Building a product from the ground up is a hard thing to do. It is much more difficult when you are trying to make your customers love your product. Product experience is all about users. They should be the sole focus.

A product is not only a service or a technology that your customers use, but it is also the entire experience. Product managers think that only technology and the final product is everything, but they forget about the fact that it is all about users. If your product is perfect as it is but makes the users go through a sloppy process, then you have a failed product. This is why you need to create and optimize every aspect of the customer experience. Because customers judge your product based on each interaction they have at different steps.

Why is product experience important?

If you give your customers a terrible product experience, then they will never become your customer again. It chases away new users as well as makes them hate your product. They are known to increase the churn rate, reduce loyalty and decrease the Customer Lifetime Value. But if you provide them with great product experience, then it increases CLV, builds credibility, improves the scores of all customer experience metrics like CES, CSAT, NPS, etc.

A lot of products lack that punch because there has never been a lot of importance attached to giving the users a great experience while using the product. Having a great customer onboarding process is the start towards having a fantastic product experience. A customer should be able to use the entire gamut of functionalities without feeling exhausted and confused at any point of time.

With subscription models gaining mainstream, it is all the more easy for your customers to leave you for a competitor. Even a free product should be able to deliver on the product experience front.

Who is part of the product experience?

Product managers are the ones who are solely responsible to enhance the product experience. The UI/UX and design employees form a part of it. They are the ones who need to create an interface which is optimized from the perspective of a customer. In fact, anyone who is a part of the product building phase is responsible for giving a smooth product experience.

If your company works in silos, then destroy that setup and work together as a team. There should be information exchange among different departments in your company so that everyone is in the know. There are departments like sales and customer care which are not part of the product team but are more likely to interact with the customers on a more personal level. Why not include them in the product experience as well because they would have a lot to offer since they would have spoken to thousands of customers over time.

Marketing teams are also resources that can give great perspectives because they know the kind of content and messaging that works and how a new feature will be welcomed or taken advantage of by a user.

Here’s another thing that a lot of businesses miss. Customers. Ask your customers too. Bring them in for Focus Group Discussions, interview them, get on a phone call with them, send them a survey using SurveySparrow, and so on. to pick their brains.

Elements of creating a terrific Product Experience:

1. Feedback

Getting an opinion from customers when launching a product should be the first thing that comes to a business’ mind. You can use various channels to collect feedback from customers. If you have an email list of customers, then using an online survey tool like surveysparrow is the easiest thing to do. It could be in the form of surveys, interviews, emails, etc. Not only should you get feedback from prospective customers, but also from the ones who are not part of your buyer persona. You will never know the kind of unique perspective that you can get from someone.

Collecting feedback should be a regular affair. You should have a plan when it comes to using the feedback that you got from your customers. Close the feedback loop by checking back with your customers as to why they gave a particular rating. When you do this exercise, you will not end up making the product experience better, you will also create a better experience of using your product, and interactions with your customer support team.