Before I begin, I want to thank Daniel Vassallo, a fellow Twitterati for his kindness and just being who he is, unabashedly. He’s a source of inspiration and support.
Customer Obsession
I learnt the term “customer obsession” when I was a product manager (yes, I have been there and done that). I didn’t truly internalise this because most of the time, there was no “real” customer. But, as an entrepreneur, seeing my customers in flesh and skin, took customer obsession to a whole new level. My biggest learning was -
If you really listen to a customer, not only do you learn what they are asking for, verbally, but you transcend words to understand what they truly need. Data surely offers to help you read between the lines, but if you aren’t asking the right questions to begin with, or questioning what the data is saying, data means shit.
A few months ago, I saw that Shaadi.com was running a promotion for a one-month paid membership priced at Rs. 1700 (I lost the screenshot!). If you’re familiar with this industry, 3/ 6/ 12 month subscriptions are typical, so this caught my eye. I quickly looked at Bharatmatrimony and Jeevansathi websites to check if this was driven by competition, but no.
So, I concluded that Shaadi.com had probably got a new “growth” product manager. This feature vanished after a few days, and I figured that the A/B test had failed. I don’t know the PM, but chances are this person has never spoken to a real customer. I know this, because I’ve spoken to hundreds of them (both potential and existing).
So why did the test fail?
I don’t have access to the results of this test, but I am guessing there weren’t enough impressions, views, clicks, increase in revenue or whatever other metrics they track to merit continuing the campaign.
In most mature businesses, products are built top down - you start from the business rather than the customer. So, I am guessing, the PM here started with the assumption that by lowering 3-month to 1-month, he/she would reduce friction for the customer to get a paid membership, improving conversion and resulting in higher revenues.
When you start with the business, these experiments are always a hit or a miss, and in this case, it was a miss. As simple as that.
But, what if you started from the customer?
When you build products starting from the customer, you discover the precise points of friction for the customer to use and engage with your product. This helps you prioritise your A/B tests better. As a PM, building, failing fast and re-building with resilience are important skills, but being right a lot is also equally important.
The only way to increase the odds of being right is to start from the customer. As a PM, if you don’t stand guard for your customer, chances are, no else in your org will.
So what does your customer want?
When a customer signs up on Shaadi.com (or any matrimonial website for that matter), they have no clue what the website has to offer them or what they’re paying for. The UX isn’t intuitive, there’s too much cognitive overload, yada yada yada. So typically, there is a lag in conversion.
The business views the lag as a drop in engagement and potential churn. So, they employ pesky sales executives who harass the daylights out of their customers by calling them incessantly until they’ve coughed up money for a paid membership. Most of them will reluctantly sign up for a 3-month membership because that’s the least they can do to deal with the spam (if they don’t delete their accounts).
The customer is so overwhelmed and exhausted by this point, they don’t actually end up using the product unless the customer is a desperate parent with time on hands (who cause churn anyway) or a broker using your platform to grow their database. But there’s no way to know/ acknowledge this especially when you start from the business.
So, really, the first order of business is to find out who your customer is, what they want and how their needs evolve over a period of time.
So, who is your customer?
I don’t know. But I am hoping you know. If not, here are some ways to find out:
Firstly, I’ll use existing data to profile your customers into various cohorts based on their behaviour on your platform. Two axes that I’d use are willing to get married (consistent engagement) and willingness to pay (depth of engagement), like this:
I’d start with the largest cohort, and understand their biggest points of friction using data (analyse sessions data, user journey, etc.) to use the product effectively. My guess is that people who are interested to get married but are unwilling to pay is the largest, but if I am wrong, I would love to discuss.
Secondly, I’ll put your sales agents to better use. Given that they’re anyway calling every single customer multiple times, I’ll get them to understand the biggest customer pain points to help validate the earlier hypothesis about points of friction. This would help you prioritise removing them (not the agents, LOL) so that the customer is able to see value in your product.
Thirdly, I’ll use existing new age models (like DinnerClub) to make introductions and increase the depth of engagement which will further improve usage among the customers pushing their willingness to pay.
Given how large Shaadi.com is, I’d imagine they went through this exercise on their own anyway. If not, I hope someone from Shaadi.com reads this newsletter, fails fast and builds something else, in true product manager style ;)
And, no, I don’t want to be a product manager for Shaadi.com. But having learnt how to use their product over the last couple of years, I like their product much better than their competitors. So, anything to help, really.
If you found this edition too geeky, don’t worry, I’ve got something interesting for the next edition - pleasure and power in the bedroom. So, stay tuned!
Sneak peak into what I’m reading/ watching/ listening to:
K-Drama saga continues: I finished Crash Landing on You, Marriage Contract, Descendants of the Sun and Vincenzo. Now I am onto Because this is my first life. These shows are so far from reality and reality. God Bless Korea.
The unforgiving city and other stories by Vasudhendra: I love the author, and I am fortunate to have met him in person. I love his writing, but his personality even more. Absolute no airs about him.
Book of Life by J.Krishnamurthi: I can’t recommend this book enough. I’ve never read a book for the second time in my life, but this one, I am on my third reading. I pick a random page and read multiple times, I love it.
Manifestation: I discovered Lacy Phillip a week ago, and ever since, I’ve been hooked. It may sounds crazy, but its great for intense emotional therapy.
Shapely Gal song of the month: What we had by NGTY and ALEV. So trippy.