WRITTEN BY SHARI DIAMOND, FLUVIO PRINCIPAL CONSULTANT
Last weekend, I decided to take my baseball loving four year old son out for a day at the ballpark. We ordered the tickets online through a ticket site, and an access code was sent to my email. As we were approaching the ballpark, I checked my email to access my code and retrieve my tickets… and that’s when it all went south. Over the span of the next 25 minutes - in the scorching heat of the Atlanta summer - I sat on the phone with a customer service representative trying to help me figure out how to navigate their website and app to input my code and retrieve my tickets. The ultimate solution (but not the one that ultimately worked) was to delete their app from my phone and download another app to input my code there, taking me outside of the company’s own on-site / in-app experience… I was beyond frustrated, my son was screaming and crying that we were missing the game, and the customer’s service representative was flustered and frustrated. What went wrong here?
Sitting down days later - and with a make-good refund for my troubles in hand (bravo to the company for the exceptional way they heard my feedback and made-good on the issue) - I was able to examine the situation from the perspective of a product marketer, and learn a few things as well.
Clear product messaging goes way beyond marketing copy
When we sit down to write product messaging, we are naturally focused on how to address customer pain points and lure customers with meaningful phrases that speak to our value proposition. Many times, we forget that once customers are sold into a product, they still need our help to be ushered along. Messaging along the usage journey is equally as important as prospecting messaging - it helps optimize a customer experience and ultimately results in retention, and higher LTV, ie: more profitable customers than those you’ve just acquired (bingo!).
And yet, so little of our time is spent on in-product copy, and oftentimes usage copy is not very well thought through. In my struggle to access my tickets, the directive copy once logged into the website/app was “Have a code? You need to input a code to access your tickets” [paraphrased]. How helpful. It did not direct me that I actually needed to log out of my profile to find where to input my code. As PMMs who understand the customer psyche, we can help to craft the customer usage journey messaging with insights to improve navigation, and clear directions to optimize the experience of using the product.
Actively educate customers on product updates that will affect their in-product experience
Product updates are excellent for existing customers. If a company is doing it right, they’ve sourced feedback on how to improve the user experience, and updates to features, navigation or the like can greatly improve the usability and make the experience of using the product much more seamless and enjoyable. When these changes are worth announcing externally (ie: Tier 1 or 2) and will be noticed by a customer, let them know. In-app or on-site messaging is very effective in communicating such updates, as is a quick visual tour if the change is major. I found out, through a conversation with the supervisor who ultimately called me about my complaint, that the product I was using had just gone through some recent updates and the navigation had changed (in this case, I believe the ‘log-out’ link had been moved, along with other things). Good to know. Had they let me know of the changes, it likely would have helped me troubleshoot my own issue, or identify where else I might have needed to look on-site to find that ‘log-out’ button I so desperately needed.
Keep your customer service reps in the know about major product changes
Part of the role of a PMM is also to make sure that important product-specific messaging is trickled down to anyone who may need to know it. We so often focus on enabling sales teams in sales-led organizations, or website copy in product-led organizations, that sometimes we forget about customer service representatives. These team members have the benefit of speaking to and listening to customers day-in and day-out: hearing their feedback, helping them troubleshoot, listening to their frustrations, and even hearing their hysterical, screaming child in the background, so desperate to get into the ballpark that he’s close to hyperventilating.
I can’t stress enough how important these reps are to the business - given how hard it is to solicit customer feedback through surveys and interviews, these reps are your front line to your customers, and they must be informed of any updates or added features that will affect the customer experience. I learned (from that same supervisor) that the customer service rep who had helped me had yet to be trained on the new updates to the website and app. That poor man had been led to battle unarmed - no wonder he was just as frustrated that he was unable to help me.
Using a prescribed Go-to-Market plan for all product releases, big or small, will help ensure that all necessary steps are taken in messaging out updates (internally and externally) and that no one goes uninformed or ill-equipped. The GTM plan is a document to be shared and agreed-upon cross-functionally, as teams such as Product, Sales, Technology, Training, Communications, Support, and more are involved. All teams should also agree on what defines a Tier 1/2/3/ roll-out, and what activities fall under each. Product launches are very much a company-wide effort and it’s all hands on deck for them to happen successfully.
So what happened?
After all that drama and frustration, and just as my case was being escalated to a supervisor, I finally (as a fluke) found a link on the website to log-out and was able to find the place on the login page where I could input my code and retrieve my tickets. The heavens opened up and the angels began singing… no, that didn’t happen but my son did stop crying and he got a $10 ice cream bar for being such a trooper (and yes, I helped myself to an ice cold beer too). The Braves got slaughtered, but it was ultimately a great mommy/son outing, despite the way it started. Days later, I got a personal call from a service supervisor at the company who heard my tale, had listened to the call, took time to listen and assured me that they had heard my feedback - and, as an extra nicety, they refunded my ticket.
All’s well that ends well, I suppose - but it’s a cautionary tale of what can go wrong when you miss the finer details in usability messaging and GTM planning.