One of the most difficult challenges product managers tell us they face is finding new ways to innovate their products and services to find or maintain a competitive advantage and to attract and retain more customers.
This doesn’t mean to say they’re always short of ideas for new features, it’s about the need to acquire the relevant knowledge to identify which will resonate the most with customers. This applies to both the short term and the long term. Many product managers have a vision for the future of their product and ultimately where they want to take it, but often they’re not sure if that vision will excite customers and align with their needs in the most impactful way.
Other product managers don’t know where to start. That’s not uncommon. It’s an indicator that they lack the customer insight they need. What are their problems? What’s the market missing? What are their unmet needs?
Research shapes successful innovations
A customer-centric innovation process is crucial if you want to create high-performing products and services. Research is pivotal to this but it’s not enough on its own. You need to go further which is where this part of our service comes in.
Customers aren’t always able to envisage the exact solution that they need, but they do know what problems they’re facing. As an innovator it’s about getting into their world and using customer insight to create or redevelop a product or service to meet their needs. By beginning to understand the customers’ world, thought processes and behaviours, you can begin to understand what a successful product or service could look like.
Foundational, generative research will help you understand the space that your proposition can occupy. It will facilitate your product development process by highlighting the innovation opportunities. Opening the product space in this way can be fundamental to your future success.
The return on investment from this kind of research is huge. The insight we’re able to gather at this stage will help you put all of your foundational building blocks in place that will help you shape your innovation for the coming months and even years.
At UX24/7 we can help you to involve your customers in your product innovation process to uncover their unmet needs allowing you to create an effective product development roadmap.
These are just some of the ways UX24/7 can assist you. We work with Product Owners and Research Managers to help them reduce product development costs, deliver product-led growth and benefit from global best-practice User Experience.
But don’t take our word for it. Read what our customers have to say!
Paul and Sarah from UX24/7 have been excellent when working on this project with us. They have been very flexible, approachable, and brilliant at giving expert guidance to provide us with a good outcome to our research. The venue chosen for the focus group was excellent, and the final report and debrief proved very insightful. We look forward to reviewing this further internally in order to drive our future roadmap.”
Amy Fletcher, Digital Product Manager, TUI Group
Case studies
If you would like to know more about the work we have done, check out the following case studies.
