Timing of your product conversation sessions matters a lot

One of the key responsibilities of a product manager managing customer conversations, is to determine the timing of the product conversation sessions. Multiple feedback loops with customers is a key advantage product conversation sessions have over traditional requirements gathering sessions. You should recognize this  advantage and make the best out of it by determining the number, timing and frequency of your sessions with customers. To do this well, work with the rest of the product team side by side, participate in product design sessions, understand what they are building and assess when the time is ripe to gather feedback on the newly prototyped ideas.

You might need additional feedback approximately every 4 to 6 weeks. If you are in charge of customer management, you need to develop and master your skills to assess this need for feedback and determine the timing of the conversations.

You also need to ensure that the conversation sessions actually happen. Once feedback is collected and analyzed, you need to nudge product managers and designers to incorporate the feedback into to a new and evolving prototype. This will help product managers and designers arrive at some decisions  as well as give rise to some brand new questions. By nudging fellow product managers and designers to have repeated conversations with customers, you can ensure that the feedback is actually incorporated into the prototypes. The fear of going before a customer will force the team to iterate the prototype quickly and bring it to a logical conclusion.

As a customer advocate, you need to make sure that in every session a new version of the prototype or a new idea is presented for discussion. This will showcase the evolution of the product and keep customers engaged.