Product Managers are often inundated with feedback and new feature requests. These requests can come from user feedback, sales insights, data trend analyses, product strategy, amongst others. As a result, it sometimes becomes difficult to distill the signal from the noise. Regardless of the source, you must always assess the validity of the problem and understand the business impact of a potential solution. When it comes to assessing feedback from your users, focusing solely on your power users is a huge mistake. Don’t get me wrong, having power users is great. In fact, a product without a power user segment is mediocre at best. Power users increase your lifetime value (LTV) and reduce your cost of customer acquisition (CAC).
However, when it comes to feedback, this user group are often the most vocal. Constantly bending to their will could prove costly for your product, and ultimately your business.
Who are Power Users?
I define powers users as those who take a critical action within a specified timeframe to solve their core problem. That core problem should be in line with our product’s value proposition.
In other words, power users are your most engaged user base.
Why focusing mainly on Power Users is problematic for your product
Power users represent a small segment of your total users
In a perfect world, it would be lovely if power users encompassed 100% of your user base. Unfortunately, that is never the case. These users are typically a small segment of your total users. Depending on your product, they could represent anywhere from 1 to 5% (maybe slightly more) of your total users.
Power users are already your most engaged users
These users are the most engaged and the least likely to churn. By placing a higher weight on this vocal minority, you end up missing out on improving the experience for the majority of your users.
What should Product Managers do instead?
Segment feedback by user groups
You should always collect feedback from various sources and segment accordingly. This tells you how representative the feedback is to your entire user base. It gives clarity and helps prioritize which problems are more pressing to solve. For instance, if 80% of feedback received was provided by 1% of your power users, you can lower the priority of that problem. If there were an issue that impacted the core experience of your product, you should be getting signals from other segments of your population.
Assess the value of the feedback
A great product manager knows not to draw conclusions based on a small percentage of users. When you are evaluating customer or user feedback, you should always assess the value of the feedback and its impact to your business. Power users care about their use cases and not really about your business. You need to make sure that the feedback you assess is one that is providing value in the manner that serves your business. Obviously, if there was a problem that was significantly impacting your business, you would have been alerted by various signals.
Acknowledge the feedback & file away
Time permitting and as best as you can, acknowledge feedback from this vocal few when provided. Provide a simple explanation for why now is not the best time and drum up excitement for what’s coming down the pike. As I wrote in this post, doing so displays empathy and makes the requestor feel heard.
Every product needs to have Power Users
Power users are not the problem. Every product needs them as they are your champions and advocates. They lower your cost of customer acquisition and improve your acquisition loop. Their dedication to your product is invaluable to your product development and business success.
With that being said; given their immense value, it is easy to overestimate the value of their feedback. Doing so is myopic and poses significant risks to your overall product. Herein lies the problem.
