E144: The Other Reason Your B2B SaaS Product “Doesn’t Work”

Besides the obvious technical issues, there’s a deeper meaning behind your users providing you with feedback that your product “doesn’t work”.  Let’s talk about what that might really mean and what to do about it.

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Episode Transcript
 Hey folks, Sean here and today What I wanna talk to you about is the other reason users and customers might claim that your product quote doesn’t work. Now, the first one’s probably pretty obvious, and that’s because it doesn’t technically as in something’s broken with your product. That one’s probably pretty straightforward.

The other reason is that in terms of how I would interpret it, is really what they mean is that your product is too hard to use as in what they’re trying to do with it. The output or the outcome they’re trying to generate from it is too hard for them to figure out how to do. Now, this falls into any number of different categories, but regardless, your users and customers are gonna treat your product the same way.

Now, especially if you’re starting out or launching a B2B SaaS application, you might not get this precisely right on the first try, and that’s okay. What’s important is for people to. Jump through the hoops to be able to use it so that you can get the feedback in terms of what doesn’t work. Right. So don’t immediately think that someone reporting something not working means that your product can’t do it technically.

That’s what I’m trying to explain is, and that may or may not be the case. More than likely it’s probably not. But uh, at least if it’s only a few people reporting that feedback, if it’s consistent across the board and it’s tons of users, then yeah, you may have a legitimate technical issue, but, The deeper meaning behind people giving you feedback about product and not working, especially on a case by case basis, is probably more than likely a usability issue.

So what you want to do in that case is you want to really figure out where people are getting stuck. Why are they giving you that feedback? How does your product work in terms of what it is they’re trying to do, and why do they feel that that’s suboptimal? If you can dive deeper into that and start to figure out why you can more than likely see the patterns.

Because the challenge when we’re building products, especially new, and then also if you aren’t in your own target market, is there’s so much context to learn. Terms of bridging that transition from what I call the existing solution, or however your users and customers were solving that problem before, to getting them to ultimately using your product that you may or may not have.

And oftentimes, if you’re not in that target market, as in, if you’re not literally in the shoes of one of those users and going about the same type of daily routine that they are, it can be difficult to capture that feedback. That’s why it’s important to have tools like Hot Jar in there and other analytics tools, plus ways to capture feedback from them so that you can learn more about how they are using the product.

When you see how they’re using the product, you’ll see what comes intuitively for them. Then you shouldn’t be looking at potentially designing around what’s intuitive for you, but more than likely what’s intuitive for them, because that’s gonna be an easier user experience for them, better usability, and make it significantly simpler for them to get more value out of the use of your product.