Your whole company should walk in your customers’ shoes: 7 steps for making customer empathy part of your culture
Who are the keepers of customer understanding, empathy, and intimacy in your company? If the answer isn’t “all of us,” you may have a problem.
Sure, certain people are on the hook for implementation, customer success, and receiving feature requests, but I’m talking about really knowing your customers, understanding what they’re about, and being in lockstep with their goals and challenges — both in the context of your product and beyond it.
Great companies don’t just funnel this knowledge through a few people like the CEO or product manager. They make sure everyone in the company understands their customers. When customer intimacy is an “everybody” thing, good things happen: More people feel committed to the customer’s success, customer success managers feel supported; product managers make decisions with higher confidence; engineers are more bought in; and everybody’s more aligned.
Here’s a 7-step process I adapted from a couple of colleagues and honed over my last few companies. It’s inspired by First Round Capital’s Get in the Van but expands the learning to the whole company and emphasizes the visual and experiential aspects of learning. I call it the “cross-functional check-in” (XFCI).* (Boring name, I know. I’m open to suggestions!) Here’s how it works in seven steps, and here’s a downloadable tool with sample questions for you to use in your own company (feel free to customize it to your needs).
Schedule XFCI sessions with customers
Schedule an XFCI session with each of your customers after they’ve implemented and are comfortably using your product (for many companies, this is 1–3 months after implementation). Schedule each customer session with a little time in between (1–2 weeks) and representing a variety of industries and use cases each time.
Scope the session with each customer
Scope the session with each of your customers. Make sure they understand the purpose and scope. Sessions can be in person, but web meetings let you invite more people from your company, which is the point. Invite at least two people from your customer representing two personas — ideally, a practitioner and a sponsor/champion. Send each participant your questions beforehand as a courtesy so they can prepare if they choose.
Invite your company and set ground rules
Invite many people from your company — ideally all — and ask each team lead to send at least one member to each session. Assign a (good) moderator to each session and prepare a short customer summary so participants have context. Assign a note-taker and have them jot down key insights from the session (don’t go for perfection here — a half page of critical findings is enough). Include these insights on the same sheet as the summary, keep all of them in a central repository, and make them available to everyone in your company. Set ground rules for participants, e.g., raise hand to ask questions, send questions via chat to moderator, no screen shots of customer screens, etc.
Give your customer a heads’ up
Even though you’ve scoped the session with your customer, give them a heads’ up so they know what you’re trying to achieve, and why. If you explain that your goal is to increase customer understanding across your company, your customer will buy in. (I have never had a customer react negatively, and in fact, several have asked me to share the process so they can implement it in their company.) As a courtesy, let them know the ground rules you’ve laid down for your company’s participants, as well as clear any special requests ahead of time, such as asking them to share their screen so they can voice objections, clarify your ask, or simply be prepared.
Split the session into two parts: interview and watch party
Spend about half of each session interviewing your customer (download sample questions here) and half observing them using your product (note the “things to observe” in the sample questions). During this part of the session, have the customer verbalize what they’re doing and share their experiences and impressions along the way, e.g., “This…feature is essential,” “I wish I had information about…at my fingertips,” and “It feels like I spend too much time doing…”
Add value in the moment…and after
Find opportunities to give your customer immediate value during each session. Share a shortcut, workaround, or best practice in the moment. Listen for opportunities to take follow-up action items like feature requests or support issues, capture them in session notes, and assign owners to circle back (such as the customer success manager, product manager, or executive sponsor). Even if the response is not what the customer wants to hear, follow up anyway. Also, find ways to recognize your customers for their contributions such as product ideas and best practices. Don’t have a newsletter or community to do this? How about a note of compliment from one of your executives to the person’s boss?
Make the XFCI part of your culture
Make the XFCI part of your culture by extending session invitations broadly, encouraging attendees to do readouts on them in their team meetings, and referring to learnings from them during company “all-hands” and in artifacts like product requirements documents (PRDs). Highlight the process as an artifact of your company values and showcase them in culture videos, during candidate interviews, and even in your sales pitch.
*The XFCI is not intended to replace your standard customer success check-ins, UX reviews, or other standard customer interaction.
