One of my colleagues at Tableau, CMO Elissa Fink, wrote an article last year that discussed just how essential people are to building a brand. She talked about engaging with your customers in a way that brings them on the journey with you and makes them invested in your success.

From a marketing and communications standpoint, that seems to make a lot of sense. But we often don’t think of creating software — especially enterprise software — in that way. But it’s not to say we shouldn’t. In fact, as the lines between enterprise and consumer software continue to blur, we in the B2B space have an opportunity to build software that turns our customers into fans who are engaged in our success. We do this by building software with our customers in mind and include them in the software development process.  

As a result of this approach, customers will feel that every release of your software is made specifically for them. Problems they had can finally be addressed. Tasks that were hard can be made easier, and they can accomplish new tasks that they never thought possible.

When customers are at the center of software development, they become your biggest champions and the evangelists of your software. They have a voice, are empowered and can help steer future innovation. All of this is a result of the engagement between customers and the developers (i.e., listening to their feedback, understanding their use cases and innovating quickly). The future of technology will relentlessly focus on the people who use it.

But don’t wait for the future. You should start now and adopt a people-centric mindset when building products. Here’s how:

Understand Customers And Learn Their ‘Why’

If you do not understand what your customer is actually trying to do or what problem they want to solve, then it is nearly impossible to build a product that is right for them. Start with analyzing the customer needs and the benefits that you will deliver and then work back from there. Use different mechanisms to discover their “why.” Don’t just listen for the feature request — dig deeper to understand the core reason they need this feature and then find the best way to solve the problem.

Include Customers In The Development Process