Aligning Product Development with Customer Pain Points

Your Product Managers are talking to customers. So why isn’t your product getting better? A few years ago, I was on a team where our boss had a rule: 🗣️ “Everyone must talk to at least one customer each week.” So we did. Calls were scheduled. Conversations happened. Boxes were checked. But nothing changed. No real insights. No real impact. Because talking to customers isn’t the goal. Learning the right things is. When discovery lacks purpose, it leads to wasted effort, misaligned strategy, and poor business decisions: ❌ Features get built that no one actually needs. ❌ Roadmaps get shaped by the loudest voices, not the right customers. ❌ Teams collect insights… but fail to act on them. How Do You Fix It? ✅ Talk to the Right People Not every customer insight is useful. Prioritize: -> Decision-makers AND end-users – You need both perspectives. -> Customers who represent your core market – Not just the loudest complainers. -> Direct conversations – Avoid proxy insights that create blind spots. 👉 Actionable Step: Before each interview, ask: “Is this customer representative of the next 100 we want to win?” If not, rethink who you’re talking to. ✅ Ask the Right Questions A great question challenges assumptions. A bad one reinforces them. -> Stop asking: “Would you use this?” -> Start asking: “How do you solve this today?” -> Show AI prototypes and iterate in real-time – Faster than long discovery cycles. -> If shipping something is faster than researching it—just build it. 👉 Actionable Step: Replace one of your upcoming interview questions with: “What workarounds have you created to solve this problem?” This reveals real pain points. ✅ Don’t Let Insights Die in a Doc Discovery isn’t about collecting insights. It’s about acting on them. -> Validate across multiple customers before making decisions. -> Share findings with your team—don’t keep them locked in Notion. -> Close the loop—show customers how their feedback shaped the product. 👉 Actionable Step: Every two weeks, review customer insights with your team to decipher key patterns and identify what changes should be applied. If there’s no clear action, you’re just collecting data—not driving change. Final Thought Great discovery doesn’t just inform product decisions—it shapes business strategy. Done right, it helps teams build what matters, align with real customer needs, and drive meaningful outcomes. 👉 Be honest—are your customer conversations actually making a difference? If not, what’s missing? -- 👋 I'm Ron Yang, a product leader and advisor. Follow me for insights on product leadership + strategy.

Customer Success Leaders—If you're not actively shaping the Product Roadmap, you're missing a critical opportunity. The most effective organizations don’t treat CS as a participant—they rely on it as a strategic partner. Product teams should be co-designing the future with their customers. That means: ✅ Understanding emerging use cases and evolving needs ✅ Enhancing the product based on real customer insights ✅ Prioritizing with business impact and revenue in mind In today’s market—where consolidation, cost-cutting, and efficiency are top priorities—building a product that truly solves business challenges is the difference between success and irrelevance. So, how do you drive better alignment between CS and Product? Here’s what I've seen work: 1️⃣ Lead with Data & Insights -Identify the most adopted and least adopted product features -Pinpoint where customers are dropping off and why -Find personas and use cases that drive the most value -Look for patterns and trends across your customer base 2️⃣ Support Data with Customer Stories -Conduct interviews and surveys to capture direct feedback -Dive into workflows and edge cases to understand nuances -Align product evolution with customer goals and business objectives 3️⃣ Prioritize Product Feedback Strategically -Leverage customer data to rank impact and urgency -Tie feedback to revenue—renewals, expansions, and upsells -Ensure recommendations align with the broader product vision 4️⃣ Maintain an Open Dialogue -Establish a structured collaboration rhythm (bi-weekly syncs, Slack channels, shared roadmaps) -Keep all teams informed on designs, timelines, and priorities -Be clear, concise, and adaptable—Product is balancing competing priorities across the org 5️⃣ Close the Loop—Every Time -Set clear expectations with customers early and often -Enable Product teams to engage directly with customers for firsthand learning -Continue gathering feedback even after launch (beta programs, customer advisory boards) At the end of the day, great products are built by teams who stay close to the customer. CS should not be a passive observer in product development—it should be a driving force. When you get this right, you influence retention, expansion, and advocacy. And that’s a business win. __________________ 📣 If you liked my post, you’ll love my newsletter. Every week I share learnings, advice and strategies from my experience going from CSM to CCO. Join 12k+ subscribers of The Journey and turn insights into action. Sign up on my profile.

At Liquifi, we've reached over $100M in total value processed, and we're still growing fast. Here's 4 principles we've used to scale 👇 1 → Identify who you're actually building for And remember — your initial assumptions might be wrong. When we launched, we initially thought Liquifi was mainly for #web3 founders. But when we talked to users, we realized that our main audience is actually CFOs + Heads of Finance. Founders benefit from the product, but its the finance leaders at web3 companies who suffer most directly from the pain of not being able to manage token vesting, compliance complications, etc. That shift in thinking dramatically impacted: > our product roadmap > our user discovery motion > our outbound sales strategy > which features we prioritized — and why > our entire approach to growth 2 → Identify your ICP's hardest-hitting pain points. We knew we were building for CFOs + Heads of Finance—but we needed to intimately understand their day-to-day pain points. Not just what we thought bothered or annoyed them. Oliver Tang and I had worked at crypto co's before Liquifi, so we understand the end problems—but mainly from a beneficiary perspective. Not necessarily from the CFO seat. To tap into the CFO brain, we interviewed tons of them — dug into their psychology, understood their workflows, and figured out where breakdowns + inefficiencies happen. 3 → Ignore irrelevant features If you can't draw a straight line from [feature X] to [solving pain point Y] — don't build it. Stay laser focused on building what solves your ICP's problems. Ignore other distractions. The ideal motion: > Build the simplest solution to your customer's pain point > Make it insanely easy for them to start using and testing it > Gather feedback, then constantly iterate 4 → Relentlessly test your hypotheses. We're always talking to users. Our entire company—every function—stays as close to our end user as possible. It's the only way to really understand what problems we're solving for — and whether our solutions work :)

When brands work on their offerings they often take an inside-out approach. (1) Figure out the offering (2) Assess the competition  (3) Try to retrofit it into something customers want And then have long discussions about why folks aren’t buying…. When we work on positioning it’s the opposite: (1) Understand your customer’s needs (2) Assess the solutions they might consider (3) Find the areas of the offering that satisfy those needs and create separation from competitors When everything you do depends on creating alignment with your customers it makes sense to put it at the front of the line. It’s tricky though to know who the ideal target customer is. It’s about finding the best possible fit between their needs and your solution. To help with that you can use this simple rubric of questions (the “core need” here refers to the brand’s primary focus area): ⦿ Pain Intensity How much of a blocker is the core need for the target customer’s critical work functions if it isn’t resolved? ⦿ Pain Frequency How often does this core need repeat itself for the target customer over the span of a typical month / quarter?  ⦿ Value Alignment How well does the target customer’s core need align with the most valuable aspects of the brand’s offering? ⦿ Solution Awareness How much familiarity and depth of knowledge does the target customer have with possible solutions?  Score each one on a level of 1 to 3 and then add them up. The higher the score the better the alignment between the customer and the brand. (See the graphic for more details) Whether you’re debating between potential segments to focus on or just trying to find one that works, this gives you a way to tease apart the qualities you want to consider. This is key for getting in a customer-first mindset. And it’s absolutely essential for creating positioning that customers actually understand and remember.

At Abacum, we’ve followed a product playbook for about two years and it's worked wonders for us to build a customer-centric product, so I wanted to share some insight on how we do it. By the way, I accredit a large portion of our 4.8/5 G2 rating to this. Here’s the framework we’ve used to stay relentlessly committed to our customers: 1. Weekly customer conversations to become a product expert for real Product managers and designers must hear directly from users. Not yearly. Not quarterly. Weekly. This shows everyone what's working, what isn't, and what to focus on. This should lead the team to become intimately knowledgeable about the persona, their technicalities, and your product. 2. Break down silos Align product and support under one leader so customer insights are not lost in translation. The person who hears the vocal complaints from your customers should be very close and have the capacity to align the product roadmap. 3. Go beyond the product Great PMs are go-to-market-driven. Beyond talking to customers, PMs should also have a broader understanding of where the market is going. They can do this by: → Talking to prospects about unmet needs → Collaborating with GTM teams who hear from a larger, more diverse group of companies → Researching emerging market trends, like the ICP’s tech stacks or workflows The goal with this framework isn’t to build flashy features that sell in demos but fall flat in practice. It’s to create a product that resonates deeply with users, solves real problems, and aligns with where the market is heading. What other strategies have worked for your product team? I’d love to hear your thoughts!