Your customers know something you don’t

Do you truly know your customers, or are decisions still driven by guesswork and assumptions?

Too often, vital customer insights become buried in customer support or sales, inaccessible to product managers and executives who shape the business strategy. This disconnect isn't just inconvenient—it leads directly to wasted resources, missed opportunities, and frustrated customers.

Imagine spending months building features nobody uses, or investing heavily in solutions that fail to address core user frustrations. Unfortunately, these scenarios are common when companies overlook regular customer interactions.

The solution? Embedding customer insights and co-design practices into your everyday processes. By doing this, your company doesn't just build better products—you create loyal customers and gain a lasting competitive advantage.

The real cost of ignoring customer insights

Up to 30–50% of development efforts in digital projects can be wasted due to inadequate early customer research. By contrast, companies that prioritize customer insights see significant returns:

• Salesforce highlights that 84% of business buyers view the experience a company provides as equally critical as its products and services.

• McKinsey shows user-centric companies experience 32% higher revenue growth and 56% higher total shareholder returns.
  
  

Real-world impact: Enivo’s story

When designing Enivo, an innovative property management system, we avoided costly guesswork. Instead, we engaged property managers, accountants, and residents early, capturing detailed insights. Complex issues, such as accurately calculating loan amortization schedules spanning decades, were clarified through these conversations and validated via rapid prototyping. As a result, test users overwhelmingly recognized Enivo as offering "the best user experience available."

This user-centered methodology proved invaluable, demonstrating clearly that involving customers early significantly improves product-market fit.

Vandall: Building customer-centric software from day one

At Vandall, we've built our entire platform with a relentless focus on customer feedback. We didn't just guess what music professionals needed—we listened, tested, and iterated with them. Whether it was optimizing file sharing for producers or streamlining metadata management for labels, every major feature in Vandall is the result of direct user input.

This approach hasn’t just helped us build a product people love—it’s accelerated our growth significantly. We’ve hit milestones faster, avoided major missteps, and continuously delivered value to our users without the costly guesswork other startups often face. Our customers aren’t just users; they’re co-creators in our journey.

What does customer co-design look like?

Imagine designing an engaging digital experience for a versatile educational gaming platform like Seppo, catering not just to K–12 schools but also to NGOs and businesses. Instead of guessing what each group needs, you involve teachers, students, and corporate users in dedicated workshops. Together, you map the complete user journey—from creating games tailored to classroom instruction to designing strategic exercises for corporate training.

This approach quickly surfaces critical friction points, such as navigating a visually appealing yet professionally credible interface or ensuring robust offline functionality. According to Seppo’s UX lead, direct user interactions delivered "many great insights that have significantly influenced our product development."

By engaging users from the outset, Seppo struck an optimal balance, enhancing usability across diverse contexts and genuinely aligning the product with all stakeholders' needs.

Practical steps to leverage customer insights

Building with customer insights doesn’t need to be overwhelming—it starts with a few simple, consistent actions that deliver immediate value.

• Establish Regular Reviews: Set bi-weekly or monthly meetings to systematically review and act on customer feedback.

• Identify and Engage Stakeholders: Speak directly with three to five users from each key customer group.

• Use AI-Assisted Surveys: Quickly and easily create insightful, unbiased questionnaires with modern AI tools.

Embracing these customer-centric practices transforms your organization, driving agility, reducing risk, and accelerating meaningful innovation. Industry leaders like Airbnb and IKEA have proven this approach delivers exceptional ROI.

Ready to replace guesswork with growth-driving customer insights? Reach out directly—I’m here to help you unlock your team's full potential.