Merci Victoria Grace, former Head of Growth at Slack, discusses using customer empathy and product intuition to drive growth. She emphasizes understanding customers, predicting their needs, and executing product changes accordingly. Her tips include conducting user research, testing hypotheses and new features, focusing on the real customer experience, and treating customers with kindness and respect. The goal is to design products that customers want to use through an intuitive understanding of them.

1. Merci Victoria Grace
Former Head of Growth, Slack
@merci
Using Customer
Empathy and Product
Intuition to Drive Growth
#GHConf18

3. Being a person is hard.

4. We don’t build things for ourselves.

5. Understand, predict, and execute.

6. Understand, predict, and execute.
Well-implemented product analytics
Usability or “play” testing on existing products
Read research on cognition
Conduct or buy market or social science research
User interviews, surveys, and other research
Everyone does customer support

7. Data + Taste = Product Intuition

8. My favorite horror movie is
watching people use my product.

10. Understand, predict, and execute.
Hypothesis-driven experiments
Usability & play testing on new products
Feature requests & usability bugs
Anecdotes > personas
Research on values & beliefs of core audience
Pretend you’re a human being

11. Everyone at your company designs
the customer experience.

12. “The role of a designer is that of a very
good, thoughtful host anticipating the
needs of his guests.”
- Charles Eames

14. Consider the context.

15. Ask What happens next? from the
mindset of your customer.

17. Learn, design, and execute.
Only test what you actually want to build
Stay focused on your real customer
Always test your existing product
Treat your customers with kindness & respect

18. How will we know it worked?

19. How will we know it worked?
Stat-sig experiment results
Directionally positive usability tests
Feature adoption
Fewer usability bugs
Increase or hold NPS score
Customer service & sales satisfaction score
Engagement correlates with paid conversion
Organic growth

21. Merci Victoria Grace
Former Head of Growth, Slack
@merci
Using Customer
Empathy and Product
Intuition to Drive Growth
#GHConf18

23. Being a person is hard.

24. We don’t build things for ourselves.

25. Understand, predict, and execute.

26. Understand, predict, and execute.
Well-implemented product analytics
Usability or “play” testing on existing products
Read research on cognition
Conduct or buy market or social science research
User interviews, surveys, and other research
Everyone does customer support

27. Data + Taste = Product Intuition

28. My favorite horror movie is
watching people use my product.

30. Understand, predict, and execute.
Hypothesis-driven experiments
Usability & play testing on new products
Feature requests & usability bugs
Anecdotes > personas
Research on values & beliefs of core audience
Pretend you’re a human being

31. Everyone at your company designs
the customer experience.

32. “The role of a designer is that of a very
good, thoughtful host anticipating the
needs of his guests.”
- Charles Eames

34. Consider the context.

35. Ask What happens next? from the
mindset of your customer.

37. Learn, design, and execute.
Only test what you actually want to build
Stay focused on your real customer
Always test your existing product
Treat your customers with kindness & respect

38. How will we know it worked?

39. How will we know it worked?
Stat-sig experiment results
Directionally positive usability tests
Feature adoption
Fewer usability bugs
Increase or hold NPS score
Customer service & sales satisfaction score
Engagement correlates with paid conversion
Organic growth

42. Learn more about the
GrowthHackers Conference at
GrowthHackers.com/Conference