Keys to Success for Platform as Product: Customer Empathy
What if I told you there was a way to help overcome one of the biggest problems facing platform teams? I’m talking about adoption. It is commonplace for platforms to get built and then not get used due to lack of user adoption. This is doubly ineffective because we’re not only not solving the problems we set out to solve, but we’re also wasting time and resources building something that no one uses. As we move to treating our technology platforms as products a key element to improving adoption is customer empathy. In this second installment of the series we’ll look at just that.
Our goal in moving to a platform as product model is to make organizations more effective and efficient through better use of technology. Enabling developers to own their applications from development through to production is a crucial aspect of this model. This approach and mindset is different from how we are used to doing things in a purely services organization. In the services model we are primarily engaged in executing tasks, both large and small on behalf of users. In a product model, we instead build a platform out of self-service components that developers can use to build the products and features that the company delivers to end users. In order to do this, the platform needs to be easy to use and understand. This is where customer empathy comes in.
What is customer empathy? Customer empathy is the process of looking at things from the customer’s perspective. It is meant to help you understand what the customer is experiencing when using your system and how they feel about it. If your goal is to make a developer’s life easier, then understanding their perspective is more than useful, it is essential. Without this perspective, you run the risk of creating features and an overall platform that does not have the desired impact on the business.
So how does customer empathy help us with adoption? It is a frequent occurrence that a team builds a platform and fails to get users to migrate to it. There are two big significant for this: a) the platform may not be solving actual user pain points, and b) the users may not feel invested in the solution.
In the case of not solving customer pain points, this can originate from a lack of understanding of the customer’s perspective. If you approach the problem from your own point of view, the platform may be solving your own pain points, but then you are not building a product to appeal to others. An example is asking developers to go through a new process for creating new builds which automates a significant portion of your work in configuring the CI system but is quite onerous for them (e.g. requires reading lots of documentation and following a number of steps). Contrast this with identifying a user need to add a new stage to the build process that requires lots of small changes to many builds and offering them a solution that automates this process. In the first case, you are solving your own pain points, in the second you are solving theirs. Which do you think users will be more eager to adopt?
The second reason for lack of adoption is that users may not feel invested in the solution. If the platform is developed without user input and feedback, then they may feel reticent to adopt. It could even come close to satisfying many of their needs, but without the input, they can’t be sure just what problems are being solved or what new ones might be created. Adopting a new platform requires effort and changing ways of working and with this uncertainty they may not feel motivated to put in the effort to adopt it. Contrast this with a platform that has been developed with user input and feedback with an effort to address problems they feel are important. In this case, the users are much more likely to adopt something new that they believe will make a material impact on their lives.
In the first installments of this series, we looked at roadmaps and how they can be a way to communicate your plans and start creating useful interactions with your customers, AKA users. While the dialog this creates can go a long way towards bridging the gap with your users, how can we go further and really understand their needs and pain points?
There are a number of ways to achieve customer empathy and we’ll explore a few here. Think of this as a survey of methods to get you thinking and researching how you can better understand your users’ perspective.
* Talk to your users: The easiest way to find out how your users are feeling about your solutions is to ask them! Create a standardized interview format that focuses on the day to day experiences of the user and find out what they are thinking.
* Customer journey mapping: Another way to understand what your users are experiencing is to map out the journey they go through to get work done. Create personas for different types of users and map them out separately. Take the results back to your users and see if you got things right.
* Focus on user-centric design: UX professionals have a number of tools to use to understand user needs and pain points, including using design thinking, prototyping and user testing. These techniques can help in developing empathy for your users and building a platform that is easy to use.
* Feedback and iteration: Empathy means understanding your users’ point of view. Getting feedback on what you are building for them is a great opportunity to get this understanding. Working iteratively and having a forum for feedback gives you more opportunities to find out what users are feeling. The feedback helps you build exactly what is required and the users are invested in the solution.
* Surveys: Surveys are another great way to find out user sentiment and overall satisfaction. Keep your surveys consistent and watch for trends over time and be mindful of survey fatigue.
* Shadowing: Perhaps the best way to understand your users’ perspective is to experience it directly. Take the time to spend a day in the life of a few of your users and gain valuable insight into how their work is impacted by your system.
By creating a culture of customer empathy and utilizing the above techniques, you can significantly enhance the chances of solving your users’ actual problems. This, in turn, increases the adoption rate and makes the entire organization more efficient in delivering value to the business and its customers.
So we set out with the premise that customer empathy can help us improve adoption of our platform. We looked at a couple of reasons why adoption can be low: a) the platform may not be solving actual user pain points and b) the users may not feel invested in the solution. We looked at how customer empathy can help with both of these issues and several techniques for achieving it. I hope this has given you some ideas to to consider while taking your journey to platform as product.
