product manager things!