9 Common Product Strategy Problems (And How To Solve Them)

1. You’ve never needed to talk to your customers before.

You lucky duck. 

Either through deep experience or sheer luck, you’ve managed to build something that fills a need. But what next? Don’t mistake this success for insight. While it may work at the beginning, relying on past experience isn’t a long-term strategy. Technology, regulations, roles, goals, and just about everything else changes. If you’re not talking to customers, that means your insights aren't keeping up with everything else. A great place to start is with a Service Journey Map to diagram all the known touchpoints, different types of user groups, and biggest unknowns.

2. You’re repeating the same customer anecdotes that you were using five years ago (heck, even two years ago).

Stories stick with you. Personal experiences even more so. However, when it comes to stories you use for product decisions, it’s best if you refresh them every year.

COVID was FIVE YEARS AGO. Think about life before that. Now think about your life now. It’s likely changed in some big ways (thank you, Kroger Pick-Up). Your customers have also changed. You may not have to totally scrap your insights (unless they are actually five years old), but revisit them. Engage your customers in some generative research to explore how roles, goals, and the industry has changed. Your customer insights have a shelf life.

3. You’re using customer anecdotes from only one customer or customer group.

Because of recency bias, anchoring bias, or simply having a loud, boisterous customer, this can be an easy trap to fall into. I recently had a conversation with a product leader who told me, “Our customers hate when things change and never want to pay for new things.” This wasn’t the first time they had told me about this curmudgeon user group. However, I refuse to believe that they are the only user group, although they may be the loudest. You can combat this with various tools like service journey maps to revisit the different audience roles or customer personas to understand how people in similar roles think differently. The idea that all your customers think the same way is a terrible way to shortchange yourselves and your customers.

4. You’re feeling pressure from leadership to build the ‘shiny new thing.’

This is popularly called ‘shiny object syndrome’ — where existing strategies are disregarded in favor of a new or trendy opportunity. It can feel a lot like jumping on a bandwagon. Sometimes the best bet is to hop on, but you need the right direction. 

I really hate to bring up AI as an example, but it’s top of mind. Throughout 2024, companies felt pressure to release some kind of AI feature. But without pairing it with a suitable user need, many of the features often fell flat. I recently tried to use a survey platform’s AI to write my survey—and it was atrocious. However, had the platform put the AI to use in analysis, it would have totally scratched an itch.

If your product strategy is changing abruptly, it’s time to get your customers involved and focus your interviews on pain points that this shiny new thing could and should solve.

5. You launched something that no one is using.

Pushback to change is inevitable. It’s normal to feel that initial surge of negative feedback after launching new features. But when an idea fails to gain traction altogether? That’s definitely a sign to check in with your users and revisit your product strategy. Completing a robust study with interviews in multiple user groups will allow you to fill in the customer journey and address the true pain points.

This happened with a healthcare client recently who was wondering why users weren’t using a new feature. Through our study, we learned that it wasn’t because the features were unhelpful, rather the feature wasn’t being presented at a relevant point in the workflow. Armed with this knowledge, they were able to adjust the product and gain traction. 

6. You have a backlog a mile long but no idea what to prioritize first.

It sounds like you have no shortage of ideas, but what you really need is priority. Say it with me: It’s time to talk to your customers. Running a multivoting study, like a points ranking survey or pairwise comparison, will allow your users to voice which features best fit their priorities. Spend time building the right thing, not just the next thing.

7. Your team is constantly fixing usability issues.

When you and your team feel like you’re running from one emergency to the next, it’s best to complete some broader usability testing for a larger workflow. By zooming out from a small interaction, your team can uncover better ways to mitigate issues. Great experiences are not made from optimized micro-experiences.

Through moderated usability testing, we’ve learned sometimes entire sections of products can be moved or completely removed, instead of fixing individual feature challenges.

8. Your team is building one-off features for customers.

If you’re constantly under pressure to add specialized features for specific clients or sales prospects, we hear you. Customizing your product to each buyer is a giant time suck, but sales need to be made. 

Don’t spend your time fighting against the sales machine. In times like these, doing a larger, qualitative user study will help you uncover customer groups with similar pain points or goals. With that lens, it’s more probable that features requested by one account can be relevant to another. Sometimes that means building a feature set just a little differently than asked to increase relevancy to more users. So while you may still be under the gun, chances are that you’re doing good for the product long-term.

9. You’re wanting to do something new.

Innovate or die! Expand the bottom line! Capture new markets! Pick whichever you choose. Growth is the goal and whether you’re looking to launch into a new market or pivot to a new use case, research will tell you how to do it well. Customer journey deep dives find new opportunities. Concept validation research evaluates and refines something new. Audience segmentation studies pinpoint messaging and define user groups.