Arjun Ken

Metrics and Products are kind of two sides of a coin. Nowadays, it’s too hard to imagine a product without someone asking you for feedback. The only way to improve products is by learning from the end-users. Collecting feedback is not only limited to products but also extends to services. For products, setting up a feedback loop is the most important job of a product manager. Having a mechanism to learn from every product release is very critical for success.

Build, Measure, and Learn, as proposed by Eric Ries in his popular book “Lean Startup” is a great way to establish a feedback loop that enables companies to build products quickly with constant learning from the end-users. It emphasizes two main activities, “maximize learning” and “minimize costs.”

If you are an avid online learning geek, I’m sure you know about Lynda.com. It is one of the leading online learning platforms that hosts tons of training resources from varied domains.

A couple of years ago, I think it is 2015, Microsoft acquired Lynda.com and rebranded it as LinkedIn Learning. However, Lynda.com continues to operate just like before for those organizations it provided free access. Now, all new subscriptions will need a LinkedIn account and premium membership. There is not much difference in content between LinkedIn Learning and Lynda.com except for the technology used for delivering the content. Both platforms offer course completion certifications at the end.

Let me start with a quote that is so relevant to this topic.

“There is only one boss. The customer. And he can fire everybody in the company from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else.” – Sam Walton

The epicenter of any business is customers. They can be either existing customers or prospective. They are the boss and drivers of the business. Especially for product managers, getting to know their problems, needs, pains, and frustrations is like mining the gold mine. Every bit of information gained from this process is the gold. So, how do we mine this gold? What do the top customer-centric, most successful product managers do to gain better insight from customers? The answer is;