The last two years have been a testing ground for the value of customer experience to brands. Whether it be engineering D2C propositions from scratch, moving sales and service to online channels, creating contactless experiences, or offering more flexibility in fulfilment.
There were many businesses that quickly had to make fairly obvious operational changes in 2020, but beyond that, how can brands prioritise their investment?
This question goes to the heart of why product management, insight and testing have crucial roles in determining growth in 2022. Because investing in UX and CX will not always be a source of differentiation or a sure-fire method of increasing sales.
Good Growth CEO James Hammersley explains this dynamic in commerce:
“Often the shopper journeys, experiences, payment options, et cetera, are the same from one brand to another. Worse still, many brands are investing to stand still – without realising they are not moving ahead. We call this the Red Queen Syndrome (from Alice in Wonderland).”
“Testing lets you prove whether you are moving ahead or not. Therefore, to gain market share and grow margin, it is critical brands innovate and test quickly and at scale – based on responding to customer failure.”
In fact, Hammersley cites “understanding failure” as the biggest opportunity for brands in 2022. “It is the single most important metric for driving margin and market share growth – irrespective of channel. And testing will help any brand to understand why failure occurs.”
So, how do brands need to think about product Philippines Photo Editor management in 2022? On a recent Good Growth podcast, ITV’s Head of Product Stuart Jones spoke about his role in creating a better video-on-demand (VoD) service, and touched on the issues of discovery, delivery and design.
Here are some highlights. You can listen to the full episode here.
Product managers are not gatekeepers to design
Product management is a pragmatic discipline that is constrained by prioritisation.
“What I don’t do as head of product,” says Jones, “and I don’t think a product manager should do, is be almost the gatekeeper to design and experience.”
He continues, “We have to foster that way of working collaboratively. And we have to try and make sure that the decisions that we make are based on business prioritisation and trying to ensure that what the customer gets is what they require, but also ladders up to that business goal.”
Good Growth’s James Hammersley says simply that, “[Product and Insight teams] should prioritise the product roadmap on the loss of revenue, and to address any brand and technology constraints.”
Jones offers some more context for this outlook at ITV in discussing the role of advertising in the VoD service.
“A customer will always say they want less adverts and they will always say they don’t want to be interrupted by any [subscription] upsell, and that’s one of those key business drivers for us.”
“How do we try and fit this experience in?” Jones asks. “One of the levers I don’t pull is the volume of advertising that we’ve got, because there’s substantial revenue tied in to the distribution of advertising on the platform. But the levers I do have are… [making] sure that the customer experience is good and as seamless as it possibly can be, to make advertising a tolerable if not enjoyable experience for people as well.”