
Members of the Aha! Product Success and engineering teams connect at our company onsite in Deer Valley, Utah. | Photo by Jodi B Photography
October 20, 2023
You should honor the engineers who help you bring your product strategy to life. Because without them, you just have a bunch of well-formed ideas. But you do not have anything that creates customer value. So when engineers tell you that they need more of something, you should listen. When you do, you will often find that they are looking for deeper customer understanding.
The best product managers review and parse customer feedback with engineers regularly — collaborating to deliver solutions that delight your users.
Why do so many engineers struggle, feeling like they are shipping features into the abyss? Some product managers are slow to pass along customer feedback. Others give that feedback promptly, but it is too vague (“We need to improve the usability”), lacks relevant context, or is disconnected from the product strategy. Even more frustrating, some product managers only share feedback when something breaks or goes wrong.
If any of this sounds familiar, you are not alone. And there is no blaming of product managers here. Many of you are so busy that you fall into reactive mode, putting out each new fire as it starts. The irony is that devoting regular time to analyzing customer feedback with engineers will make everyone’s life easier. It gives you a valuable opportunity to deepen trust with your cross-functional teammates, enhance your understanding of what customers need, and build a stronger product together.
It is not enough to share customer feedback with your engineering teammates — you also need to have meaningful discussions about what the feedback means, why it matters, and what will happen next.
Our team at Aha! is fortunate in that we use our own products every day. This gives our engineers empathy and firsthand knowledge of what users encounter. Every engineer at Aha! also does regular customer support rotations to answer technical questions and stay close to the customer experience. These are useful exercises, but they do not replace thoughtful conversations with product managers.
In that spirit, we asked five Aha! engineers to share what makes for a fruitful discussion and helps them better understand customer challenges. Here is what they said they would like product managers to do:
Remove pressure
“After receiving customer feedback, the product manager and I usually have an informal discussion upfront. Instead of jumping right into a live call,