What do you do if your product managers lack empathy skills to understand customer needs?

Albeit an interesting angle, but isn’t it more about interest than empathy? A genuine interest understand the customers situation, what their aspirations or painpoints are. Nothing beats walking the beat, field surveys and interviews as applicable. The user experience is the tell tail of product (or service) success. Hence, if there is a lack of interest, that persons qualities and experience, is probably better served in another position.

When talking about new features and products, I expect all of my team members to be able to talk about user pains and needs, quoting insight from research and customer interactions, backed by data. I habitually ask 'What was the insight ?' 'Can you back this with data?'. This is essential context. The best product managers interact with customers regularly. In the base of B2C/SMB products, listening to live calls/chats with customer care is probably one of the best ways to get under the skin of customers, and start developing empathy. Listening to recordings and reading escalated tickets is just the first step. Listening to support calls and chats in real time brings the user's pain much closer.

Talk to users as much as possible. Create test accounts that match your audience profile. At LinkedIn, we had multiple test accounts to represent new and infrequent members to feel the pain of users with small networks and low relevance. Bonus points if you're testing the product in different languages.

- Organize regular calls involving product managers, customer success, and customers to gather feedback. - Analyze customer support inquiries to identify common themes and collaborate with teams to address them. - Evaluate product-market fit by engaging with sales, marketing, and prospects. - Ensure C-level involvement to prioritize customer-centric strategies.

I come from a support background where empathy is crucial to success. I think the need for empathy really depends heavily on the product and it's category. If you are dealing with a consumer product with a lot of A/B/C testing, then maybe empathy is not as important as pure analytical skill, or you know the market fit really well and don't need it. If your product is still getting worked out and you have a lot of interaction, such as a B2B Enterprise product, empathy is going to be a critical skill that, without it, you might just need to find someone else. Empathy is not a skill that can be taught, you could learn strategies to fake it.

I would sit with the PM directly at his workplace and watch him and provide instant feedback. All courses and trainings are theoretical and there is always a transformation from the course to the real life. It is better to coach the PM directly on the job over a period of time and provide him with a behavior, that I would like to see in a certain situation.

Empathy is not a skill - it's a mindset that needs to evolve. One of the practices to build an empathy mindset is to have a fun activity every month, asking your team to share their experiences in helping people outside/within the work environment: Start the conversation by sharing your experience to break the ice and then ask your team to share their experience. A simple format could be: What problems the people had? How did they communicate the problem with you? Have they reached out to you, or have you reached out for a casual conversation and discovered the problem? What solutions you have provided? Did your solution solve their problem? What was their feedback? Alternatives etc. Make a wall of achievements for your product team.

Breaking by Organisation scale and lifecycle - 1. For Startups, focus on interactive workshops and role-playing exercises that simulate customer interactions, fostering empathy with limited resources. 2. Growth Stage companies should invest in comprehensive courses and coaching, incorporating case studies relevant to their expanding markets to ensure empathy scales with the organisation. 3. Mature companies could benefit from mentoring programs that pair less experienced managers with empathetic leaders, alongside advanced simulations that challenge product managers to apply empathy in complex, global scenarios. Each approach is tailored to organisational resources and needs, ensuring empathy training is both practical and impactful.

- Offer empathy training through workshops, courses, or coaching sessions. - Use case studies and role-playing exercises to teach empathy principles and practices. - For instance, organize a workshop where product managers practice active listening and role-play customer scenarios to enhance their empathy skills.

Contrary to popular belief, empathy is a skill that can be developed over time. However, just like any other skill it also requires willingness to begin with. So, firstly it is the recognition of the need to empathise with the customer’s needs and wants. Secondly, listening in with an open mind is essential. It includes paying attention to the non- verbal cues as well. Thirdly (and this is the most difficult one), questioning the biases that you have and what you ‘think’ you know. And lastly, mindfulness of the entire situation at hand while keeping in mind that ‘its not about you’. Repeating these mindfully helps in attaining the art of empathy with practice.

I remember vividly watching through a one-way mirror how our test user was unable to discover the button which was right there. Its insightful to see a customer using the product for real. Its ok to run a survey and get some shiny and nice-looking charts around user preference, however its equally important to have a channel where you directly engage with customers via customer interviews. That will ensure that you have a persona in your mind along with a deeper assessment of customer behavior.

I have found that many of the PMs I have coached don't lack empathy. They lack confidence in managing customer interactions. They struggle with extracting the right level of information from these interactions and feel nervous about asking deeper questions. Having a more junior PM undergo a rotation in support can help them develop this skill. While it provides an environment with less pressure on facilitating discovery, it highlights the importance of our solution and the pain points customers are experiencing. While it may not directly lead to identifying the next killer feature, it serves as a gateway to understanding current customer needs and helps build the necessary confidence.

If your product manager lacks empathy skills, it's essential to address this issue constructively. You could: 1. Provide feedback: Offer specific examples of situations where empathy was lacking and suggest ways to improve. 2. Offer training: Provide resources or training sessions on empathy. 3. Encourage customer interaction: Facilitate opportunities for the product manager to directly engage with customers . 4. Set clear expectations: Communicate the importance of empathy in understanding and meeting customer needs. 5. Lead by example: Demonstrate empathy in your own interactions with customers and encourage others to do the same. 6. Monitor progress: Regularly check in with the product manager to see how they are improving .

In B2B Software, the ideal way to build empathy is to visit your users at work and see what they deal with on a day-to-day basis using your product. On a visit you can see the stress that your product is meant to alleviate and the stress your product sometimes causes. It may seem daunting to your product managers to arrange a visit. Often all it takes is a call to your sales rep. (making sure they understand you need to meet with users, not buyers) and a box of donuts to sometimes get you hours of time with your users. Coach product managers through the reluctance to spend time away from their desks, invest in travel, and/or take some time from sales. Time with users building empathy is among the most important things they can do.

Personally, I schedule customer or user interviews every single Friday. Whatever the team has questions about, are exploring, or need to user test is done in those. When you have them scheduled ahead of time, regardless of not yet having something planned to talk about, you remove the barrier of having to schedule it, and the 'exclusiveness' that can often surrounding interviewing users or customers. I have found that after having those on the calendar, people stopped making assumptions and guesses about work and started actually asking. I think everyone is aware of the importance of customer research, but many people feel a barrier or that their questions aren't 'important enough' or 'thought out enough' for interviews.

In my point of view empathy is not a skill it’s a mindset! When we see a leader or any colleague building a culture of trust and not micromanagement and biases we learn those people come in with built in empathy in themselves! Similarly when it goes for a product manager it is extremely crucial that he or she must have that trait in themselves to feel the need and pain of their customer. Most of the time PMs do have empathy but they lack confidence to get that customer centric approach. So what do they need to get this trait and mindset? 1. Give constructive feedbacks 2. Build a culture of empathy so that they can contribute and learn through that environment 3. Most importantly lead by example! That is always a must.

There’s different ways to be customer obsessed. Empathy is a really great way to do that. However, we can start with basic principles. Start with the Why. Why would the customer care about this. Then the How. How does it help them? If you get these two questions answered, you’re 80% there already. Empathy is just the 20% cherry on top!

Empathy is key for product managers, but it's the supportive company culture really amplifies this trait, especially during challenging times. PMs can benefit from collaborating with teams that regularly interact with customers—such as sales, customer support, and marketing. These teams provide diverse insights into customer needs, enriching the product development process. Additionally, partnering with UX designers and researchers, who specialize in empathy and user understanding, can also offer PMs invaluable guidance. PMs should also revisit organizational success stories that underscore the positive impact of empathy on product success. These stories illustrate practical examples of empathy's role in creating meaningful products.

Product companies that do not embrace an empathic customer culture will build products that they feel are what their customers need. This "we know it better" mindset works for some period, particularly with new Innovations, but customers build sustainable high growth companies; not product managers, or engineers, or sales, or marketing, or investors etc. The inability to truly listen, understand customer challenges and opportunities will build customer driven business outcomes. Failure to build a culture of empathy creates an organization whose most successful outcome will be that of acquisition.

It is critical for product leaders to to demonstrate customer empathy at every opportunity. This is the language that will get cross-functional teams on the same page. This can take the form of including engineering or operations or other organizations on customer calls. Nothing generates more customer empathy that hearing directly from the customer. With product taking the lead, the language and priorities will eventually shift to focus on the customer, which will lead to greater success.

If your product managers lack empathy skills for understanding customer needs, remember there are other team members who might have strengths in this area, working on the same product. Encourage collaboration and urge your product manager to listen to and value the opinions of others on the team. Promoting this kind of culture can help ensure customer needs are still understood and met effectively.

If marketing is about anticipating consumers’ needs and wants, even before they know it themselves, then Empathy is surely the most important trait for a successful marketing professional. One of the easiest ways to improve empathy for consumers is by spending as many waking hours with them as possible to understand their typical “day in life”, become aware of and sensitive to their pain-points and understand and recognize their aspirations!

Empathy's not a one-and-done; it's like leveling up in a game, always room to grow. Track it with the good stuff—happy customers, sticking around, spreading the word. Dive into feedback and look-backs to spot where to boost empathy skills.

To help product managers get better at understanding others, first, ask everyone they work with, and the managers themselves, where they think they need to improve. Focus on how well they listen, get what others are feeling, and if they're kind in their responses. Then, set up special training that teaches them how to be more understanding, like practicing being in their customers' shoes. Encourage them to really get into what users need by joining in on customer service chats or watching what users say about the product. Keep checking on how they're doing and talk about ways to keep getting better at understanding people.

Review and improve The final step is to review and improve your product managers' empathy skills over time. Empathy is not a one-time activity, but a continuous process. You can use various metrics, such as customer satisfaction, retention, loyalty, or referrals, to measure the impact of empathy on your products. You can also use feedback, reviews, or retrospectives to identify the gaps and opportunities for improvement. The goal is to help your product managers learn from their experiences and grow their empathy skills.

Send your Product Management Team out into the wild. Have them participate in ethnographic research, and if possible, actually have them do the work of their customer. What better way to gain empathy than to take off your shoes and put your customers' on.

One of the key ways product managers develop empathy for a customer is by using the product themselves. If you are on a highly technical product, something that is further removed from your day to day work or not a typical b2c product, ensure you have used the product and the problems it's supposed to solve by using it hands on. For example, if your team owns a CD/CI product, one of the fastest way for PMs to have empathy for the customers (in this case, developers) is by deploying code and being on call for the tool. Empathy in the abstract is a good start but true empathy only comes from walking a mile in your customers shoes.

Consider empathy and customer-centricity as important criteria when hiring new product managers. Look for candidates who demonstrate a genuine interest in understanding and serving the needs of customers.

The problem is not a lack of empathy. The problem is those product managers don’t have a clue why the customers buy. Empathic or not, it’s their job to understand the customer and their needs, and tailor the product. If they don’t want to do it, it’s a lack of professionalism, and not a lack of empathy. Get them out of the team.

Ummm...what does this have to do with "empathy"? We're talking about a fundamental requirement of the job. This would be like investigating the "empathy skills" of a restaurant server because they didn't ask about dietary restrictions. We don't need someone to be Patch Adams to have passion to build awesome stuff, and acknowledge that the arbiter of "awesome" is THE END USER. After 19+ years of doing this, I can assure you that if a 'beyond-junior' PM needs more than a nudge of guidance on how to recalibrate their lens to primarily focus on "customer needs", then they are in the wrong profession AND/OR I'm baffled by what YOU thought was the critical ingredient for the role.