There are hundreds of variables to consider when designing and building a product. When you lock onto a few, new questions start popping up.

You have to choose the optimum frontend framework, database, hosting service, backend, etc. This means there are many options that can make or break your product.

While these choices will have a significant impact on your product, one decision trumps them all — whether you should build around your customer.

Companies and builders didn't have to think about this before. The market was never saturated with so many products.

Now users have so many options that they will just move to a different product if they face any dire inconveniences.

Let's take a look at two scenarios to get a better idea:-

Scenario 1

You are part of a company, XYZ. You are trying to build a workflow product primarily focused on content creators. The market is pretty saturated with tons of competition.

To beat the competition, you develop some features that you think will be revolutionary. Your company goes ahead and starts development for these features.

After a couple of months of development, you finally ship the features. You are expecting extraordinary feedback.

Instead, users stop using your product. They start using your direct competitor's product.

You have no idea what is happening. Nothing makes sense.

Scenario 2

You are part of a company, ABC. You are constantly communicating with your users using Discord, DevRev, and Twitter. Before introducing any new feature, you hold polls to know what your users think.

Every decision is made based on user feedback and requests. You don't add features that users don't want.

Users are never taken by surprise by some new feature. They are up to date and have already tested them on the beta version.

Why Scenario 2 is Better

It might not always be obvious why scenario 2 is better. But it is by miles. Users feel more valued and will love using your product. They feel like they have a say in the decision-making (which they do). Here are a few other reasons:-

Feedback is King

Humans are social creatures. We want to interact, vent, and bond. And more than anything, we love giving advice.

Your users want to know that their voice is heard. If they have trouble with some feature, they want assurance that the developer will fix it.

As a developer or manager, if you ignore your users, you are bound to fail. Your users make or break your product. Lousy customer service leaves a poor impression of not only your product but also your brand on your users.

Of course, all feedback might not be helpful. But if you ignore everything, you miss out on the good stuff.

UX can bring you to the top.

There can be confusion between what the developer intended and what the user perceives. The developer might think it is evident that the user has to go to some particular page to change their profile picture. But the user might have great difficulty finding the page.

This will never happen in scenario 2 because you listen to your users. You are listening to your current users, which will make it easy for new users.

This will enhance your user experience and help differentiate your product from the countless others in the market.

Optimum testing

With your beta version, early adopters can test out the latest features. Even before releasing features, you can tweak them to perfection.

This gives you an extra layer of testing where your users are your testers. They can try out new features and tell what issues they are facing. This ensures smooth use of the production build.

Is Dev CRM the secret recipe for success?

Businesses interact with their customers using CRMs. But users generally have particular questions or issues that only developers can answer. By the time the query reaches the developer, it may be too late for the user who may have moved on to another task, or worse, another alternative

What if the users were connected to the developers/makers directly through the product.

That's where Dev CRM comes into the picture.

Dev CRM allows developers and users to interact directly with each other. When users have issues, they interact directly with the developers. We talked about how feedback is king. With Dev CRM, user conversations are immediately connected to tickets that are connected to issues that are in turn connected to product features and developers who own those features. This makes collecting feedback and acting on those incredibly seamless and fast.

Dev CRM and DevRev

DevRev believes in product-led customer-centricity. This means that product growth is a consequence of building around customers.

DevRev brings users close to the product and developers close to the users and consequently, the revenue and the business priorities.

You might have used Discord before to report bugs. You go on a particular channel and report the bug. A chatbot might reply, saying that your report will be looked at. And that's pretty much all that happens.

In DevRev, when you report the bug, the conversation gets connected to the product features that are owned by specific developers. The chatbot will also give constant feedback to the user. If the developer and the user believe it is a huge issue, the developer can mark the issue. Once the code fix goes into Github, the updates make it back to the customer seamlessly

DevRev, in summary, achieves product-led growth with the following:-

• New age issue and ticket management — A visually appealing UI that links every customer conversation, feature request, and new product enhancement. Managers, support teams, and customers are always updated on any changes.

• Customer centricity on any application — You might not have started developing around customers. But now you realize it is the best way and want to transition. No worries! You can inject DevRev PLuG SDK into any application. It's that easy to empower your developers and customers.

• Valuable insights on your product — Want to know how a feature impacts your product? Within DevRev Trails, you can visually see your catalog of product features and capabilities and how any service or even API affects your product and customers connected to them. You can see all of this in an organized manner with metrics, goals, and events.

Don't Miss Out

Dev CRM is the future of building products. Product growth as a result of customer-centricity is unmatched—one platform where developers, supporters, and customers can grow together.

Bring the Dev and the Rev(user) together.