It's a rain-soaked chat this time as Tom and Corissa wander through Bournemouth in a downpour.
We tackle a thought-provoking LinkedIn question from WP Engine's Jason Cohen – a question about how to listen to customers when they ask for features.
00:29 LinkedIn inspiration and the big question we're tackling today
02:28 Customer feedback creates an apparent puzzle
03:40 Mistakes we've made by asking people what they want
05:14 Secret 1: what do people already do?
07:37 Secret 2: imagine your company is a big metal box
10:50 You're always limited by your own internal perspective, and that's OK
16:51 Secret 3: there's no such thing as a feature
19:48 The story in your customer's head is different from the story in your head
20:18 Don't make things look simpler than they are
20:48 \"Feature\" is just a label to make your own life easier
21:41 Secret 4: build as little software as possible to enable the most behaviours that create value
23:32 When customers are reduced to a metric
24:18 Why an Impact/Effort Matrix to decide on features will fool you
27:32 Real-world example: a Calendly integration project
33:33 Unfolding ideas by soaking in rich customer context
36:25 SenseMaker for generating insights in a very different way
38:30 When you try to make too much explicit, you get in trouble
\"Ask a customer if they’ll use a feature…
They say “yes” but don’t use it.
Ask them to name a feature they actually want and there’s the “faster horse” problem of incremental improvement instead of vision.
What’s the answer? Just “gut feel” and sometimes you’re right?\"