A product owner at Taskflow explains why relationships matter more than planning. Enterprise customers are churning, AI accuracy is failing, and the backlog keeps growing, but the real problem is trust between teams and customers.
Relationships are tricky and building and maintaining strong relationships is a pretty big part of success as a product owner.
Trust me, relationships are nothing but pain and misery.
You know, we heard it earlier. Technova's Taskflow product. Well, it faces significant enterprise customer churn, AI accuracy issues and an overflowing feature backlog. While these problems stem from various root causes, addressing them requires strong relationships across the board. As a product owner, your ability to build and maintain robust connections with customers, stakeholders, stakeholders and your team is super important. I like to say it this way. Build strong bridges today because you never know how much weight you'll need to put on them tomorrow. This is part of the validation of the hypothesis from the canvas step. As we design the product, it's time to test our hypotheses. Hypotheses, the plural of hypothesis.
Why is it that we come from the same background but I can't understand you?
Okay, let's think about this idea in terms of our Taskflow product. Let's start with our enterprise customers. Instead of relying on exit surveys or second hand reports, pick up the phone and call them. Set up video calls or if possible, an in person meeting. Your goal is to understand their pain points and why they're considering leaving Taskflow. There are a couple techniques you can use here. You could set up an interview type meeting where you ask questions of your customer and kind of draw out their feedback. Or you could actually go observe the work. Preferably you could do both. But let's start with the idea of interviewing your customers. Make sure you're focusing on what matters to your customers rather than trying to pitch them solutions. And be prepared to ask tough questions. What's not working for you? Where are we falling short? That can be a tough one. It takes courage to invite criticism, but it's essential for improvement. Now you can use the Ground Rules for Interviewing tool to help guide you and conduct great interviews. It's in your workbook as well as in this lesson below. Another technique is to go and see the work being done. The Japanese call this a gemba. Gemba literally means go and see. Gembas involve observing the work process firsthand to understand how it operates and identify opportunities for improvement in a deep dive into your customer's world. It'll give you insights about their jobs and pains and gains, what customers do on a daily basis in their real setting. It often differs from what even they believe they do and would tell you in an interview. And I have another tool for you. It's the A Day in the Life worksheet to help Track what you're seeing. Okay, but what about internal relationships? You know, as a product owner, you're the voice of the customer to your team. So how can you engage and build strong relationships with them? Well, to me, the best way is to involve them in these conversations, give them direct exposure to customer feedback. When I was at the global nonprofit, we implemented a rotational support system where team members took turns spending a day responding to customer inquiries and even answering the support desk calls. Help desk is Mike. The benefits of this approach, they were pretty significant. Well, first we resolved a bunch of minor issues like frustrating bugs, because the team members found it was just more straightforward to address the problems directly rather than have someone explain to them what was happening. This not only builds pride in their work, but helps them understand the real world impact of what they're creating. Another thing that happened is it helped me build a deeper relationship with my team members. They could tell I cared about the product and that I expected them to care as well. And it also shows the customers that their voice is being heard at all levels. You know, building relationships. It's not just about about delivering good news or answering help desk phones. It's about creating an environment of trust where all information, both good and bad, can be acted upon. And so that means being transparent and managing expectations with our stakeholders, our customers, and our teams. For example, at Technova, if the AI task estimation accuracy is off, don't sugarcoat it. Just present the data clearly and the impact it has on the customers and your plan to address it. Features may need to be shuffled, reprioritized timelines, they're going to shift and new challenges are going to come up. Your job is to keep all stakeholders informed and aligned throughout the process. Now, just a pro tip here, most of the teams I'm on, we have team working agreements, and I like to include this one. We make and meet our commitments. The idea is to highlight the importance of saying what we're going to do and then doing what we're going to say. That doesn't mean promising less to avoid disappointments. Don't do that. Make and meet your commitments. No less, no more. Pretty simple, really. It means being transparent about the realities of product development. Sure. Explain the reasoning behind decisions, be clear about uncertainties, but always tie everything back to the overall product vision and our value proposition. For taskflow, this might mean having frank discussions with enterprise customers about the roadmap for addressing their specific needs. It could involve explaining to the sales team why certain feature requests are being prioritized over others. Or it might require working with the development team to communicate the business impact of improving the AI accuracy in task estimation. Trust is built through consistent, honest communication, even when the news isn't what people want to hear. Okay, as we close this out, just keep in mind that building strong relationships isn't just about being nice, it's about being real. When you pick up that phone or walk the floor with your customers, or sit with your team during support calls, you're showing that their success matters. Build strong bridges today because you never know how much weight you're going to need to put on them tomorrow.
