Assessing Product Features Against Customer Expectations (ProductCamp Boston 2016)
•Download as PPTX, PDF•
0 likes•831 views
In this session we'll focus on a simple framework for evaluating customer expectations, explore how product features can delight or disappoint, and offer a mechanism to optimize feature sets. About Bill Allen Bill Allen has been a part of more than a hundred product-development efforts. In his role as a Senior Product Manager at Bose Corporation, Bill articulated the requirements for – and guided the development of – such market-leading products as the original Bose Wave Radio, more than ten generations of Lifestyle and 3•2•1 music and home-theater systems, and the groundbreaking Videowave TV. Prior to Bose, Bill was a consultant at Arthur D. Little, and held roles in engineering, OEM sales, and technology licensing at audio innovator dbx, Inc.
Recommended
More Related Content
Viewers also liked
Viewers also liked (16)
More from ProductCamp Boston
More from ProductCamp Boston (20)
Recently uploaded
Recently uploaded (20)
Assessing Product Features Against Customer Expectations (ProductCamp Boston 2016)
- 1. Assessing Product Features Against Customer Expectations Bill Allen www.linkedin.com/in/billallen2016 A framework for evaluating customer expectations, learning how product features can delight or disappoint, and for optimizing feature sets https://goo.gl/17M5MXNote: Animations will work best if you open this file in PowerPoint.
- 2. Discussion Points • Products are made up of Features • Customer Expectations determine how Product Features matter • Product Features will change over time • As will Customer Expectations https://goo.gl/17M5MX
- 3. Three Types of Product Features 1. Check the box. tires, brakes, power windows 2. More is better. horsepower, gas mileage 3. Oooh, Shiny! collision-avoidance radar What makes them different? https://goo.gl/17M5MX
- 9. Failing to Meet Expectations • “You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone” • A hotel guest takes a shower, and the water pressure drops. • A driver hits the brakes, and the brakes fail. • That last sip of coffee is full of grounds. https://goo.gl/17M5MX
- 10. FF Assessing Customer Expectations If the brakes work, how do you feel? If the brakes fail, how do you feel? OKI don’t like that https://goo.gl/17M5MX
- 11. MUST-BE FF Assessing Customer Expectations If the brakes work, how do you feel? If the brakes fail, how do you feel? OKI don’t like that https://goo.gl/17M5MX
- 12. MUST-BE FF Assessing Customer Expectations If the brakes work, how do you feel? If the brakes fail, how do you feel? If the car brakes automatically to avoid a collision, how do you feel? If you can use the car’s brakes to avoid a collision, how do you feel? OKI don’t like that OK I like that https://goo.gl/17M5MX
- 13. DELIGHTER MUST-BE FF Assessing Customer Expectations If the brakes work, how do you feel? If the brakes fail, how do you feel? If the car brakes automatically to avoid a collision, how do you feel? If you can use the car’s brakes to avoid a collision, how do you feel? OKI don’t like that OK I like that https://goo.gl/17M5MX
- 14. Features v. Customer Expectations ? ? Must- Be Reverse Indifferent I am neutral. I don’t like that. It must be that way. I like that. I can live with it. F F I like that. It must be that way. I am neutral. I can live with it. I don’t like that. 1-DimDelighters
- 15. Radio-Preset Example • Existing Radio: – 25 presets – Any preset can be either AM or FM – “Next” goes to the next preset, regardless of band https://goo.gl/17M5MX
- 16. If you don’t have to switch between AM & FM to select a preset in the other band, how do you feel? FF Radio-Preset Example
- 17. If you don’t have to switch between AM & FM to select a preset in the other band, how do you feel? If you don’t have to switch between AM & FM to select a preset in the other band, how do you feel? FF Radio-Preset Example If you have to switch between AM & FM to select a preset in the other band, how do you feel? OK OK
- 18. FF INDIFFERENT If you don’t have to switch between AM & FM to select a preset in the other band, how do you feel? Radio-Preset Example If you have to switch between AM & FM to select a preset in the other band, how do you feel? OK OK
- 19. FF INDIFFERENT If selecting the next preset keeps you in the same band, how do you feel? If you don’t have to switch between AM & FM to select a preset in the other band, how do you feel? If you don’t have to switch between AM & FM to select a preset in the other band, how do you feel? Radio-Preset Example If selecting the next preset keeps you in the same band, how do you feel? If you select the next preset, and you get one in the other band, how do you feel? If you have to switch between AM & FM to select a preset in the other band, how do you feel? OKI don’t like that OK OK
- 20. FF MUST-BE INDIFFERENT If you don’t have to switch between AM & FM to select a preset in the other band, how do you feel? Radio-Preset Example If selecting the next preset keeps you in the same band, how do you feel? If you select the next preset, and you get one in the other band, how do you feel? If you have to switch between AM & FM to select a preset in the other band, how do you feel? OKI don’t like that OK OK
- 21. Radio-Preset Example • Existing Radio: – 25 presets – Any preset can be either AM or FM – “Next” goes to the next preset, regardless of band • New Design: – 20 AM Presets – 20 FM Presets – “Next” goes to the next preset in the current band You don’t have to switch between AM & FM to select a preset in the other band. INDIFFERENT Selecting the next preset keeps you in the same band. MUST-BE https://goo.gl/17M5MX
- 22. FF S S Enter the Market Win Compete Feature Mix? https://goo.gl/17M5MX
- 23. FF S S Enter the Market Win Compete Feature Mix? https://goo.gl/17M5MX
- 24. This Framework • Is inherently qualitative • Can require hard-to-word questions • Needs to survey the product’s target customers • Can’t establish the relative value between similar features • Bottom line, is one useful lens among many https://goo.gl/17M5MX
- 25. Points to Remember • Understand your customers’ expectations As they evolve during the product’s lifecycle • Don’t give any reason for dissatisfaction Make sure to deliver the Must-Be features • Offer meaningful competitive performance Reasonable One-Dimensional features • Give them a reason to choose your product Delighters = Differentiation https://goo.gl/17M5MX
Editor's Notes
- ...Good morning. I’m Bill Allen, and I’ve been a product manager at Bose Corporation for many years, working on Lifestyle M & HT systems, the Bose Wave Radio, other hardware products, and for the last couple of years, heading up product management for our mobile apps. Today, I’d like to share a framework I’ve used in product development that’s helped me and my teams understand how customers view different types of product features. A new way to look at things you already know.
- In this presentation, I hope to give you a different way to look at product features, to help you better understand why they belong in your product, and how they matter to your customers. I’m going to talk about Product Features, Customer Expectations, and how they change over time. I’m also going to talk about a way to assess customer feelings so that you can characterize those features. Incidentally, if you’re interested in this slide deck, you can download it from the link in the lower right.
- I’m using the example of a car, hoping you can all relate to it, but I believe the framework can extend to software or even service offerings.
- I’m going to build a visual representation of this framework with a two-axis chart. The [x axis] shows the degree to which a feature might be present or absent, and the [y axis] shows whether customers are satisfied or not. One simplification I’ll make, just to reduce clutter, is to replace the words with [letters].
- Going back to our car example, I’ll plot Brakes like [this]. The way to interpret it is that, on the right side, people are OK if the brakes are there, but, on the left, they get upset pretty quickly if they go away. For [Gas Mileage], more is better, and less is worse. And for [Collision-avoidance radar], people are happy to have it, but don’t mind if it’s not there.
- Those are three specific features, but they represent the three types we talked about earlier. Brakes are a type we’ll call [Must-Be features], Gas Mileage we’ll call [One-Dimensional] Features, and Collision-Avoidance Radar we’ll call a [Delighter]. This chart comes from Kano’s work in the mid-80s, and it highlights a few things. First, [this] is a place to avoid. Or as a colleague put it: “Rule #1: Don’t piss people off.” [Next...]
- Delighters are unexpected. That’s why, on the left side of the chart, people don’t mind their absence. But that only lasts until products in the marketplace build up customer expectations. [Then,] they become must-be features. A/C, ABS, Keyless Entry, and Power Windows all started as delighters, but have evolved over the years.
- Another way to think about the difference is that [Must-Be] features are the ones you’d better deliver, unless you want to disappoint your customers. [Delighters] are what really improve on customer satisfaction. You don’t make people happy by merely not disappointing them. Must-Be features must be there, or else! The Must-Be features are what customers know they want, but Delighters give them what they didn’t even realize they needed.
- Must-Be features are all about meeting expectations in order to avoid dissatisfaction. Customers want to take certain things for granted, and not encounter unwanted surprises. Like [when you’re a hotel guest] taking a shower, and the pressure drops. Or you [hit the brakes] and they fail. Or you’re really enjoying your [coffee], until that very last sip.
- So let’s use that x axis to look at a couple of features, in order to [assess customer expectations]. If we survey our customers to find out how they feel about the feature being present or absent, we can learn what type of feature it is. We can [ask] them...
- That pair of answers about the brakes makes them a [Must-Be] feature. Let’s ask about [using those brakes].
- [READ] [READ] Now what if we add in collision avoidance radar, and [ask] about that? READ Note that I’m not asking about the technology, but about how it appears to customers. Like any survey, choosing the right language for the survey questions can be a challenge. In [this] example,...
- The answer pair says that automatic braking is a [Delighter].
- When you conduct a survey with these paired questions, you ask about the feature being [present], and you offer five possible answers on a positive-to-negative scale. READ. Then you offer the [same] answers and ask about the feature being absent. If I like [more] gas mileage, but don’t like less gas mileage, that’s a one-dimensional feature. If I [like] what collision-avoidance radar does, but I don’t feel strongly if it’s not there, that’s a Delighter. And if I [don’t like] when the brakes aren’t there, but don’t feel strongly if they are, that’s a Must-Be feature.
- So let’s look at a real example of a radio I worked on many years ago. It was a follow-on to an [existing] product that had 25 presets...
- So, going back to our axis of the feature being there or not, we ran a survey about what we thought might be a [feature] that you didn’t have to switch bands.
- We asked a bunch of radio listeners how they felt if they didn’t have to switch bands, [and] they were OK with it. But what about if they [did] have to switch bands? [Turns] out they were OK with that, too.
- In other words, this thing that we thought might be a feature, they were [indifferent] to it. Fortunately, we thought there was [another] feature that might be useful...
- Selecting the next preset keeps you in the same band. We [asked] about that, too, and people were [OK] with it. We [also] asked about getting a preset from the other band, and the answer was interesting. It was consistent with some complaints that our support folks had received, that [people] didn’t like it. Having strong negative [feelings]...
- ...when the feature isn’t there, and neutral feelings when it is, told us that this was a [Must Be] feature.
- Back to the decision at hand. Our survey told us that people were [indifferent] to a feature in our existing radio, and gave us some ammunition to align everyone around a [new design]. [READ] [READ] [READ] And it delivered the [Must-Be] feature of staying in the same band when going to the next preset. Bear in mind that this was in the early 90s, before we had a UX group that could make these kinds of decisions, but it illustrates how the framework can help.
- So you’ve done a survey, and figured out [which bucket] each feature goes into. What’s the right mix, and how do you prioritize? Well, you can think of the feature types like this. The [Must-Be] features are table stakes, the cost of entry just to play the game. Don’t try to sell a car with no engine or tires. The [1-Dim] features are generally about measurable performance, and let you compete. But it’s the [delighters] that really set you apart from your competition and help you win.
- Delighters are about making customers happy, must-be features are about keeping them from being unhappy, and one-dimensional features have to do some of each. But delivering the must-be features is necessary just to have a fair chance in the marketplace, while it’s the delighters and one-dimensional features that let your products stand out. [Force-field windows, soft keyboards]
- So let me start to wrap up. This [framework] is inherently qualitative. There are plenty of other tools that can help put values on these features or establish willingness to pay. It [also] takes some skill in writing the question pairs to make sure the feature is expressed properly – more like a user story. You [also] need to survey your target customer. It’s fine to build a hypothesis using the team’s responses, but validate them. [Related] to the first point, READ | A/C Glove Box & Radar example. [Bottom Line...]
- .A few points to take away: The [value] in this framework is in understanding your customers’ expectations, especially since they’ll evolve over the LC (Gretzky). Once you know what your customers expect, [don’t] give them any reason to be dissatisfied. Deliver all the must-be features, and then [make] the product competitive by offering one-dimensional-feature performance that makes sense for your customers. [Then], add delighters to differentiate, and give your customers a reason to choose your product.
- That’s the last of my slides. Now I’d like to open it up to your comments or questions. Does the framework make sense to you? What are your thoughts on this way of thinking about product features and customer expectations? Has anyone here used similar methods? What worked or didn’t work?