Omar Zenhom argues customers buy the feeling a product gives them, not its features. His company stopped chasing new features and instead made existing ones rock-solid and polished, which dramatically improved retention and revenue. No amount of marketing saves a buggy, unreliable product.
People don't buy what the product does. They buy how it makes them feel. When a customer uses your product or uses the experience of buying your product, like on your website, and it feels smooth and it feels intuitive and it's beautiful, that feeling is the product. When it feels clunky, when it feels buggy, when it feels unreliable, the best marketing in the world will not save you because those people will leave. So we made the decision to invest aggressively in making our product rock solid. We stopped chasing new features. We focused on making the existing ones outstanding. And the difference in customer retention after that investment was not subtle. People stopped leaving and they stayed for longer, gave us more revenue, and therefore we were able to reinvest in the business and hire exceptional talent. We basically said we're going pro and we need to start acting like the pros so that we can earn pro money.
