The B2B Podcast Index
Index
All categories
MarketingSalesSaaSFinanceHROpsLeadershipCustomer SuccessAI & DataProductStartups & FoundersRevOpsEngineering & DevTools
MethodologySubmit
Best of:MarketingSalesSaaSFinanceHROpsLeadershipCustomer SuccessAI & DataProductStartups & FoundersRevOpsEngineering & DevTools
An independent project byFame
SearchBest episodesGuestsInsightsMethodologySubmit a podcast
Index/Product/Practical Product Management
Practical Product Management artwork

Confirmation Bias is Killing Your Product - The Keys to Great Product Design

Practical Product Management · 2024-10-09 · 39 min

0:00--:--

Key moments - from our scoring

Substance score

48 / 100

Five dimensions, 20 points each

Insight Density8 / 20
Originality7 / 20
Guest Caliber13 / 20
Specificity & Evidence11 / 20
Conversational Craft9 / 20

Pete, a product design leader currently at MasterCard, joins Marilyn and Leah to discuss how confirmation bias undermines product decisions and why systematic user research, design standardization, and customer-centric practices are essential to building better products at scale. Drawing on experience across eBay StubHub's consumer platforms and MasterCard's complex B2B ecosystem, Pete explains how design component libraries can save 240k per product through 57% time reduction, and demonstrates measurable business impact: OSAT up 20%, NPS up nearly 100%, and support tickets down 40% over four years. The conversation tackles the persistent underinvestment in B2B and employee-facing product experiences, the critical difference between product managers conducting surveys (loaded with bias) and trained user researchers eliminating bias, and why speaking in dollars rather than design principles moves enterprise executives to champion research. Key insight: confirmation bias - our tendency to seek information confirming what we already believe - can waste enormous engineering resources on wrong problems. Invaluable for product leaders, startup founders, and enterprise product teams struggling to balance speed with rigor.

Key takeaways

  • →Confirmation bias kills product decisions; user researchers with unbiased methodology are essential to de-risk initiatives and validate assumptions with facts rather than opinions.
  • →Design component libraries and standardized design systems can reduce implementation time by 57% (approximately $240k savings per product) while improving consistency across enterprise products.
  • →B2B and internal enterprise products deserve the same experience quality as consumer products; poor UX creates retention and generational workforce issues as newer employees expect intuitive interfaces.
  • →Product leaders must champion user research teams and speak in the language of their audience (dollars and de-risking for executives) to gain support rather than relying solely on experience-driven arguments.
  • →Access to customers in regulated industries like fintech requires systematic effort through mechanisms like situational surveys and community building, not assumed impossibility due to compliance restrictions.

In this episode

  1. 1From E-Commerce to Enterprise: Pete's Product Design Journey
  2. 2Scaling Design Standards and Component Libraries Across Organizations
  3. 3Bridging the B2B-B2C Experience Gap and Respecting User Time
  4. 4Building Customer Access and Community in Regulated Industries
  5. 5Measuring Impact: OSAT, NPS, and Help Ticket Reduction
  6. 6The Critical Role of User Research in De-Risking Product Decisions
  7. 7Combating Confirmation Bias and Leveraging Unexpected Research Learnings

Mentioned

MasterCardeBayStubHubKlarnaKnapsackPeteMarilynLeah

Guests

Pete

Topics in this episode

user research methodologyMasterCard B2B product experienceDesign systems and tokenized componentsConfirmation bias in product decisionsDesign component librariesLean UX validationOSAT and NPS metricsHelp ticket reductioneBay StubHub e-commerce experienceFintech product design

Questions this episode answers

How much money can a design component library save per product?

A design component library with 50 patterns can reduce implementation time by 57% and save approximately 240k per product, according to a quantification Pete's team did at MasterCard based on research from Knapsack.

What specific metrics improved at MasterCard after implementing user research and design standardization?

Over four to five years, OSAT grew 20%, NPS increased almost 100%, and help tickets dropped 40%, which Pete notes translates to significant cost savings beyond customer perception improvements.

Why is confirmation bias dangerous in product development?

Confirmation bias can send teams in wrong directions, causing them to invest tremendous time and money solving problems that don't actually exist because they're only seeking information that confirms what they already believe.

What is the difference between a product manager sending a survey and a user researcher conducting research?

Product managers conducting surveys introduce bias through loaded questions; trained user researchers are skilled at designing interactions and surveys specifically to eliminate or minimize bias, which is a distinct expertise.

How should product leaders advocate for user research teams internally?

Product leaders should champion user researchers by articulating that research de-risks product decisions, eliminates assumptions, and ultimately saves money - speaking in terms of dollars and business outcomes rather than just customer experience benefits.

What our scoring noted

Our reviewer’s read on each dimension, with quotes from the episode.

Insight Density

8 / 20

A handful of useful points (design system ROI, time-on-task, de-risking) but mostly familiar product/UX advice padded with agreement and meandering ('going in all kinds of different directions here'). Low ratio of novel claims to filler.

being able to quantify in hard dollars the exercise of Lean ux
we're here to de risk, we're here to reduce assumptions

Originality

7 / 20

Leans heavily on well-worn tropes - Apple vs Android consistency, 'voice of the customer,' confirmation bias, the maturity curve of admitting you don't know. Little contrarian or first-principles thinking.

I like to think of it as um, the Apple versus Android
No, I am the voice of the customer

Guest Caliber

13 / 20

Pete is a genuine senior practitioner - leading B2B product experience at MasterCard and prior eBay/StubHub work - relevant and hands-on, though the transcript itself stays fairly high-level.

I am at MasterCard where I am leading the B2B product experience, uh, curating hundreds of B2B products
I worked with marilyn at eBay StubHub for several years

Specificity & Evidence

11 / 20

Some concrete numbers stand out (component library ROI, satisfaction and ticket deltas, cited Knapsack study), but much of the discussion remains abstract with unnamed 'orgs' and generalized anecdotes.

it's about 57% time reduction or 240k in uh, savings per product
our OSAT has grown, uh, has popped uh 20%. Uh, NPS is up almost 100%. And help tickets... are down 40%

Conversational Craft

9 / 20

One genuine probe ('I want to poke at that') and a good question about user research, but largely a mutually affirming chat among colleagues with unchallenged claims and no productive disagreement.

I want to poke at that, I mean something you said
what do you wish that product leaders knew and understood about user research

Conversation analysis

Computed from the transcript - who did the talking, and the words that came up most.

Share of words spoken

  • Speaker B55%
  • Speaker A23%
  • Speaker C22%

Most-used words

customer38product28user18experience18different17marilyn13design13voice13back12love12customers12products10part10pete9research9enterprise9

Episode notes

In this episode of Practical Product Management, Leah and Marilyn sit down with Pete Peterson, a seasoned product design leader with a wealth of experience in building design teams and user research practices. They dive deep into the intricacies of product management in large organizations, uncovering how harmonizing design standards can foster a unified user experience. Pete also shares his wisdom on balancing B2B and B2C products, the power of advocating for user research, and why empowering teams to step beyond their core responsibilities leads to greater success. This episode is a must-listen for anyone looking to understand the value of user research and the challenges of driving product harmony in complex environments. Key Takeaways: 1. Influence is everything - Advocating for design and research is crucial in large organizations where multiple teams and stakeholders are involved. 2. B2B needs love too - B2B products often don't get the same attention as B2C, but they benefit greatly from thoughtful user research and design standards. 3.

Full transcript

39 min

Transcribed and scored by The B2B Podcast Index.

Speaker A: Welcome to Practical Product Management where we don't talk about theory, but we talk about how product management shows up in practice, in context in companies. And so today Marilyn and I are going to interview Pete. Um, Pete has a vast knowledge of building design teams that are embedded within engineering and product, but also really user research practices and things that just make for better customer outcomes. And so we really wanted to talk about that and get to know Pete and introduce our little audience to. So Pete, tell us about yourself.

Speaker B: Hi guys. I'm so happy to be here with you. I've known Marilyn and worked for Maryland, uh, a long time. We go way back. Leah, uh, it's great to uh, get to know you. So yeah, I am a uh, product design leader. I've been in the game a long time, mostly uh, uh, working out of Silver, uh, San Francisco, so the West Coast. And I, uh, worked with marilyn at eBay StubHub for several years and we handled the uh, buy and sell experience. Uh, and it was just tremendously rewarding to be able to be on the bleeding edge of an E commerce, uh, enterprise, uh, both in uh, M Web desktop and native. Most recently I am at MasterCard where I am leading the B2B product experience, uh, curating hundreds of B2B products all coming through a single front door that we like to call it, which is uh, a curated platform experience that our, uh, large enterprise companies come through, access their products and do the important work. Um, it's a really, really complex ecosystem and the exercise in creating that unified experience is a pretty high bar of difficulty, but it's very, very rewarding.

Speaker C: I love the evolution of the time that we spent together because I think that um, you've had deep experience in user interactions inside certain apps that you control end to end. Um, but when you talk about a company, a big multinational company that serves thousands of people across the globe, um, and you actually have hundreds of engineering teams contributing to the user experience, that's not something that any one person controls. Creating the framework and the standards and the practices and advocating for customer experience across a large distributed organization I think is just as important, if not more important than really then really curating the experiences on, on a, on an interface that, that you know, a smaller team, a couple hundred people control instead of thousands. So I'd love for you to talk to us a little bit about the difference, um, and I will call it the evolution of, of really sort of like going from something that you can hold wholly control to influencing um, engineering teams across the globe.

Speaker B: Yeah, no, that is Advocating and influencing is really kind of what I spend most of my time doing. Because you're right Marilyn, we are in concentric circles of outside of which we are in absolute control. And the farther out we go uh, the more advocating and influencing we need to do. And I've really enjoyed the, the evolution of coming into MasterCard uh almost five years ago and um, starting to assess our capabilities and really upskilling and empowering orgs. We can get to that later but once we get to a place where we can become, become very, very effective, we actually have a platform from which we can show the value and show the outputs to outcomes and get the neutrals and even the uh, detractors to come into a place of wanting to be part of what we're doing. And I have seen several orgs within MasterCard um, kind of want to come back in and um, we've, I do the sneaky thing where I do some things for free for these guys. Marilyn you'll, you'll remember this. We'll do some work uh, whereas we're not really part of a unified uh, org, but we're doing some good work. They see the benefit and then they come back in and they actually want to formally uh, attach themselves to our teams. And this has happened several times and it's just fantastic. And this has to do with uh, just good old fashioned methodology around um, understanding the customer problem, having access to customer, really being able to quantify what their needs are and uh, then being able to ideate and experiment ruthlessly and bringing the solved problem that is quantified in the fact that it's going to be uh, uh, a good solution. And I've really enjoyed actually I'm going in all kinds of different directions here but there is one thing that we've done where we've been able to quantify in hard dollars the exercise of Lean ux, validating our solutions. What all this boils down to is that we are not just doing the work and it's good work and we trust each other but we can actually quantify this. And this gets other organizations within the enterprise excited and they want to be part of that.

Speaker C: I like to think of it as um, the Apple versus Android. Like I think when you talk about it in abstract terms people are like oh you know, yeah but my button should be purple or like I want to have it. I want to be a slightly edgier style. When you look at applications on an Apple device, everything has the same navigation, everything works the same. As a user it's really easy to interact because the interaction patterns are the same on an Android device. Everybody does their own stuff, everybody does their own thing and it uh, creates a really fragmented user experience. So when you're trying to create that holistic experience, I do think, I do think harmonization is super important. Talk to me about um, maybe what are some of the biggest wins you've seen uh, by advocating for and achieving harmonization?

Speaker B: Yeah, I mean design standards are critical and especially in a large enterprise, whether it's MasterCard or any other company that, that spends a lot of their R and D by acquiring. Uh, picture a lot of different companies, smaller companies coming into the larger enterprise and they're all used to being their own encapsulated company but now they're part of something bigger and they need to quickly get up to speed within that larger enterprise. And we do that with design standards uh, and uh, established tokenized components. And um, different companies are at different uh, various stages of maturation here. We're, we're obviously on that journey and we are, we have a very robust design component library that is spawned from a central spine that is called made within MasterCard. And then we have several branches off of that one being in the B2B space. And um, my team actually is in charge of uh, bringing the B2C design component library as well as the B2E so customer facing, B2B facing and employee facing. And when these systems are up to snuff and they work well, they can save everybody, I mean a ton of time. And we actually did a quantification of this uh, with a component library, um, in a product that has about 50 patterns, it's about 800 hours total implementation. Uh, with a product, uh, uh with a component design Library it's about 57% time reduction or 240k in uh, savings per product. So it makes sense both from an experience standpoint but from a investment standpoint as well. And uh, to give proper credit, uh, we adapted these numbers from uh, a study done by Knapsack. So uh, very very powerful both from an experience as well as business bottom line standpoint.

Speaker A: I want to poke at that, I mean something you said. It was not exactly that, but I want to poke at that a little bit. Like having worked on both the customer side and on the B2C side and the B2B side. Um, I mean I owned a lot of the merchant tooling and the merchant experiences at Klarna for instance which do not compare at all in terms of look and feel and brand and experience to the B2C side.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: How do you find the right, the right balance there? Right. Like consumers have certain behaviors and what they expect and what they're looking for. Especially when we're talking about like finance, fintech products, banking products, things like that. And then on the business side or the merchant side or the, you know, the B2B side, often I think companies have cut uh, a lot of corners and been like, oh, as long as it works, they'll be fine.

Speaker B: It comes m last.

Speaker A: Right. And we treat them like second class citizens. Right. So what do you think about that, um, tendency. What do you think? You know, what do you find that balance? Because there is an expense tied to that. Right. And so it has to turn, it has to bring something in in order to, to kind of make it worth the our while. Um, but I, I'm just curious what you.

Speaker B: Yeah, no, you're absolutely right. And it is so true that as we look back the, the last 10, 20 years, I mean Fintech used to be really, in a terrible, terrible way and it has come so far. Uh, and in some areas, you know, uh, upstarts are leapfrogging and really starting to do incredible things. But it is so true that uh, the enterprise level or B2B has tended to, you know, be not favored. Uh, the.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: The end customer experience has always come first. But if you look, a customer is a customer and a paying customer is a paying customer. Um, and another anecdote. If you look at two otherwise very equal products and one has the differentiator that it's that the customer prefers that, which one's going to win? Right. And the B2B space has historically had the kind of crutch of having bought unpaid for customers. They're forced to using that application. Well, that will only work as long as you get deposed. Right? Um, right. Uh, so having said all that, the customer has to be taken care of. And when we're talking about B2B or enterprise level products, the information density and the time on task can be more complicated than the one if we go back to StubHub, who on an impulse is on the sidewalk in front of a concert looking for last minute tickets, you know they're going to be on there for 40, 50 seconds, maybe a couple, three minutes after purchase. But somebody who, whose job it is to use an application that we're providing them, that they're paying for, their bosses are paying for, we have to have a higher degree of respect for the time that they're spending and not take them for granted and treat them exactly like any other customer.

Speaker C: I love your. You. You called out a metric that's really near and dear to my heart, which is time on task. Um, and I think that, uh, um, I think I used to say, um, we're not Instagram. No one comes here to hang out. Our job is to help them get their job done and get them on their way because they got other stuff to do. Um, and I think that holds true, um, for B2B products as well as the internal products that employees use. Um, and I've actually seen instances where internal products are like, because no one cares about the employees most of the time those products can be so janky and weird and not intuitive because, you know, person A has been in their job for 25 years and they, they know the buttons to push. The problem is person A is going to retire. You're going to bring in someone who's Gen Z and they're not that like, this is the TikTok generation. They have no patience and, or time to learn all the complicated shit. Usually when someone resigns, there's a tight window of handover that, that is going to cost your company, uh, in employee time and mistakes. So making sure that your tools are intuitive, regardless of who the interface is, I think is an obligation.

Speaker A: Well, and I think, I mean, I'll just add there. I would just say, like the other thing that we need to remember is that they are the workforce of the future and they will not hang out in, in these old environments the way that, I mean, Gen X is like, fine, it's terrible. Of course we have to hang out with it. Everything's terrible. That's how we were. We expect it.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker A: So, and the boomers built it badly. So they're like, it's perfect.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker A: Meanwhile, you know, the Millennials and Gen Z are sort of like, I'm not hanging out in this mess. Yeah, so what? You know, so I think it is that's true whether they're our customer, like a consumer, or they are the person using our tools in the B2B space, or they are the employee that's going to start to be more and more true and they're going to be less and less patient with our, with our nonsense.

Speaker B: Absolutely. And uh, and you know, poking a little more at your question about different types of customers in B2B or uh, B2C. Access to customer is, is wildly different in different industries. And in Fintech, uh, where I am now is you have this historical kind of, uh, colloquial way of saying, well you don't have any access to customer because there's all kinds of regulations or you know, restrictions. And um, that is something that is just baloney. We have to absolutely reject that and work through, go above, crawl under whatever we have to do to get by that kind of old, you know, false truth hood in order to get at them because they're, they're the same kind of customers that they just want to do their job, they want to do it easily and quickly and they're humans that uh, so. But they have been a little bit dehumanized. Right, because that poor access. But I am really proud of what uh, our teams have been able to do to systemically generate that access and then develop the relationship. Uh, we actually in the past used to focus um, on kind of a focus group where the few that we had access to would be in a circle and they would just talk shop. But it became this kind of echo chamber of same old and it became almost like a you know, venting session which didn't harness the real truths about temporal experience in a flow or in a specific place, uh, while they were doing their task. So now we have through various mechanisms, nothing earth shattering, just sight interrupts during critical places. We ask them a uh, situational question, uh, they bite. We develop the relationship and then we feed back, you know, at the, at ah later on what we have been able to do, we develop that community. Uh, and we're also helping build the trust over time because we're actually doing something about what we heard. So this isn't something that goes from 0 to 100 overnight. It's a slow burn and it takes time. But I'm really proud of uh, what our uh, user researchers have been able to do over time to build that um, community of customers that we can then hear from, understand and quantify and then share with them the, the overall uh, uh, uh, changes. Speaking of changes, in our last um, four to five years our OSAT has grown, uh, has popped uh 20%. Uh, NPS is up almost 100%. And help tickets, which is another really, really great uh, story we could talk about, uh, are down 40% which if you take that times the cost of a help ticket, which varies from industry to industry, that's, yeah, that's a big, big difference in quantifiable dollars. But more importantly in the perception and the relationship that we maintain with our customers so that when somebody retires, we don't go off a cliff.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. So you mentioned, you in, you just mentioned something that I'm like, oh, you talked about user research, right. I would love, given this audience, which is primarily product people and product leaders, what do you wish that product leaders knew and understood about user research that you think that they don't?

Speaker B: Wow, I love that question. I love that question. There is a. So regardless of industry, regardless of where we work, there a varying level of understanding of the value. And um, I love to speak to anybody at any stage in their perception of the value because I am here to help. And uh, what we do is, what I usually start with is we're here to de risk, we're here to, to make you successful. Whomever it is that we're working with, they have a job, they're good people and they just want to do, you know, good things for the company and for the customer. We have an innate ability to forget about customer and just focus in on our day to day and the people that we work with. And that was actually part of a long running series, um, at MasterCard, which ah, was training for the product managers that had to do with instilling empathy for customer and bringing the customer's voice into the room. And there were several exercises that were done, but what, what it boiled down to is just remembering customer. If the, if the only thing you can remember from that training, um, was bring the voice of customer to the room and then things will generally go well. So um, de risk, we're here to do, we're here to reduce assumptions, eliminate assumptions for fact. So here are the customer sentiments, here's what's working well. Here are the problems, and we wrap that into a simple problem statement. Right. Um, and what we were able to do is declutter all those assumptions and we're able to maintain a strong rudder of what we're here to do over the days and weeks and months that a complex initiative usually takes. We've all been in a place where three months have gone by and we're all sitting in a room and we're riffing on something that has nothing to do with the initial, uh, problem we were here to solve. And that problem statement, uh, helps us come right back to where we need to be, whether we're engineers or product designers, user researchers, executives and the like. So that is key. But at the end of the day what I, what I really like to come back to is we're here to de risk.

Speaker A: Yeah. And I think, like, I'll just say this because, uh, I know the people, a lot of the product folks that are watching this and some founders and executives, I think it's really important, like that very statement. It's so important for product managers and product leaders to really, um, articulate and get the back of their user research teams and say, we need them, do not cut them, do not take them out. This is going to make it all riskier and it's going to make everybody's job harder and we're not going to necessarily do the right thing for the customer. So I think it's really about that championing. And when product leaders have a seat at the table or a louder voice because they are talking to so many stakeholders and doing that, I think it's, I really encourage everyone who's doing that job. When you have access to researchers, champion them, be on their side, right? Because they are absolutely on your side. So be on theirs. Right? So that's definitely super, super important.

Speaker B: And, um, adding just another thing, and this is something Marilyn taught me a long time ago, is speak the language of your audience. Um, you need to come to the folks that you're speaking to and needing to influence and just speak their language. Um, I spent many years saying that experience is king because, uh, the customer will be happier and good things will happen from there. That's true, but it doesn't resonate with everybody. It resonates with a certain audience, product designers, uh, and highly evolved product managers and the like. But some executives, not all, but some executives, uh, they, they will all recognize the need for customers, uh, delight. But when push comes to shove, dollars usually take over and it's natural. So speak in terms of dollars and savings and gains and de risking and then you're more likely to gain, uh, more audience with them and then you can really, uh, convert them to the champion that you need them to be.

Speaker C: I think the one important takeaway is that this is a. So let's talk about product experience. Design, user research. They're two different roles, um, and they require two different sets of expertise. And I've run across product managers that are like, yeah, but I, you know, I sent a survey, I got some information. Um, this is a skill. Humans are inherently biased. So we as product managers, we, as leaders, we have a bias. Um, and you need to recognize that everything you do is fully biased. So every survey you send out, every question you ask is loaded with bias. And it's the job of someone like a user researcher to pull all the way back and design these, design these interactions, design these surveys, whatever tool you're using to seek feedback in a way that eliminates or minimizes bias. Um, because I have seen lots of product managers be like, I know what my customers think, but you don't. And I think one of the things that you said repeatedly Pete, is, and I wholeheartedly agree with, if you're wearing the badge of the company that you work on, you don't get a voice in this survey. I don't actually care what you want because you're not the user unless it's an internal user of course. But like everybody uh, can have an opinion but like you're not the one paying for and using the product.

Speaker B: So no, absolutely, uh, could not agree more. And the confirmation bias is something that we have to be aware of and really be careful because it's a killer. It's a killer. It can send us off in the door in the wrong direction where we invest tremendous amount of time and money and as we know engineers time, if it's not spent well, it can be a tremendous waste. Uh, and it happens all the time. So being able to focus on the true problems and then solve for those same problems and then validate the solutions, that, that is uh, an absolute game changer. And it's done well really in a lot of places and it's not done so well in a lot of places and that's where you can make a huge, huge difference.

Speaker C: And it, I just had to ask chat GPT. Yeah, there's, there's more than 180 biases.

Speaker B: Wow.

Speaker C: Human bias.

Speaker B: Wow.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker C: There's more than 180 because we don't, we're not logical beings. We, you know, we, we identify patterns. That's how we stayed away from being eaten by dinosaurs. Believe in that.

Speaker B: And one more thing, um, doing, doing that upfront research, uh, not only uncovers the true problems but it can, it can unearth very unexpected learnings that take us in completely different directions. Maybe not for this initiative but it's a good discovery that we're going to hold on to and then draw on a tangent and explore in uh, something else entirely. So it really helps us open up that gamut for possibilities.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker A: And I think what I would say piggybacking on what both of you have said is like leadership then especially in sort of mid sized to large enterprise companies stop you know, tripping over you know, dollars to get to dimes like these books are worth what you're paying them. We need them to do this work. And then in the startup world, founders, you don't know your customers well as

Speaker C: you think you do.

Speaker A: Sorry, you just don't you had a vision and a dream and an idea, and that's amazing. Now, uh, get out of the way, right? Like, let folks who know how to do these jobs do these jobs and they will deliver on your dream and your vision and your beautiful nirvana of whatever it is you think you're trying to do. And I think there are, you know, so I think it's tricky because I always sort of thought when I went into sort of startup land and there was more, there would be more freedom to say, let's get some research in here, let's do this. But actually it's almost even tighter. Cause founders are like, no, I already know. I already know what we need. And I'm like, you couldn't possibly know, right? You're so biased. There's no way you know, right? What you pitched in a deck to VCS is not what user researchers are going to find out. That is totally different. They, you may have some overlap, we hope, but in general, there's so much to be done in figuring out, like, what is the thing we're going to learn that could cause us to go, oh, okay, we need to move the rudder a bit.

Speaker B: And being, being able to let go can be very difficult, regardless of whether you're a founder or if you're leading, uh, user researcher and you, um, and UX designers are, or what have you. But it's a wonderful thing once you're able to do it because you're cutting somebody loose and you're letting them do what they do best. And that is compounding skill and compounding, uh, uh, abilities. And that's what makes for wonderful teams.

Speaker C: Totally agree. I think it's actually part of what I would say a maturity curve. And uh, I think it's a maturity curve for product managers as well as people that drive business. Um, very junior product managers, they believe their opinion is right. They have all the answers. They don't need to ask anybody else a question. Like, they don't need to understand. Like, they know and they're gonna write

Speaker A: down the know what to do. Marilyn, shut up.

Speaker C: Exactly right? And then as you become more season and as you become more mature, sometimes, not all the time, not everybody makes this leap. Um, there's this leap to understanding that you don't know. And there's so much value in just, just not knowing. And then going and exploring assumptions and assuming everything is an assumption. Like, how many, how many of us have actually really sat down and been like, well, Here are the 15 assumptions. Like, when you have a feeling about a person or a meeting or something. Like, what are the assumptions you're like, you're walking in with? It's very. I mean, that's an introspection point that takes a lot of maturity for anybody. So, um. Yes, yes, yes. As clearly, I'm a fan of not knowing anything.

Speaker A: I mean, just the, just the sheer ability to say, I don't know is one of the moments when you realize, like, oh, I might have grown up a little, right? Like, because we're so. We're such a hustle to try to be like, I can figure it out. I have an answer.

Speaker B: I mean, it shows great maturity and there's a, there's a sense of vulnerability in there that can be easily misunderstood. Right. But if you have, if you're part of a team that you trust and they trust you, then they're like, okay, uh, let's pick on Marilyn. Marilyn created this, uh, the space for us to succeed in. She gave us the scaffolding and now she's signaling to us that there's an area that is still vague. And she, she wants us to look deeply into that place. Let's go after it. Let's support our leader. Let's go in there. Uh, because that is where incredibly powerful things can happen. So you're not just letting go and saying, I don't know, it's, it's abilities to ascend into, uh, very, very powerful places of success. So I completely agree with that.

Speaker A: Well, I think we get, I think we all get. We can't, we can all, we don't all. We can all get hung up on this concept of being the voice of the customer. I am the voice of the customer. No, I am the voice of the customer. No, I am the voice. So you got people in customer support, and you got people on merchant support, and you've got people marketing and you have people everywhere saying, I'm the voice of the customer. And it's like, hang on, everybody. What we have to do is actually go find out what they're saying, not assume we know and are the voice of the customer. Right?

Speaker C: So in context, like, I call that so. And I think this, Pete, this is a bridge you've. You've managed to build. Um, when you talk about call center, and I do, like, I've been to a couple of these CX conferences and it's all a bunch of people that run call center, and they do, they believe that they're, they're the sole voice of the customer. Here's the deal. 100% of the people that Call probably have a problem, cranky. But that's not your entire population.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker C: So you are the voice of a subset of customers, but you don't represent the entirety. So how do you harmonize what happens qualitatively from the people that are happy, from the people that are kind of in the middle, from the people that are pissed. Um, and then quantitatively, like, what are people actually doing and how do you derive insights to harmonize what is the voice of the customer? And in Pete's case, across, I don't know, a hundred different applications to understand what is really going to move the needle for the company. And that is time well invested. Because otherwise you are this, like you're in this narrow echo chamber. And the call center people can be like, well, 80% of the calls are about this thing that may or may not be your biggest problem.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker C: You don't know.

Speaker B: Yeah, it's so apropos that you bring that one up, Marilyn, because, um, I have. Let me back up. So the, the product ecosystem and the customers that access it is, it's vast, as we have already talked about, and they traverse that space and like Marilyn said, when they run into issues, they utilize the help tools that we have that happen to be in an entirely different org. So if we hold ourselves hostage to the little narrow, uh, org vertical that we sit in, we have a very poor ability to affect our customers experience that we now own. But when they're over here, they're in a different org and we don't own. So how do we solve that? Well, like Marilyn mentioned, just ruthless advocating and influencing and building those bridges with our partners and peers. And I've had an, A really um, amazing time working with others and kind of reducing those uh, roadblocks, um, removing those roadblocks and um, getting to a place of trust with folks in different organizations so that we can solve the problems of our common customer. It's not yours, it's not mine. It's ours.

Speaker A: Right?

Speaker B: And the customer doesn't know when they leave a vertical and they go to another vertical. It's just their experience. They're sitting trying to do their job. So I've really enjoyed working with other smart people in uh, our sister organization. And uh, it has blossomed into an ability to work together at this customer conference, uh, the CTC conference, customer, uh, tech conference, uh, within MasterCard, uh, where I have been able to get us, um, the ability to support the leaders of that conference to run user research, uh, exercises, uh, mostly in form of workshops to harness insights and Then share those insights and then feedback at the next conference what we're doing about it. So this is this ongoing flywheel of learning, telling you what we've learned and then showing you what we've done. And this flywheel is presently just spinning up. I mean, we're about a year and a half deep into it and it's going really, really well. And the collaboration across sister organizations on behalf of our customers benefit has just skyrocketed. So really, really fun. Not always easy to do, but, you know, little by little, day by day, it's really, really bearing fruit now.

Speaker A: I love that. So I think we're kind of towards the end here, and one of the questions we often ask Pete is, what are you excited about? Like what. What are you excited about right now?

Speaker B: Wow, that is a great question. That is a great question. Well, I want, I mean, maybe, maybe, um, I want folks to feel empowered to do, to reach out left and right of where their core role is. I don't want them to feel like they have to stay right in their area of expertise because, yeah, you can, you can shine that penny and make it just super gleaming. Um, but what else are you doing? Right? So we have UX designers that validate, uh, their own work. We have user, uh, researchers that are looking more at, um, uh, uh, uh, market fit. They're doing things outside of just that hardcore research. Um, we have folks that are, um, we have product managers that we're training up to get more skilled in appreciating how to draw insights in a unbiased way, uh, and then picking on engineers, getting them to a place where, when they're doing design components, they're starting to go left into the design space and understand how designers think and how they're creating those, uh, systems. So there's more overlap and respect, continued respect for what we're doing. But we are not just staying in that very, very narrow little, uh, vertical. So that's. Yeah.

Speaker A: I mean, the truth is. I love that. No, I love that. And I think the truth is none of us, the three of us for sure, and probably many people who are watching this, we wouldn't have the careers we've had if we'd stayed real narrow in exactly one spot. Right. Part of what makes careers beautiful, part of m. What makes finding if you have a different niche that you want to go into or a different space that you want to. Want to try or experiment in, is that blending and kind of shifting lanes a bit and going to the left and to the right and not saying, I will only stay right here. Right. Um, and it doesn't make you not an expert. It makes you open to learning from the bubble around you. Right?

Speaker B: Absolutely. Absolutely.

Speaker A: Awesome. Awesome. Marilyn, do you want to add anything?

Speaker C: No. This has been such a good conversation. I think it's such an important part of building wonderful experiences for humans, because that's what we do. So thanks for spending some time with us, Pete.

Speaker B: Thank you so much. This was so much fun to chat with you guys. I love the subject matter. I love, uh, you know, talking to you. And thanks for the opportunity.

Speaker A: Yeah, thanks. I'm sure we'll have another reason to bring you back and dive into a topic, for sure. So thanks for telling us your story. Appreciate it. See everyone next time.

Speaker B: Thank you.

Related episodes across the Index

Other episodes covering the same guests and topics, from across The B2B Podcast Index.

  • The Andy Breen Hypothesis: Testing for Value Risk is the Most Critical Yet Overlooked Piece of Product SuccessThe Product Science Podcast · on user research methodology73 / 100
  • Why your team setup matters most for a successful Fintech product launchShine: a podcast by Star · on Fintech product design

More from Practical Product Management

All episodes →
  • Trust as Infrastructure: Innovation, AI, and the Future of Payments65 / 100
  • Innovation at the Edge: AI, ERP, and the Art of the Calculated Bet86 / 100
  • The Books That Made Us Better Product Managers (And Better Humans)53 / 100
  • Season Wrap Up - The CEO of Your Life55 / 100
  • Best of Season 2, Part 2 - Conversations that reminded us why Product is a "people-first" craft. 61 / 100
Explore the best B2B Product podcasts →
All Practical Product Management episodes →