What is ongoing customer discovery and why you can’t afford to outsource it to your customer success teams?

The customer discovery process has primarily been used by product marketing/product management teams at early-stage software companies before they bring their first product to market. It is also used by larger software companies, who are developing new products to enter new markets.  Customer discovery is an iterative process of understanding customers’ situations, needs, and pain points to assess the product market fit for their ideas/solution and use the insights to make product strategy, as well as go-to-market decisions.

However, the customer discovery process should not stop once the product is successfully launched.  Product marketing teams at Product-Led Growth (PLG) companies (i.e., those who have a freemium sign up model, followed by conversion of those customers to a paid model) have a cultural DNA for doing an ongoing customer discovery. They continue to analyze their customer journey and use the insights to continuously reduce the friction in signup and conversion processes. However, the product marketing teams at sales-led-growth companies (i.e., those where sales reps drive revenue) tend to ‘outsource’ customer discovery activity to their customer success teams, once the product is launched.  I consider it to be a huge mistake. Product marketing needs to insource ongoing customer discovery i.e., they should continue to speak with customers on a weekly basis. It is the key to increasing the success of your product and is an important attribute for company building.  

So, why does ongoing customer discovery by product marketing matter?

• It helps Identify addition use cases for your product, that you may not have registered (for example, due to a new regulation or due to a change in market dynamics for your customer)
• It helps you understand the moves being made by competitors in your accounts with related products and helps you provide that input into your product strategy process.  If there is a pattern of your competitors selling related solutions into your customer base, then you should probably build these capabilities in your current product.  
• It provides insights into how your customers are justifying their internal expansion or retention efforts with your product, i.e., how are they selling your solution internally to other groups/to the decision makers.  These insights helps you update your value drivers in your messaging and improve their impact.
• It helps you understand quantitative and qualitative benefits your customers have achieved, that may have been missed by your customer success team.  These insights can inform your sales-facing ROI models, messaging etc.
• Finally, it also helps you see how your customers articulate the value of your product in their own words and language. These insights are pure gold and helps you make your messaging more customer centric.

I recommend that product marketing should talk to at least one customer every week.  It helps you better understand how they are using your product and how your product fits in their “day-in-life’.  It helps you better understand what qualitative and quantitative value they are achieving and what would they lose if your product did not exist?  You should not let your sales reps, or your customer success reps be an intermediary in getting you these deep insights.