Keeping the “C” in CX: why a digital product roadmap without customer insight is doomed

As a marketing leader, you’re often the first person to recognize when your digital product team is missing the voice of your customer. You may be reading bad reviews or hearing it directly from customers. Every product needs to be customer-driven for it to be successful. And you firmly believe that if your product and engineering teams could get on the same page about customer feedback, you would have an essential financial services product on your hands. 

Sure, your engineering team may say they understand the customer, but are they actually doing the legwork? You know your customer insight should be based on qualitative and quantitative research, like interviews, surveys, and analytics. But in most cases, product and engineering departments lean much more heavily on qualitative research, and lighter on the quantitative. Their evidence for what your financial services product needs basically boils down to anecdotes and “instinct.” 

If it seems like building your digital product is waylaid by endless conversations with tech and product developers, you need to nip it in the bud. Make customer insight a priority, before you spend millions on an unsuccessful product.

Beware of internal teams who “just know” what your financial services customer needs

Building a digital product is like building a house. You can’t make a home (or build brand loyalty) without laying a solid foundation first. That foundation starts with making sure every department is properly aligned on the most powerful customer experience possible. 

To that end, there are a few common conversations marketing teams have when trying to align their organization around a product vision. Communication between departments tends to be  siloed, and everyone has a different motivation for what product to build and how to build it. 

The product team may be motivated by competition with other digital financial services products. They want to have the hottest tech feature — one they’re convinced will give them a competitive edge. They also assume the customer will be just as excited as they are about these features. And your CEO and sales team? Your biggest client keeps telling them about a recurring problem they think can be solved with, say, a multi-million dollar solution. 

Another common scenario: the tech team, after weeks and months of building out a complex (and expensive) digital product, can’t imagine going back to square one. What was all their hard work for? Even if some of their work is salvageable, it’s still a blow to their collective ego. When you tell them you plan to so much as improve your company’s website, all they hear is  you’re throwing the baby out with the bathwater. 

And let’s be honest, your marketing team is guilty of “just knowing,” too. Have you ever pushed product roadmaps that don’t have any utility for their customer? But regardless of which department leads the charge, if there are major gaps in the customer experience, your customer will feel it immediately and everyone will see it in the KPIs eventually. 

Before you align on a product vision, here are some truths that every financial services enterprise needs to know.

Successful products are built alongside your customers 

Your customer’s voice is the most important in the room — not the biggest paycheck or the squeakiest wheel. By bringing customers into the process, teams can inherently create more value for them. Ignoring customer needs or releasing features that seem “cool” or marketable can create apathy and frustration among a customer base. 

Here’s an example. You’re a relatively new financial services company— let’s say a financial health app. Your CEO wants to roll out an NFT feature. The feature gets greenlit immediately. No benchmark surveys, no user testing or interviews. It’s all systems go. Our consulting team would call that hasty to say the least. Upon surveying customers, you might find that an NFT feature doesn’t actually excite your customer base as much as it does your CTO. It’s completely impractical.

Maybe the most valuable feature would be enabling notifications on your product’s web version. Or perhaps having the customer’s older bank statements appear as they scroll to the bottom of their statement page. 

Had your team listened to its customers and known about these gaps (quick fixes, not new functionality), they wouldn’t have spent all that time, resources, and money to build an entirely new feature your customers weren’t asking for in the first place.

Plainly put, products driven by your product or engineering team are more expensive. Without customer feedback, your entire team risks lengthy and expensive engineering cycles only to produce features your customers don’t find valuable. You can (and will) see it in your analytics, as well as in the dwindling number of customers who use your product. 

On top of that, a product vision without the customer’s voice creates internal friction among departments that can’t align on the end-to-end customer journey. When departments agree on a customer-centric approach that creates an ideal customer journey, everyone wins.

Customer insight programs build product value

If you need to prove to your C-suite, or even another department, that a new product or feature is worth an expensive development cycle, you first need to show it has value to the customer. A customer insight program is an impact multiplier. Not only does it inform your product roadmap, but it can also create internal buy-in and alignment.

Start by creating a baseline through some of the research methods we mentioned earlier — benchmark surveys, customer interviews, and A/B testing. Your entire customer insight program should inform every iteration and every prototype as the product evolves. This kind of consistency is what allows you to build value with every release. Moreover, a customer insight program can differentiate your product and create brand loyalty with customers. 

Partner with a team who will advocate for your customer at every step

You can push for customer-driven products until you’re blue in the face, but sometimes it takes an outsider to change hearts and minds. 

O3 can step in and serve as the outside perspective your team sorely needs. We’re your liaison between siloed departments, who advocate for customer utility at every step of the product vision and roadmapping process. In fact, we have our own customer insight program we use to gain a holistic view of your customer experience and build ready-to-market prototypes. The result is outstanding customer feedback along with increased brand loyalty and ROI on your must-have financial services products.

Looking to put the “C” back in your CX? Let’s talk.