How to Leverage Your Greatest Assets to Drive Your Roadmap

Customers are a company’s most valuable assets, but not for the reason you think. Naturally, having customers who pay for your products or services is key to a company’s success. But even more valuable to a company’s success is gathering and listening to customer feedback.  

Consider the amount of time customers spend with your products, using them to solve problems and enrich their lives or businesses. They are bound to have feedback and opinions about how your product can be improved to help them achieve better outcomes.  

Ultimately, customers have a front seat to witness your company’s success journey, so why not involve them in it? Here are some ways to include customers in your product roadmap to ensure you’re leveraging them—your greatest assets—for success. 

Put products in customers’ hands early  

When an idea sparks an entrepreneurial endeavor, the vision of the perfect final product often seems clear. As you begin to bring the idea to life and inch closer to your initial vision, you may be reluctant to let others test out an unfinished, imperfect version. However, waiting for a perfect or “customer-ready” product before releasing it to the public is counterproductive.  

Business leaders should trust their customer base for essential feedback that will drive decisions about how to strengthen their product. Most customers are grateful to have a helpful product that can make an immediate impact on their lives or their businesses, and they are more than willing to let you know how they think the product can be improved. Just be willing to have that honest conversation letting them know that while the product isn’t perfect, you’re trusting them with early access to it because you value their feedback. 

Seeking input as early as possible when developing new features and product offerings allows users of your product to actively engage and participate in improving it. This early feedback leads to innovative ideas that can change the trajectory of your company, while building customer trust and loyalty from early adopters.  

It also directs your product development team to spend time on the most useful improvements. Developers need the most current information from customers about how to tackle their real-world problems to make meaningful product roadmap changes. 

Align roadmap to customer needs 

Seeking out customer feedback early and often ensures your company is building a business that solves problems and addresses customer pain points. This prevents lost development time as employees won’t be devoting time to bells and whistles that your customers don’t actually need. Resist the temptation to add the shiny new technology or the latest trendy feature to your product offering. If it doesn’t align with the value that your customers want and need to improve their lives or businesses, it’s not worth building. 

The outcome from using your product is the most important thing to your customers, and therefore should be the driving force behind your product roadmap. Aim to build the exact solutions your customers need, versus dedicating precious time to extraneous features.  

Relentless attention to user feedback through direct engagement with your customers will ensure you’re building a product that’s useful and solves common pain points. Seeking your customers’ constant input also leads to breakthrough ideas that improve your product and give your company a competitive edge. 

Make customers part of the process 

As soon as your product is in your customers’ hands, you’ll begin realizing the benefits of allowing them to become part of your process. They will likely make suggestions and ask important questions—ones your team might have never considered internally. Being agile and quickly adapting to their wants and needs will enable you to innovate faster and more effectively, ultimately reshaping your vision for the company. 

Involving your customers in your company’s product development and roadmap has the added benefit of making them feel helpful, heard, and special. Allowing them to participate in building something that helps themselves and others creates life-long customers who really love your brand.  

Keep track of who contributed the feedback that led to a new product enhancement along with that person’s contact information so you can let them know when the new feature based on their idea is ready. Invite them to try it out and offer even more feedback. Recognizing customer contributions will turn them into evangelists of your product who are willing to play a role in marketing and selling it. A few may even become investors in your company. 

Establish long-term relationships 

Establish a long-term roadmap that is driven by customer feedback well beyond the beginning stages of your company. That level of customer care and attention goes above and beyond what is provided by most other businesses, and it conveys a values-driven business that is highly attractive to existing and prospective customers. 

A product is never really finished, because there is always room for improvement, especially as customer needs and demands shift over time. The key is to ensure your customers remain part of the process throughout the product lifecycle, and that you continuously seek and use their feedback to learn, measure, and iterate. That will ensure your business roadmap is set up for growth.