What Is the Product Experience and Why Does It Matter?

Listen to What Your Customers Say

You are never going to be able to improve your product experience unless you are in tune with what customers think and feel about your product. It is all too easy to assume that your product is delivering on its value proposition or that your customers have certain emotions when interacting with your solution, but is this the really the case?

You need to monitor what your users think. Get feedback from them. Find out whether they feel your service meets their personal needs—even if it is fully automated and digital. Make sure that your monitoring systems are up to date and providing the information you need.

Of course, you need to assess your metrics and evaluate things from an analytical point of view. However, at the same time, nothing beats actually having a conversation with your customers. Surveys and discussions can work wonders. Your learnings can help you to fine-tune your solution so it caters to people’s needs.

The trouble is that many people are time poor these days, so not everyone is going to be able to dedicate time to assisting you with improving your product. Therefore, giving research participants an incentive can be an excellent way of encouraging them to provide feedback. For example, you might give them a discount or a free month’s subscription to your software if they answer some questions for you.

Use Early-Warning Systems as Filters

When you consider the sheer number of different options for obtaining feedback that are available to you, you’ll need to find a way to filter the massive amounts of information that you could gather. Early-warning systems make a huge amount of sense.

You don’t need to know about every minute detail of what consumers are moaning about. Let’s face it, a huge river of unfiltered data is not going to be of value to anyone. It would only give you a headache!

So make sure that your systems are well organized and prioritized. Do not do this taking a general point of view. Your approach should be very deliberate. Think about the signals and indicators that are going to be most critical for you to monitor and analyze.

When you’re looking through all of your content in all its different forms, from social to email messages, you need to have an effective way of easily recognizing any sorts of opportunities that would have a high level of value and impact.

Make PX Improvements a Company-Wide Task

In addition to the tips that I’ve mentioned so far, it is also important to make sure that enhancing the product experience is a priority across all of your organization’s departments. You could miss out on considerable potential for improving your product if you do not do this. A lot of businesses think that PX is a task for just one department. This is a big mistake.

Instead, you should educate your entire business on the fundamentals of the product experience. You should also explain what improving your PX could do for the entire company. After all, people are going to appreciate the need for PX only if they understand how it pertains to them and why it is something they should care about.

You do not need to overwhelm people with a huge list of benefits, but as time goes on, you can weave this message into everything you do. Eventually, an appreciation for the value of the product experience should become part of the company culture within your organization. Only this can ensure the very best results.

Prepare for an Educated User Base

Not only do you need to create product tours and provide information for users who are coming to your business with no experience of your product, you also need to make sure that your organization is well prepared to serve a well-educated user base.

There are three different elements you should consider here. You need to think about marketing to these people first and foremost. Rather than simply going all-out with big banners and display ads, provide educational content. Users who are well educated about your product domain tend to be more interested in such content, and this content is how they’ll find your business.

Therefore, when you are trying to reach a well-educated user base, think about producing videos and creating news releases, articles, and blog posts. Focus on empowering people to realize that your solution is the right solution for their problem.

Next, you also need to consider educating people from a product-specific angle. While providing such content might not be the purview of the product-experience team, a significant percentage of each user’s overall satisfaction comes from their ability to locate the answers they need within your content ecosphere. For example, you could leverage an extensive FAQ section, open-source approaches to gathering content, forum-based support, and general knowledge banks.

Finally, creating new functionality and features is critical when it comes to engaging an educated user base. If you don’t invest your time and resources in this way, you won’t be able to retain and delight your most valued customers.

Final Words on the Product Experience

So there you have it: everything you need to know about the product experience. I hope this article has given you a better understanding of what to expect from your product experience and why it is so critically important to your users and your business.

Follow the tips and suggestions that I’ve provided in this article to ensure that you offer your users a better product experience and that your customers’ experiences align with what you expected when delivering your product.