How to Grow Your Business by Changing Product Dimensions

Customers Were Not Using the Product for More Than a Year

"Customers were not using our product for the proper use cases."

As the head of product, one of the problems that I faced was that customers were not using our product for the proper use cases. As a result, after a year or so, they’d change to other competitors that had better strategies. However, we could not figure out what exactly was the problem with our product. It was more like a Swiss army knife that could be used for various business problems and other strategies, but we couldn’t retain our customers even then.

Maximize the Profitability of Each Customer

The first step of action was to work on a product strategy; instead of providing a solution or asking the customer to use the product however they wanted, I changed the synopsis. I showcased some of the strengths of our products. We changed our go-to marketing strategy in such a way that we built out an entire solution for a specific use case. As an alternative, we started targeting particular customers to tailor-meet their specific needs for these use cases.

Nobody can walk in and change the strategy or the processes that have been in place ever since. I tried to understand their perspective on what the product should and should not do. I worked with my team and aligned them all on the same page before I could talk to my manager about anything.

Many questions revolved around whether it would mean the same for customers who buy the product. We were looking at Usage frequency by different customers as the value driver for our company. However, as I stepped in, I changed the approach to a Flywheel approach, whereby, for a customer to be successful with our product, there were a series of sequential steps that a customer would have to take.

As the customer went through the entire process, that was when they would be considered to be successful. Not only does launching an exchange make them successful, but other processes need to happen along with that.

Value Your Employees Just as Much as Your Customers

• Getting everyone into confidence and ensuring that everyone is a part of the problem-solving process will ensure that your solution is welcomed.
• Communicate the actions back to the customers. It will help them stick around for an extended period of time. When they see the value of the product, they are likely to stay with you.