How to Gather

and Leverage
Deep User
Insights
A Guide to
Becoming a
Customer-Driven
Product Organization
 Table of CONTENTS

INTRO
Why deep user insights are a
core pillar of Product Excellence

CHAPTER ONE
A step-by-step guide to
gathering deep user insights

10

CHAPTER TWO
How to turn deep user insights
into excellent products
INTRODUCTION

Why deep user

insights are a
core pillar of
Product
Excellence

Through thousands of conversations with the product

community, we’ve discovered that the most successful product
makers share three areas of mastery: deep user insight, a clear
product strategy, and an inspiring roadmap. These are the three
pillars of what we call “Product Excellence.”
deep user
insight
(noun)

A state where
the entire product team
has a shared understanding
of what users really need
5
 Let’s start with a definition. When we use the term “deep user
insight,” we mean that the entire product team has a shared
understanding of what users really need.

How do they achieve this understanding? By gathering and

organizing all incoming feedback into a central repository that is
accessible to all.

Deep user insight doesn’t just take place at one level or on one
team—it’s a concerted effort that involves people from the entire
organization.
*A quick note about the
term “product maker”: In the top customer-driven product organizations, everyone is
We understand that equipped with an understanding of user needs. This allows them
there are numerous to excel in their work—whether that's prioritizing, designing,
people involved in the developing, promoting, supporting, or selling. After all, product
product development touches every team, and everyone benefits when it is excellent.
process, and, as we’ll
argue throughout this
guide, they should all be
Deep user insights help you
collecting and
synthesizing deep user
build the right products in the
insights. In addition to first place
product managers, there
are designers, Product makers become disconnected from what their users need
engineers, and user for a number of reasons. Perhaps your organization is sales-led,
researchers. For the and your features reflect the needs of your most important
sake of simplicity, we’ll prospects but neglect your long-term product strategy. Or, your
be referring to this product team applies a subjective lens and builds to solve their
collective as “product own problems,
makers.” Now you know! neglecting the
needs of their target “Engineers assume the world is
personas.
much more technical than it is. For
To put it simply, Sales, every deal that comes
failing to achieve through the door needs special
deep user insights
leads to the wrong
work, special features, special
products. Teams onboarding, or something custom.
that rely on Executives tend to rely on selective
assumptions rather
recall or recollections from their own
than data spend
weeks, months, or days as subject matter experts.
even years working Sadly, this results in products that
on products that
don’t reflect the needs of a
either fail or end up
underutilized. company’s overall customer base.”
Rich Mironov
7
“
Deep user insight
doesn’t just take
place at one level
or on one team—
it’s a concerted
effort that
involves people
from the entire
organization
 1. I know it all

The path to Product managers follow their

intuition around what users need
without validating it in any way
deep user
insights
2. Product managers talk to users
Product managers collect feature requests
but convert them directly into product
We've created a rubric to requirements without seeking underlying
illustrate the five levels of user needs. They miss significant
opportunities and frequently deliver
proficiency when it comes to features that go unused
gathering deep user insights.
Take a moment to look it over
and see which level most 3. Product teams listen to users
accurately describes your
Product teams capture user feedback from all
current practices. available sources and strive to uncover underlying
needs, but overestimate their ability to do so and
make costly, incorrect assumptions

4. Product teams understand users

Product teams gain deep user insights by
performing continuous product discovery—
validating both problems and solutions—and
employ their findings to deliver the right
features, designed in the right way

*If you're not at level five yet,

5. Everyone understands users
don't worry. We'll be walking
The whole company, not just product teams, has
you through each step and
access to user insights. Everyone intimately
making recommendations for understands what matters to users & why; they are
how to get there in the empowered to do right by the user when
prioritizing, designing, developing, marketing,
following chapters. supporting, and selling

9
CHAPTER ONE

A step-by-step
guide to gathering
deep user insights
Product discovery is the process of actively capturing,
researching, and prioritizing user needs—as well as collecting
and validating solution ideas for addressing them. Because why
risk investing in the wrong products and features if there is a
way to ensure that you’re always building the right thing?

Deep user insights are an essential component of product

discovery that feeds every step of the process. Still, many
product makers aren’t sure what to do with the
onslaught of feedback coming in from all
corners of the organization. If organizing
all this information is already
overwhelming, then making sense
of it can seem next to impossible. 

That’s why we put together this

guide. Follow the steps below
to start transforming
fragmented product inputs
into deep user insights that
you can incorporate into your
discovery process.

11
STEP ONE
Conduct an audit of your existing
user and product inputs
The first step is to understand all the places where you currently gather
insights. Consider all the different touchpoints that people at your
company have with end-users. These can include:

• Email exchanges between your support team & customers

• Win/loss analyses
• Conversations between the sales team and prospects
• Exit surveys (conducted by customer success
when important customers churn)
• Qualitative inputs from NPS results
• Customer support tickets
• Existing user research
• Feature requests

As you complete this audit, note which tools or platforms are used
to collect information. You’ll likely find a smorgasbord of emails,
Google Docs, internal communication tools, note-taking apps, and
department-specific tools like Salesforce and Intercom.

Once you have a holistic overview of your insights landscape,

assess them against the problems you are trying to solve for
customers. Can you identify trends and patterns in all the collected
inputs that help you better understand what’s working for users,
and what isn’t? Are you able to identify the needs of a certain type
of customer? Can you quickly locate all insights related to a
specific feature idea or user need?

These are all important questions you should aim to answer.

STEP TWO
Regularly interface with
customer-facing teams
As a product maker, you’re likely several degrees
of separation away from your end-users. That's
why it's crucial to interface with sales, support, and
customer success—your customer-facing teams—
to access a treasure trove of insights from the
frontlines.

Running interviews with customer-facing teams to share,

rank, and elaborate on user needs can yield many gold
nuggets of actionable information. Customer-facing
teams speak with so many people that they've probably
already begun to identify patterns. And since they
understand your business and product, they can interpret
these insights within a relevant context.

Of course, you won’t always do precisely what customer-

facing teams suggest. As a product maker, you’ll have to
synthesize incoming information and weigh it against
your objectives and capabilities. Still, getting these inputs
is a critical step that will deepen your understanding of
user needs.

13
STEP THREE
Make it a habit to talk to
customers
Taking the time to talk to a wide range of users
often takes a backseat in the high-pressure
environment of the tech world.

“You’ve got to invest time

into figuring out who your
product is for, what job it
will do, and why users will
pay you for it. This means
actually talking to people who
use your product, those who
have churned off, and
anyone in-between.”

Product thought leader

Rich Mironov
How to build a habit of talking to
customers
Set aside time to regularly talk to customers
Go visit your customers once a month to observe them in their work environment, for example. Or
plug an hour a week into your calendar for customer interviews over Zoom.

Let colleagues know you’re always interested in talking to customers

There will always be prospects and customers who are eager to give product
feedback. It’s your job as a product manager to let your customer-facing teams know to send these
folk your way.

Join calls with prospects and customers

This is both an opportunity to sell them on the roadmap and
gather useful feedback on your vision.

Keep a short list of target customers

that you can reach out to
Identify enthusiastic users of your product who are open
to speaking with you and check in with them regularly.

Build a customer community

The way you go about this is your choice. At
productboard, we have a #productleaders Slack
community where we announce new features, share key
announcements, and generally keep an open line of
communication with customers. Our #beta-testing channel,
for example, fosters dialogue about specific feature sets and
areas of the product.

The great thing about this community is that it helps us identify who
our power users are and talk to them at scale. Even better, customers
are riffing off of each other’s ideas.

15
STEP FOUR
Set up a system to consolidate
product inputs from all sources
In a typical organization, teams use many tools—
like Salesforce, Zendesk, and Intercom, to name a
few—to manage their interactions with prospects
and customers. Each of these platforms is home to
a goldmine of feedback: unmet needs, problems,
reasons for churn, why a prospect opted for your
competitor, and more.

However, unless you have access to these

platforms and regularly check in on them,
many of these insights end up slipping
through the cracks. 

That's why it's essential to have a system

that syncs with your existing tech stack and
automatically funnels in all incoming inputs.
This central repository allows product
teams (and everyone else) to have
continuous access to fresh insights and
easily track and make sense of different
feedback types.
STEP FIVE
Act on the insights!

In the next chapter, we’re going to look more

closely at how you can begin to act on the insights
you’ve gathered.

For now, remember: It’s not enough to

take feedback at face value. As a product
maker, you must be willing to put your
detective hat on to dig deeper into more
significant problems or unmet needs
lurking beneath what customers say. You
need to be strategic about product
decisions and make sure they align with
broader business goals. And you must
incorporate user research and continuous
product discovery into the product
prioritization process.

17
CHAPTER TWO

How to turn deep

user insights into
excellent products

In the previous chapter, we looked at common sources of user

insights and how to collect them. Now let's talk about what
happens once you've gathered all this information.
 Mobilize your
Create a scalable company!
culture around
gathering insights The dos & don’ts
of submitting
user insights
Product makers represent a small percentage of employees
within an organization, especially in comparison to sales, Want to get your entire company
marketing, customer success, and support—customer-facing involved in sharing user insights?
teams that are on the frontlines with users each day. Create documentation to clarify what
valuable inputs look like and codify
That’s why, instead of taking sole responsibility for the heavy the process. Here are the
lifting, product makers must build a culture around gathering productboard product team’s
insights. To achieve this, folks across the organization must guidelines for the rest of the company:
develop a "product mindset" and understand the specific role
they play in the product development process. They must be
DO take initiative
trained to recognize good feedback and learn to tease out
important patterns. Share feedback rather than relying on
product makers to do it based on
casual conversations or topics that
Here’s what this looks like in practice: came up in meetings

Sales and marketing teams aren't just selling anymore—now DO give context
they have an ear to the market. What's happening in the
industry? What are competitors doing? What is your product's Feedback with context is more
main differentiator (and what isn't)? actionable

The customer success team is no longer just preventing DON’T just pass on
customers from churning or encouraging them to renew; they
feature requests like…
are actively trying to understand the gap between customer
needs and the product's capabilities, clarifying where the “We need a Salesforce integration”.
product falls short for the product team. Instead, provide details around the
problem and the people it is affecting
The support team is no longer being reactive to customer
issues. Instead, they are listening for usability pains to share DON’T create your own tags
with the product team.
Only use tags approved by the team
to categorize feedback. (Tags serve as
This won’t happen overnight, but you can teach your a flexible way of categorizing insights
customer-facing teams how to ask the right questions and in productboard)
participate in mature conversations around user insights. And,
once you build this culture, everyone becomes an extension DO participate
of the product team.
Follow-up conversations with product
team members are useful for everyone
19
Get to the bottom of what
users really need

Customers are often opinionated about your product and the

direction you should take it in. Unfortunately, they're usually wrong.

Why? When customers ask for a feature, they envision the ideal
solution for their own needs.

Perhaps because we humans assume our own needs represent

objective, universal problems, we overestimate others' ability to
understand them. Why else would so many customers be willing to
take the time to compose a message, but leave out key details
surrounding why they need the solution they're requesting? 

You can’t rely on customers to explain their needs to you. You

need to sleuth them out yourself. 

There are several frameworks to do this. Product thought leader

Rich Mironov, for example, frequently uses jobs-to-be-done. This
helps him get to the heart of customer needs by reframing their
relationship to their problems. 

5 Whys is another, and the one we like to use at productboard.

Here’s how: 

To identify customer needs, always ask why, then ask why again,
sometimes ask a third time, and on occasion once or twice more
after that. Uncovering customer needs is a multi-step process, and
the trick is asking why in the right way.

Each follow-up question you ask should serve to dig one level
deeper towards uncovering the core user need at play. See the
example on the right of a conversation between one of our
product managers and a customer. Notice how he keeps asking
for more context and information to dig into the customer’s
underlying need.

Nothing helps product managers uncover new customer needs

quite like a genuine fascination with the problems they’re solving
for. And that’s something that gets built up one question at a time,
over months or years of becoming an expert in a given space.
Get to the bottom of user needs
with these questions and
conversation starters

It sounds like what you want is x, can you tell me more about that?

Why are you asking for x?

What are you hoping to accomplish with x?
What will x help you do?
Why would x be valuable for your team?

Can we do a Zoom call and screen share

your existing workflows?

Would you be able to share an

example of how you’re doing [your
current process] today?

So it sounds like your [your current

process] is working well for you…
(a reverse psychology technique)

21
Conclusion

Neglecting deep user insights can lead to severe

consequences. After all, who wants to waste time and
resources on products that don't get used, or worse, fail
altogether?

We’ll be honest. It won’t always be easy—as we’ve tried to show

you throughout this guide, it will be a process that involves
many small, incremental changes (and maybe a few big, rapid
ones). 

The good news is that this process doesn't just involve product
makers. You'll be getting help from other people and teams
throughout your organization. And while it might take time to
build a culture where everyone has a "product mindset," the
results will be worth it.
Why a product management
system is a non-negotiable
for modern product teams

These days, every department in the organization has a tool to

help them succeed. Sales has Salesforce. Marketing has
Marketo. Support has Zendesk and Intercom. And on and on. 

Up until now, product managers have been left hanging.

Your most critical decisions have taken place in static
spreadsheets, stale PowerPoints, disjointed feature request
forums, and old-school feature backlogs stored in project
management tools. All alongside dozens of systems used to
capture user research and feedback (email, note-taking apps,
CRMs, support platforms, survey tools, NPS tools, task
management tools, Google Docs…the list goes on).
In this environment, it’s unrealistic to expect any single person—
let alone entire teams—to remember when a particular
conversation took place or where they made a note of it.

Given the gravity of the product maker’s core responsibilities—

to arrive at a deep understanding of user needs, prioritize what
to build next, and rally everyone around your roadmap—it’s
never been clearer that product makers deserve a solution of
their own.
“
Given the gravity
of the product
maker's core
responsibilities,
it's never been
clearer that
product makers
deserve a solution
of their own

25
The old way of managing
products is broken Strategy in chaos
Limited accountability
Black-box decisions
Lack of focus

Insights lost in noise

No pulse of the customer
Missed opportunities
Wasted effort

Teams in disconnect
Lack of alignment
No visibility into progress
Broken feedback loop

Enter the product

management system

Every modern product organization If you’ve already got a product management system in
urgently needs a dedicated system place, high five! You’ve taken the first step to becoming a
for capturing, sorting, and customer-focused product organization. If this is a new
synthesizing information flowing in concept for you, we’re happy to show you how
about product.  productboard can help.
About
productboard
productboard is a customer-driven product management system that
empowers teams to get the right products to market, faster. It provides a
complete solution for product teams to understand user needs, prioritize
what to build next, align everyone on the roadmap, and engage with their
customers. productboard is easy to use, enables company-wide
collaboration, and integrates into existing workflows.

Learn more at productboard.com