Author: Jurgen Appelo

Is it always about products?

Product visions, product backlogs, product roadmaps, product lifecycles, product owners, product managers ... is there any activity left in the lean-agile space that is not about products? Check any recent agile book, and you'll find there's a good chance it will be about product discovery, product development, or product delivery. It is products all the way.

But I don't care about products. I care about my experience.

Let me give you three random examples.

While writing this article at a coffee bar, I enjoyed a piece of lemon cake with my coffee. It was delicious—an excellent product. I couldn't have wished for anything better to fit the moment. However, there was just one little problem: the barista gave me the smallest piece on the shelf. They had not sliced the cake evenly, and I happened to be the one drawing the shortest straw. Or, in this case, the shortest slice. I felt a little bit disappointed. Lovely cake; I wished it was bigger.

Yesterday, I had lunch in a lunch cafe. When I arrived, it was nearly full, and I was lucky that there was precisely one table left. The avocado sandwich was good, and the orange juice was delicious. Lunch was all I could hope for. However, there was one little problem: the tables and chairs were not comfortable. I had planned to stay there for another hour to read, but I changed my mind. And I was not the only one. By the time I finished my lunch, the entire cafe was empty. Nobody stayed.

As some of my readers know, I am an avid runner. I run at least fifty kilometers per week. And after trying out many brands of running shoes, I settled on a pair of Brooks because they're the most comfortable shoes I ever had. Now, imagine my surprise when I saw that the company's CEO has written a book about the turnaround of the company and their passion for running shoes. This simple discovery makes me love my shoes even more. They are part of a larger story.

These are just a few examples to show that experience trumps product.

Experience Beats Product and Service

For sure, a great customer experience is hard to achieve without a great product. Everything you can learn about product design, development, and delivery is important. But it doesn't stop there.

Even with a great product, your company can still screw things up. Sometimes, your customer support is terrible, your logistics team drops the ball, or your finance department ruins the customer relationship. Sometimes, it's just a matter of failing to satisfy your customer's sense of fairness, comfort, or meaning. In all cases, the product is good, but your customer decides to go elsewhere.

A focus on products is still sub-optimization.

And before you say, "Oh, you mean customer service!" No, that's not what I mean. Customer service is handling a complaint about the size of the cake. Customer experience is giving each customer the largest slice available. Customer service is listening to customers. Customer experience is writing a book about them.

The customer cares more about their experience than about your product or service.

This same principle applies to all stakeholder experiences: the employee experience, developer experience, partner experience, vendor experience, shareholder experience, etc. Don't assume that you're done when you pay them the money you owe them. If they're sick of the experience, they can simply go elsewhere. And what would you do then?