Product companies often face the dilemma of adding, removing, or excluding certain features as part of their product. These decisions are influenced by various factors, such as the low usage of certain features by customers, complexity in management, technological or architectural limitations, and the need to avoid making the product bulkier. Adding too many niche features could compromise more essential features that serve a broader customer base.
This trade-off can lead to complex customer support queries and necessitate defending decisions about why certain features are included in the product, while others—especially those available in competitors’ products—are not.
The following could be approaches to addressing these challenges:
- Evaluate Customer Needs: Assess if the requested feature is truly valuable and if the majority of your customers want and would benefit from it. If a large segment of customers need it, add the feature to the backlog and plan for the earliest possible release. Until then, manage expectations.
- Minority Requests: If only a small segment requests a feature, be prepared to consider sacrificing that segment. Unless 80% of customers demand a feature, it may not be worth adding. However, if that 20% represents a core niche, consider building your marketing around this segment.
- Focus on Core Features: The fact that customers currently use your product suggests they value it. Identify the top 20% of features that are critical to customer transactions. Keep in mind that competitors may face similar challenges and may lack some of the features your product offers.
- Customization Options: Offer customization for additional features if possible. Explain the value trade-off to customers, suggesting that if they truly need the extra feature, they can pay for it. This approach often leads customers to reconsider their requests.
- Service Features: Consider offering missing features as service features, meaning they are not incorporated into the product itself but provided as an additional backend service for a fee. For instance, a completely new type of requirement, like a custom report, could be offered this way.
- Cost-Sharing for Development: If cost is an issue, explore whether the customer is willing to fund the additional feature's development, which could then be added to the product.
If you notice all companies, eventually build a layer of development environment which customers themselves can use to develop their custom needs. This works if the customer is reasonably sophisticated to handle the tech development, like low code / citizen development tools etc.?
Remember, catering to everyone is not easy. Be willing to let go of customers who may be too costly to support.
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