Top 8 ways used by Product Managers to understand the users

It’s imperative for PMs to have a deep understanding of the users. In order to facilitate that PMs can deploy the below methods to have frequent & deep interactions with the users.

8️⃣. ways to understand users

1. Customer Service Calls
   Every fortnightly PMs should sit at least one day in the call centre & get a first-hand experience of the user's pain point. A customer explaining their pain points and struggle in their own voice in the most vulnerable setting gives multiple signals & assistance to the PMs so that they can build customer empathy over a period of time.
2. Usability Studies
   PMs can collaborate with the UX research team & conduct usability studies. It helps PMs to gain completely new, unbiased & unadulterated feedback from the users.
3. Sales Calls
   It’s one of the effective venues where you can garners & get deep insights into the feature required by the users. It also plays a huge role in shaping the product vision & strategy over the long term.
4. NPS feedback loop closure
   Once you have the NPS ( Net Promoter Score ) in place, it’s time to go through the detractor responses and understand their pain points in more depth. Scheduling a weekly call with a defined set of detractors can help in anticipating the key problem areas in the product & proactively making an attempt to address them.
5. A date with users
   Based on your product, proactively reaching out to users who have been using your product regularly can help to understand the nerve of the users & can also help to get deep insights about the competitors. These users aren’t complaining now but they are surely going to compare your product with competitors so it’s key to understand the trend in advance.
6. Social Media / Playstore Review Analysis
   This analysis is key for keeping a check on customer expectations. Also having a robust mechanism to periodically check on a serious issue can help to inform the users proactively and develop a good rapport with the users.
7. Customer Council
   Based on usage patterns, you can categorize your pro users who are the most frequent users of your product & you can test and get feedback on your product through them. They are the promoters of your product and can help to make you achieve the best version of the product.
8. User interviews
   It’s the most common and frequently used methodology to understand user pain points. Pick a specific user persona and set up a monthly catch-up with them to understand their current pain points and struggles with the product. It should be done in an offline setting so that you are able to capture non-verbal signals as well. It’s best suited for zero-to-one products.

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