How to have effective customer conversations
Having effective customer conversations is a skill every PM needs to have in their arsenal. Unfortunately, this is a type of skill that cannot be developed by pure reading and researching alone. The more conversations you have with customers, the better you get at them. If you’re an experienced PM, think back to your first customer conversation. If you went omg cringe, then you know what we’re talking about and hey, you’ve only gotten better since then If you’re a relatively new PM but have experience talking to customers because you’ve been in support, pre sales, sales - then you’ve got the basics covered and now just need to focus on making these conversations effective. In this post, we examine how to do exactly that in the following sections
when PMs should talk to customers and what to look for
tips for effective conversations
common fears
Bonus 🌟 : handling difficult conversations
When to talk and what to ask
Typically, PMs talk to customers in the following scenarios
Tips for effective customer conversations
Before the conversation
Get context - Context is everything. It’s important to have answers to a few basic questions before hand so that you can hit the ground running and not waste valuable customer face time going over these details:
What does the customer’s organization do?
Who all will you be talking to from the customer’s side?
What are their roles?
What do they use your product for and how do they use it?
What feedback have they provided already?
Most of this information will be available on the tools that your organization uses such as CRM tools like Salesforce, support tools like Freshdesk or customer success tools. For usage and adoption information, you can check out the instrumentation tool your organization uses like Mixpanel. Ensure you have access to these tools. If you aren’t able to get access, then you can bug someone from the GTM team or CSMs for these details. You can also do a quick check on LinkedIn. Having all the context also shows how well connected and coordinated the teams in your organization are and prevents the customer from having to repeat themselves in every conversation.
Prepare, prepare, prepare - A call well prepared for is already half successful. Some points to keep in mind
What are you looking to achieve with this call?
What are the top 3 absolutely essential questions/topics you want to talk to the customer about?
A good practice is also to play out scenarios and practice your responses. Most people will know how they want to start the call but get a little lost when they get responses they aren’t prepared for. A few minutes of silence to process information during the call is ok. But if the response throws you off your rhythm and you don’t know what to ask next, that is a problem.
Set expectations - Now that you’re prepared for your call, make sure to prep the customer also for the call. Customer time is precious and they should know what is expected of them and what they’re going to get out of this. Some key points to cover
What is expected from the customer? - Help the customer prepare for your questions and to get the right people on the call. If you take them by surprise during the call, then most likely, their response will be “Oh I wish I’d known earlier. Unfortunately, I don’t use this feature so much, so I can collect some feedback and send it over.” Great, if that was the only objective of this call - crickets. But instead, if you had reached out before the call with something like this “I would love to understand how your team uses <x feature>. Can you please collect some feedback from your agents who handle calls? It would also be great if you can get a few of them to attend this discussion.” Then, no crickets! Basically, set an agenda upfront and give the customer sufficient time to prepare.
How long is this call for? - This is obviously covered when you set up a meeting on the calendar, but it’s really important to prepare keeping this in mind and also to stick to the time provided. This also indicates the level at which you’re going to probe/get feedback to the customer.
What does the customer get? - There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch! Customer time is valuable time and if you want them to spend 30 minutes revealing their deepest darkest secrets (just kiddin’, hello GDPR), then you have to tell them what they get out of this conversation. It may not seem like much to you but a lot of customers are more than happy to influence how the product/feature is built and to get their hands on early access.
During the conversation
Bring your allies - Try to get someone on the call who has a great relationship with the customer already. This way, you don’t have to start from scratch and spend time trying to break the ice. This person is generally the customer success manager for that customer account. It’s also great to have CSMs on call because they have all the context and will be able to manage expectations and get you out of tight corners.
Execute smoothly - You may have prepped really well for the call but also make sure to get your mocks/product demo accounts in place before the call so that you don’t face any glitches while you’re on call.
Listen intently - While you know exactly what you want to ask the customer, do listen intently to what they’re saying. The beauty is in the details. For example, notice their tone for certain questions, if they’re sharing their screen - see what other tools they use (without being too creepy).
Take notes - For some of us, taking notes is helpful because if something the customer says sparks a question, you can quickly note it down and continue to listen intently and follow up smoothly with the question. Notes also help when you have to think back about this conversation 3 months from now or to provide context to your team. It’s also helpful to let the customer know you’re taking notes so that they don’t feel like you’re distracted (either because of keyboard noises or taking some time to finish noting down what they’re saying).
Record - If taking notes is not your jam, then try to record the conversation (and make sure you have consent from the customer) so that you have something to go back to.
Be flexible - Generally, PMs try to stick to the agenda they have set and prevent the group from digressing. But, the customer may not want to get into the things you want to (even though you’ve set expectations) and that’s ok. Any customer feedback is valuable feedback and, you can always meet them again for the conversation you originally intended to have.
Enable a collaborative discussion - While no one likes a know-it-all (with the exception of Hermione Granger of course), it doesn’t help to be extremely submissive/servile either. Sure the customer is important (probably because they’re paying for your product) and their time is precious but they’re also open to hearing from people who are designing products for other organizations like theirs and have insights into other processes. It’s important to maintain equal footing with the customer so that they can trust you and look to your for advice. Therefore, it’s absolutely okay to say no, but politely.
After the conversation
Yay 🥳 you’re done. Not yet!
Send out follow ups as soon as you can - You had the conversation with the customer and you talked about a few things and agreed on next steps. Make sure that this is sent as a follow up email to all participants, as soon as possible. This makes it easier to schedule a follow up meeting or ask some questions that may occur to you later and basically helps build a great relationship with your customer.
Pass on the recording/notes - Share notes/recordings not just with your teammates but with the customer as well.
Was the conversation effective? - Easy! When you prepared for this conversation, you had a list of questions/topics you were looking to cover. Do you know more about these topics? Then your conversation was effective.
Revisit your top 3 questions - The information you got from this call could help you fine tune your top 3 questions or swap out a question for another one.
Learn and improve with every conversation
If you’re looking to improve the way you have customer conversations, you could
Listen to recordings and reflect on them - This is a little bit like movie stars watching their own movies, slightly cringe but absolutely necessary. It’s important to understand how you sound, how fast you talk and how many “Uhm, ok, you knows” you said on the call (we know this hurts, *there there*)
Get feedback from your co workers on the call - Alternatively, you can discuss this as a goal with a teammate and get them to attend your call (or pass on the recording) so that they can give you detailed feedback.
Attend other calls/listen to recordings - It’s always informative to see what your other coworkers are doing and how they conduct calls.
Common fears
If you’re somewhat new to product management (or not), here are some common fears that are probably on your mind
What if we have nothing to talk about?
What if they think my idea/feature is laughable?
Will they be willing to provide enough information about their processes?
What happens if they ask me a question that I don’t know the answer to?
What if they are super rude to me?
In the book Daring greatly, author Brené Brown talks about shame gremlins. They are the thoughts and questions that occupy your mind when you’re flooded with self doubt and fear of failure. These fears are nothing but your shame gremlins and the good news is there’s way to handle all of these fears.
You very rarely will not have anything to talk about when you’re with a customer, but even if your mind suddenly turns blank, don’t worry the customer will always have a lot to talk about your product (feature requests galore :)!). If you’re looking to validate your idea, then any response is good response. If customers react positively, then great, your idea has received some validation but if their response is lukewarm at best, then also great, because you know now that your idea isn’t a burning problem for the customer.
So, fight those fears by scheduling more and more conversations with customers and learning from them 💪🏿
Handling difficult conversations
This is something that every PM has to deal with inevitably. Tough conversations generally happen due to not setting the right expectations with the customer. In these conversations, the customer is hostile and is most likely threatening to churn. Generally, these customers are frustrated with the different interactions they have had with your product/organization and don’t really want to have another conversation. If they do, they want to use that time to air their unmet expectations.
We won’t get into how to resolve these issues in this post. But, if you’re caught unawares in a tough conversation, here are some pointers
Be calm - The more irritated the customer gets, the calmer you should get if you’re handling this conversation. It also helps to show empathy in some situations.
Ask why - If a customer is frustrated, think about why they’re behaving that way. Why do they want your product to have all of these features? The conversation may not be conducive to asking them “why” questions but once they calm down, you can definitely probe into this.
Try to find middle ground - Let’s say a customer is frustrated because they were promised a certain set of features but they don’t find it in your product. If you’ve been put in a position to placate them, try to get them to meet you in the middle. Can they prioritize their needs? Is there a workaround that you can offer them, till it’s built into the product?
Recommended Reading
A book that really helps how to get started with customer conversations and how to make the best of them is The Mom Test by Rob Fitzpatrick. It’s a short, quick read but will change the way you approach customer conversations.
For those of you who prefer summaries, here’s a great one.