A Passengers Perspective
How to turn customer feedback into tangible business value
Customer centricity has been a part of Michelin's DNA throughout our entire 130 year history. Edouard Michelin is quoted with saying "One should never wait to see what a customer is going to want. Give him, rather, what he needs before he has sensed that need himself." As Product Owners in Michelin's Digital Transformation organization, it should be no surprise that we are encouraged to get out into the field as much as possible to identify our customers' needs.
I recently had the opportunity to visit various Michelin distributors and end users across Belgium and Germany, receiving feedback on our digital warranty product and processes. Below are my key takeaways and recommendations for Product Owners/Managers embarking on similar journeys.
1. Preparation is key
If I'm honest, I almost skipped this part. I work on this product every day and assumed there would be little preparation needed. Ironically, through this exercise, I learned that is exactly the point: preparation is necessary. It opens your mindset and avoids defaulting to your regular dialogue, assumptions, and ideas about your product.
I spent time reviewing articles, blogs, and training on how to effectively gather customer feedback. While there are many helpful resources, I found the Build Better with UX trail on Trailhead to be a helpful tool to aid in my preparation.
2. Expect a different perspective
When discussing in a conference room, it's easy to say "that's just not the way it works". But keeping this mindset in the field may prevent you from discovering key takeaways. Instead, head to the field expecting to be proven both right and wrong.
While my team and I have spent over two years working on our product, there were some realizations that came to light throughout the week that were completely new or exposed a different perspective on a familiar topic.
For example, we discovered that two experiences we currently treat as disconnected actually occur simultaneously for our customers. This discovery didn't render our previous analysis useless, but rather helped us identify a new lever for value creation. Approaching these discussions with an open mind was critical to avoid missing new discoveries.
3. Leverage technology
During the week I captured multiple pages of notes, pictures, and videos. Each proved to be an effective way to communicate back to our globally distributed development teams and quickly illustrated insights and value. Trello is a great tool for on the fly storyboarding, image capture, and organization.
(Of course, be sure to respect the local rules around recording and photos)
4. Focus
Back in the office, I was tempted to turn all of these ideas into the highest priority features in our backlog. However, in order to affect meaningful change (and avoid chaos for our development teams), I needed to spend time better defining the set of features from the feedback and determine business value across our entire global user base.
Although I'd love to have unlimited capacity (every Product Owner's dream, right?), this process will help prioritize and focus on those game changing value-add features to avoid distractions.
5. Don't underestimate the power of people & process
While I went to get feedback on a specific technology, I left with just as many people and process takeaways. In the past 18 months, our user base has grown significantly and now supports several global teams and processes throughout Michelin. The field visits provided a reminder to look beyond technology and include the development of people networks and process improvements in future roadmaps to ensure successful delivery.
This wasn't my first field visit, and certainly won't be the last. In the meantime, I'd love to hear from you! What other tips and advice do you have for future field visits? If you have a global user base, how do you replicate this exercise more frequently using remote tools / processes? How do you balance creating meaningful change globally and locally?
(Special thanks to Nathan Mareen, Stefaan Segers, Richard Röhr & Axel Schoening for making this week possible!)
Great tips, thanks for sharing!
Always very good to visit real users, can make a much better sense of the functionalities and value we provide to them. Understanding there is probably still around 50% of all we do that is not going to be heavily used. Questions around what are the pain points doing their job are generally good ones to understand what they’d like to achieve. And what should we improve to facilitate their job could be a second one. As opened as possible questions around the way they do their job ...
Thanks for sharing your learnings Danielle! What were some of the UX methodologies and exercises that helped you collect and synthesize valuable insights?