How This Sr Product Manager's Onboarding Strategy Transformed Customer Satisfaction

Hm. I don't have anything as a product manager, I. Because a lot of my, uh, products has been in the 0 to 1 stage, so which is basically getting, uh, so the first two products that I worked in, the first product, uh, you know, I joined, uh, and then we launched the product and, uh, the product got shut out because, you know, the investors had a conflicting product in a different ecosystem. And the second product that I launched that was also 0 to 1, it took some time to launch, but, uh, you know, it was mostly in the Uh, well, by the time I left the company, we had just, we were still in the acquisition stage, or, or, you know, that, that part of the funnel wherein acquiring new users and trying to get them to product value and there was a little bit of flux, uh, by in terms of, you know, who the I mean, as is, uh, normal around a lot of companies, when you have a lot of stakeholders, the priority of the product goes down. So because I was just one product manager and I was, you know, a product head, a lot of people in that ecosystem. So have I def uh designed a system that brought delight to a customer. Uh, technically, I don't think so, but,

Yeah, I mean, I have 4 different products, so no, no,

right? No, so for the current product, yeah, the new, uh, uh, designs that we are coming up with, it has got a, you know, it's got onboarding, it's got documentation. So I have this plan altogether wherein we design this. I will have, uh, another uh resource working on documentation so that, you know, when somebody comes in, they know exactly what they're getting out of the platform. They know where to look up. Uh, there's a, what do you call it, uh, chatbot so that somebody can, uh, you know, even if I'm the only one in customer support, there's always somebody to reach out so they're not stuck anywhere. So, uh, let's say one of the biggest uh differences is, uh, so earlier when I joined, The onboarding was not exactly a job place sign up. It was basically somebody entered a feedback form saying that I'm interested in the platform, then somebody contacted them. You then gave them a link to a sign up form. And so that journey itself was broken. So one of the easiest thing is that, you know, put a sign up button there. This is what, uh, everybody expects, expects nowadays, right? Nobody wants to because that's a broken journey because by the time you contact him, you know, he might have forgot about your product and gone somewhere else, yep. So one of the first things that we do is just put a button on the homepage. The homepage might be better, but put a sign up button there. Let them get into the product, and uh we'll figure things out after that.

Yeah, I mean, so, uh, coming in as a product manager, it's basically, yeah, that's the first thing that you learn, right? That's making an assumption that, uh, a customer is gonna figure shit out just because you've built something. So, I mean, it took me a while to learn that, but because coming from a developer background, uh, you expect things to fail. I have the same fallacy or the same bias that, you know, I've built it in a certain flow that people would figure that out. But then the first two products that I built in and it was, you know, simple enough, but, you know, the kind of questions that we're getting from customers were all different, so that really tweaked my view in saying that there is no such thing as a smart customer. There are people, uh, you know, the user personas that you build for, and they might, uh, you know, use the product in a completely different way. So I had uh users trying to game my previous product and I come up with different uses. So that particular knowledge I brought to uh the current uh company that I work for. Now, the biggest challenge in terms of not just in uh I would, I would say that it's an expectation mismatch, right? So, say for example, so when I came in, the biggest challenge that I was expecting was, OK, fine, uh, how do I implement a product management practice here? The, uh, bias that I came in was with that everybody would understand, uh, the product life cycle or how a product management, uh, you know, uh, department functions, uh, you know, in any modern company. In terms of there is user research, uh, you know, there's somebody who mocks up wire frames and, you know, then, uh, the process for the user story is, you know, the design is there somebody designs it, I pass it on to the developers then. The other challenges, let's say if a design is not working, if the user says it's not working, then we have to reiterate and come up with a better way of work on it. So that is something that I think almost every modern organization works with in terms of that is your normal product department. That is the expectation that I came with here, but that was wrong, right? So it's you're, you're talking about, uh, you know, the, uh, stakeholders have different expectations in terms of they wanted somebody to manage the work, but, uh, in terms of if somebody said, OK, you know, if the user is not, uh, let's say they're not using the platform, it's either a sales problem or it's a problem with something else, right? It's not a matter of, OK, you've designed something, you learn it, and then you it on top of it. So, yeah, you could say it was my expectation was slightly misguided also. But it's been great like that in terms of understanding that, you know, yeah. So everybody's understanding of product management is not the same as, uh, you know, what we are coming in. OK.

Um, so what we have is We, uh, the initial thing. Let's see, uh, the first thing was the understanding of the user. Actually, I told you in the beginning that I came in a completely new domain, so I had to assume that, uh, the users are, uh, the user study was right, and I would focus on the domain knowledge itself. So I would learn about the domain while we build, keeping the user persona that was in their mind when they developed the product. So what happened was over a period of time, so we had uh The payroll solution that we've created. Basically had the understanding that it was built for a first-time entrepreneur or somebody who's new to payroll. It was supposed to be, uh, these, uh, this was gonna be the majority user, right? Somebody who does not understand the laws, does not understand the process at all. This kind of user is gonna come in, he's gonna figure it out, and he can start making payments to his employees. So this was the predominant, uh, user persona. A second user persona would be somebody like a chartered accountant, somebody who knows the flows but whose requirement is gonna be, uh, you know, much higher than what an MVP could provide. So these are two different kinds of users that we have. Now, after a while I was learning about the domain and all of that, I was doing side by side calls with all these people. With all my users. What after, I mean, uh, even I did the entire spiel, you know, whenever I was pitching the product to you, uh, users, I would say, you know, this is designed for somebody who's new to the system. You don't have to worry about all the laws and all that. It turns out our understanding of the use of this one was wrong. And, uh, basically there's no such thing as somebody who's gonna come in, uh, you know, somebody who does not understand the system, he's gonna start using it. Invariably, those kind of users are gonna go away and he's gonna hand it off to somebody who actually understands the process, so. Knowing that means I have to change the priority of, you know, all the features that are gonna be developed. So to give you a very quick example, so if I, my, did you an entrepreneur, he does not really care about reports. He just wants to process his payroll, payout, his employees, and on the other hand, if I have a chartered accountant, what he's gonna do is he wants more reports because that's gonna help him in communication with his clients. He does not really care about, you know, doing his salary payout, uh, all of those things. When it clicked for me that, you know, the dominant user is actually a chartered accountant or, you know, people of that persona type. So that means I had to prioritize what these guys have. So luckily what we had is, uh, we went for a channel partnership wherein I'm not running a marketing campaign and trying to figure out, uh, users from the while. I had a partner who was basically helping us, uh, do, uh, our calculations and all of that. So I basically started tapping into that particular network, uh, in terms of, you know. Uh, uh, they were basically they had around 75 members in that particular company. So like I said, you know, give me all your fresh users, somebody who's not used your platform. Let me know what are they looking at, you know what are the features that they want for their clients. And slowly when we started implementing in terms of reports in terms of the uh you know uh our uh backlog changed and to cater to this particular user so in one of the easiest examples that I could give you was So there is a certain, uh, to run payroll, there's like 5 steps and we have to lock it at the end so that, you know, you can't change it month on month. The chartered accountant wants a process where they can unlock this process. And so how do I give them that because the entire assumption is nobody's gonna unlock it or unlock it because we don't want to give that flexibility to a new user. Uh, somebody who is not familiar with the payroll process. Uh, so the assumption was, you know, if this guy wants to change it, this particular user who's new to payroll, he has to come contact us and basically we will unblock it from the back end, make the changes, and, you know, so they don't, uh, become. Non-compliant with your statutory regulations and stuff like that, but this is some, this modification is something that a chartered accountant does on his day to day basis. So developing a process that allows them, you know, on the dashboard without us getting into, that was a feature that they wanted. This is something that we prioritize and Let go or this is something that they're happy at. Sure.