The Right Person To Manage Customer Conversations

Attracting customers, engaging them in a conversation at the right time and keeping the conversation going is critical to the success of your product. So getting the right person to do the job is key.

Dedicate a product manager as the customer manager
Sharing your product design to gather feedback from customers is as important as designing the product itself. When formal feedback is needed, you need a person to dedicated 100 percent of his or her time to reach out to potential customers of your product and lead this exercise from beginning to end. There are many reasons why having a dedicated person for this job is critical for the success of your product.

First of all, seeking the right customers and keeping them engaged is a full time job. It is not possible for one person to design the product as well as manage the customer relationship. So we recommend that you dedicate a product manager to find customers, attract them, manage the conversations and ensure an ongoing dialog with them.

Among other responsibilities, this product manager should be able to:

• Identify customers that are a good fit for the conversation
• Explain the value of the conversation to the product team
• Organize and facilitate feedback sessions
• Keep the product team on a schedule, like a coach manages a team of athletes
• Capture and share the feedback collected during the sessions

Select a customer manager with the following skills

The product manager you select to manage customer conversations should have the following special skills and experience.

• He or she should be able to develop a strong customer pipeline. Therefore a former role in sales, consulting, market development, or a similar customer facing experience is a must. Such an experience brings a strong understanding of customer pipeline development.  
• The customer manager should be able to present a value proposition that works for both product designers and customers. This person should also have a deep understanding of how to manage customer expectations, how to be a customer advocate and nudge the team towards meeting those customer expectations.
• Empathy for customers must be in the blood of the customer manager you select.
• The customer manager must know how to develop a network within your organization. For example, the customer manager should be able to convince internal stakeholders such as account executives to get access to customers. It is also important that this person knows how to manage customer conversations without disrupting current account activities with the customer. Networking skills are important because customer conversations may require executive sponsorship on both sides.