Client Requests
Being part of a growing startup, we get feature requests from our clients. When we were first getting started, we were still missing some key functionality in our product so we pretty much used client requests to prioritize what to work on first. Now that our core feature set is built, we can be a bit more nuanced in what to do with client requests. This is easier said than done.
As you start to scale, you remember the beginning days, and have such a wanting to delight your clients that you want to say YES to every request. This is a problem. It is easy to get sidetracked and not stayed focus on your goals and your product strategy. Instead of just saying YES, you must validate the request. I use a trick that reframes the request to do this. I pretend the request isn’t coming from a client but instead is a feature idea our product team has introduced that needs to be groomed and validated. Using this trick makes it a lot easier to see if this request fits in with your strategy, and makes it a lot easier to see how it fits alongside your priorities.
Importantly, this trick also keeps the ownership of the product process with the product team and not your clients. This may seem counter intuitive - to build the best product for my clients shouldn’t I build along side their needs? Not totally. Remember you are the domain expert on your product space. And your clients don’t know about the needs and wants of your other clients. You should obviously take every bit of a feedback in. But client feedback is just one part of the product process and client feedback means synthesizing all feedback not overreacting to one specific client.
You will scale because your clients love your product today. When this happens they will make requests to add and extend it. Using this trick will make it easier for your product team to keep building a product your clients will love tomorrow.