1.
How we used
customer feedback to
build Product Insight
MICHELLE HUFF
CMO
UserTesting

2.
Tactics to build shared
understanding of your
customer
Framework for getting
buy-in across your org
Fast
Winning
Hearts & Minds
What you get out of this talk….

3.
Why this matters
Maximizing time
to customer
value wins!
Alignment
around your
vision & the
value
Avoid second-
guessing,
debating,
HIPPOs

4.
Our Venture
Product Managers: A new target audience
Strategic bet.
Needed to validate the market, problem &
solution

5.
Shared Understanding of the Customer
USERTESTING

6.
Key Product Questions
Solution
What’s the best,
lightest solution I
can build for them?
Customer
Who is my
customer?
Problem
What is
their
problem?

7.
Key Stakeholder
Groups Leaders
Sales &
Support
Exec Sponsors
Core XFN
Team
Get alignment
within each group.
Work your way
from the inside,
out.
Company

8.
Start with Your Core Team
USERTESTING

9.
Core Team
Everyone builds customer empathy
- Engage everyone on the team in
gathering customer feedback
Communicate & adjust/person
- Slack, email, decks, meetings, notes
- Research plan, recruiting, interviewing,
note-taking, findings, actions
Build a “shared understanding”
- No one wants to build something
they don’t understand or aren’t
bought into
Product
Manager
EngineerDesign
Product
Marketing
Data
Science
User
Research
Squads @
UserTesting

10.
Maximize Research Efficiency
• Key research
questions
• Methodology
• Success /
decision criteria
Be
Transparent
Share
Findings
Evidence-
Based
Timebox
Research
• Next, research
• And share
findings out
• Constantly
reinforce
• To move fast
• 1-2 weeks

11.
Radiate this Information Out
Through Your Org
USERTESTING

12.
Key Stakeholder
Groups Leaders
Sales &
Support
Exec Sponsors
Core XFN
Team
Get alignment
within each group.
Work your way
from the inside,
out.
Company

13.
Bring People Along
on Your Journey
Exec Sponsors: e.g. CEO, CMO, CRO, Founders
- They will help push this down & through their orgs
- Have to be bought in early. Leverage their
expertise.
Sales & Support (key front-line folks + leaders)
- They will help realize this product
Leaders & then the whole company
Share Findings. Assert your POV
Ask “How does this resonate with your experience?”

14.
Find the Right Forum
Company
Brown
Bags
Exec
Reviews
1:1 Team
Meetings
Recorded
Trainings

15.
15
Who is your customer?
What is their problem?
USERTESTING

16.
Needs Discovery Interview Questions
Who is your customer? What is their problem?
Tell me about your
role?
Goals for the year.
Biggest challenges.
What keeps you up
at night?
How & when do you get
customer feedback / do
research? Tell me
about an experience.
What made it easy?
What made it
frustrating / hard?
What did you use
to do it?
How similar was
your most recent
experience (how
you typically do it)?
Want to show you
some early sketches
and get your
feedback.

17.
PMs Roles &
Responsibilities
Their Usage of
Research & Data
Their Pain Points &
Use Cases
Example:
Findings Agenda
for Stakeholders
Their Reactions to
Early Solutions & Ideas

18.
18
Customer + Problem
Product teams, especially Product Managers, need a way
to make faster, better product decisions based on
customer feedback
USERTESTING
EXAMPLE CUSTOMER- PROBLEM STATEMENT

19.
Who is the
customer? What
is their problem?
Come back with
solution ideas &
timelines /
milestones
Show designs last
Sharing: Phase it Out
Phase 1: Phase 2: Phase 3:
Remind them each time of what we learned last time
You can never repeat this enough

20.
20
What is the best, lightest solution?
USERTESTING

21.
Core Team Brainstorm: Map Solutions to Needs
Customer Needs Our Solution
Bandwidth constraints
Expert research guidance
Insights for every stage of
development
• Language & product
orientation/functionality focused on fast problem-
solving & what PMs want to accomplish
• Quick Answers:
preformatted studies requiring minimal input from
customer (task/question creation is handled by UT)
& easy to consume reports with automatically
extracted insights/highlights (built around their use
cases).
• Live Conversation:
same-day video interviews when PMs want to dig
deeper

22.
Prioritization
Effort
Impact
Idea Idea Idea Idea
Idea Idea

23.
Template: Testing product ideas as a landing page
Feature 1
1 - 2 sentence description
Feature 2
1 - 2 sentence description
Feature 3
1 - 2 sentence description
Your 1-Line Value Prop Here

24.
Sharing Your Solution
1. Provide context on how you validated it
2. Map customer needs directly to the feature set
3. Share the value prop & feature list before
designing & sharing designs
4. Designs last!

25.
Build Fast
What can we stand up in 1 - 3 weeks to test our
assumptions?

26.
26
Recap
USERTESTING

27.
Build a Shared Understanding
Solution
What’s the best,
lightest solution I
can build for them?
Customer
Who is my
customer?
Problem
What is
their
problem?

28.
Radiate it out
Leaders
Sales &
Support
Exec Sponsors
Core XFN
Team
Get alignment
within each group
Company

29.
Thank You!
Michelle Huff
CMO
mhuff@usertesting.com
@michelle_huff