Don't Write It Down – REWORK
Summary
Don't write down customer feedback—instead, listen for patterns that repeat organically across your user base. 37signals found that institutionalizing every piece of feedback creates false obligations, while recurring themes naturally surface as genuine priorities, letting you avoid the trap of 'we have to do something' product decisions.
Key Takeaways
- Listen to customer feedback but resist documenting most of it; only institutionalize patterns that emerge repeatedly across your entire user base, not anecdotal requests from individual users.
- Selectively capture unique language and interesting scenarios in a 'voice of the customer' project to extract linguistic insights (e.g., customers calling projects 'base camps' led to actual product naming).
- Avoid 'design by anecdote'—one compelling customer story shouldn't drive product changes; wait for validation across multiple customers before treating feedback as a legitimate priority.
- Beware the 'we got to do something' fear-driven mentality when facing tech trends; rarely does reactive feature work turn into anything great, especially when driven by FOMO rather than repeated customer signals.
- Build for your customer base at large, not for individual scenarios; every customer's perspective is valuable to them personally, but product decisions should reflect broad patterns, not one person's reality.
Related topics
Transcript Excerpt
In any part of commerce, in any kind of product, in any kind of service, you don't want to deliver something. No one wants to buy something. They want to buy good. They want to buy great. Actually, they don't most of the time just want to buy good. They want buy something great. And that very rarely if ever comes out of something. Every individual customer has an important things to say about their own scenario, their own situation, their own reality, their own perspective, and it's all valuable for them. Um, but we have to build a product for the customer base at large. >> That's actually the phrase we got to do something. That is very often sort of that expression of fear like I don't know what JUST SOMETHING WE GOT TO HAVE SOMETHING ABOUT AI. WE GOT TO DO SOMETHING WITH AI. HOW many tim…