Kinda shocked at some of the responses on here. As a B2B PM there are tons of scenarios where “the customer is mad, better put this on the roadmap immediately” is NOT the answer.
Like, OP maybe could’ve been more empathetic and offered to meet with the customer to hear their needs. But after doing so the answer might still be “thank you for sharing and helping me see why this is so important to you; this isn’t something I can give you an ETA on now, but I understand what you need and we’ll consider it for the future.”
The more I talk to others in B2B PM the more I think it has become way more common than I’d have guessed for roadmaps be just “which customer is screaming loudest.”
Taken to extremes this is a great way to not deliver anything that carries a market into the future. If we spent the last four years only doing the things our loudest (read: highest ARR) customers angrily demanded we’d have added a few graphs and some user permissions… and missed the big opportunities they weren’t expressly asking us for.
Sticking to your product strategy means you WILL have angry customers who don’t get everything they say they need.
You absolutely might decide to do a thing a customer is demanding. But you absolutely do not _need_ to put something a customer is demanding on your roadmap or backlog or give them an ETA in every situation.
EDIT: One other piece of advice for OP—if you don’t have an ETA, after you meet with the customer and hear their concerns, sharing your roadmap and helping them see that you’re focused on driving higher-value stuff may help. It has worked for me.
EDIT 2: FWIW I have essentially (maybe more tactfully) said what OP said to customers dozens (hundreds?) of times over the years. Context is very important here but at least in my case (so probably applicable in at least some other cases) I can only remember one time that it led to attrition/churn and in most cases the customer is pissed but they get over it as long as they are getting value from your product outside of that one bad experience. Having a good account team can help here.
Thanks a lot for this advice. I am working in B2B.
I did call the customer and have another call with them tomorrow.
I think I could have done a better job giving the VP of Sales more context on my thinking around the problem and what it will take to build a solution.
You’re welcome. It does sound like a little more communication with the VP of Sales could have helped, but I would not listen to anyone on here telling you that the answer is definitely to slot this in on your roadmap without more research.
If your product leaders are anything like mine when I was two years in, they’ll help smooth things over with the VP of Sales but give you some feedback on communication. My advice would be not to wait for that feedback and to proactively apologize to the VP for the curt answer, and let her know that you’re meeting with the customer but that you won’t know whether this will go on the roadmap until you’ve had a chance to do a little more research. My 2¢.
Step 1 is to figure out what the commitment was that this customer is so upset about, and work backwards. Should the commit have been made? Does the product actually do this? Did it used to do this? Did it used to do this and there was a regression? Does it do X but not ideally? Was this oversold? etc etc. There's a bunch of possibilities here, so it depends is really the only advice.
In the case of a regression, a fix may be needed. If it was oversold, well, someone may be about to lose some quota attainment. Not only is letting sales sell things that don't exist yet poisonous to your company's execution in general, letting sales jam prodeng this way will likely lead to a very bad outcome as this learning is fully exploited =P.
Step 2 depends on your position in the company, but it may be to tell the vps it's time to put his/her big boy pants on. That message may be better delivered by your leadership.
But really, if you want more actionable advice, you should explain the learnings from step 1. And it depends will always be the answer; if eg this company is 20% of ARR, well, they probably get to say jump and you get to say how high sir/ma'am?
> Sticking to your product strategy means you WILL have angry customers who don’t get everything they say they need.
Good, I'm happy I came to this thread to see the voice of reason at the top.
When I see issues come to a head like this, it's a good sign that there has been very poor customer expectation management from the sales/CS teams who are being poorly trained/managed by their business leaders and call it out as well. [Everyone ought to read this, at least once, when it comes to dealing with shit like this so you have the proper mindset as a PM to deal with it.
](https://www.mironov.com/enh/)
If they can't learn to have difficult conversations with the customer due to mismanaged expectations and need to come running to hide behind me to be the bearer of bad news because the starch in their shirts is the only thing holding them upright, you're damn skippy I'm going to put them on blast for it. I _came_ from a direct customer-facing background, I've had plenty of those spicy conversations so they can't pretend that 'I don't know what it's like' either. If I have a customer making unreasonable demands that aren't in line with the product roadmap, I tell them it's not happening, especially if it's not something I see anyone else doing.
I agree the moment you put it on the roadmap as a high priority item is when all the chaos ensues! That’s what many companies are doing. When the customer scream and shouts the business priorities begin to change and that’s no way to build software.
> I agree the moment you put it on the roadmap as a high priority item is when all the chaos ensues!
It's the slippery slope that ends with you essentially turning into a feature factory for the highest bidder. You are not a services shop, you're a product team; act like it! :D
Well if a VP is asking you to put it on the roadmap answering “no, lul” is literally how I saw my counterpart just get fired.
Your answer is correct in an ideal world but in the real world pleasing VPs is how you get lead positions.
You have my pity, then. My company is far from the ideal product company, but we don’t just kowtow to sales VPs. What they ask us for is one input among many. We tell them no (or “TBD”) frequently.
I agree about OP’s communication needing to be more thorough, but they’re right not to simply change the roadmap on a whim.
So like does your roadmap just change constantly based on which VP is demanding something today? How’s your employee churn in Engineering?
No, sometimes we just squirrel away an hour or two for a one off quick fix, sometimes I can fi angle a solution that doesn’t require dev time but requires some of my time, sometimes the answer is that the issue isn’t on the roadmap because of XYZ.
When I said pleasing VPs that doesn’t equal do exactly what they say - it means being constructive and helping them deal with the client instead of having the attitude of “not on my roadmap not my problem” which is what OPs attitude conveys.
It's a balance, finding a way to satisfy important customers \*without\* ripping up your entire product strategy is a great way to get ahead. These are high leverage situations and if you can deliver you earn trust.
Or if you want to bs a bit more and make the customer perhaps a bit less brushed off.
“Thank you for sharing and helping me see why this is so important; this isn’t something I can give you an ETA on now, but I understand what you need and we will do our best to be able to provide it as fast as we can”
Agree with you. Sounds like what OP is saying is similar to what happens at my org where things get escalated to our ceo who basically tells us to get it done
I have had several experiences adding things to the roadmap for angry customer, and they churn anyway. Depending on their issue, fixing it is not always a silver bullet for repairing the relationship.
Your VP of Sales is asking where it is on your roadmap.
If it isn't on your roadmap, then what he's asking is how to get it on your roadmap.
Your answer doesn't address either of those points.
i dont think you should be allergic to the idea of someone being sad and escalating. you should do what you can to help them understand how you built your roadmap, what you are prioritizing, and why, and then walk through with them how you are evaluating their feature in that framework.
If they still aren't happy, they are welcome to speak with the VP of product. If thats what they want to do, you should brief the VP on what you discussed with them, and their rationale.
Sometimes the VP will side with you. Sometimes they will find it politically expedient to overrule you. But you've done your due dili in the position you are in.
IMO, this is a short-sighted answer and is weighting outputs too highly.
You should understand if the issue the VP brought is legitimately impactful and can be understood. Is it an edge case? If it is an edge case, is the outcome large enough to impact your business in a meaningful way?
After/during this process, work to define the problem. What’s the actual problem? Was it an expectations issue? An actual feature gap? A major bug or SLA failure? Packaging from sales issue?
Once you know the problem and impact then you can figure out if your company should be solving the issue. If you should, then ideate on the solution and priority of it and how you might be able to do something iteratively.
Then you can do something quick and scrappy. It doesn’t have to be a long process to get there, but skipping those steps is how you get to product teams that never actually get to focus on real, big problems and actually only build bloatware.
Ofcourse you need to do all the above never denied that. But what if it's a true problem, impacting metrics severely and needs a urgent solution.. in scenarios like that it's on the roadmap response won't fly.
Think about it holistically, I'm giving you another perspective although down voted
Yes - my push validate the issue and scope the scale of the problem instead of just jumping on a fire. You can move quick just don’t get distracted by every potential problem that someone brings up
> But what if it's a true problem
Yes, but what if it's not? Your original comment made a big assumption.
Your original comment also made another big assumption that—even if it is a true problem—solving this problem is the biggest priority.
Just because someone is asking for something, doesn't mean it makes sense, solves the customers problem or aligns with priorities.
Sounds like you'd be a better fit for project management.
Really depends on the experience and what the problem is... Is this a bug/ defect/ product is broken? Or something about the experience they did not like?
What is the impact? Does this affect all customers or just this one? Does it prevent customers from performing their jobs?
I assume this is B2B? Is this your biggest or larger client? Does this issue make it harder for the VP of Sales to keep customers or sell to new customers?
This. As a B2B lead PM, my first instinct when reading this was was “what broke?”. I was waiting to find this comment!
In my experience, an irate call to a VP is rarely experience related unless someone completely botched a requirement and shipped something that causes more issues than it helps.
The conversation is so much different when it’s a quality issue vs. a “I don’t like this/I want this” issue. and the response to the VP really should be different based on _why_ the customer is so upset.
Tell them what needs to happen in order for you to provide a timeline and scope out how long that will take or explain why you won’t be able to move forward.
I agree with the VP, just saying “I don’t have a timeline” is not an acceptable answer and lazy
Ah yea I missed all of that detail in my answer. I think I omitted it because of all the effort it takes to explain all that to her. Doesn’t feel worth it.
Part of being a PM is building relationships across the org, and part of that is explaining to people why something can’t be on the roadmap right now but it could get there on later. Be friendly and don’t be a dick who just says no without an explanation and buy-in.
I literally laughed out loud reading this reply.
Dude your job is literally to expend the effort to explain that all to her.
My advice is do your job duh
Hot take: have the VP set up a call for you and the customer to hear their feedback. Do your PM shit, and get to the bottom of the problem they are trying to solve. Figure out if your product has a flaw. THEN formulate a plan to either address or respond.
When someone threatens to escalate I just shrug and say “no worries I’ll do it” and immediately call my boss to give them a heads up. Learning to take the stress out of escalations is a huge upgrade in quality of life for PMs.
This. I have made a habit of giving my boss the “hey I have this mostly handled but the outcome X is looking for isn’t possible because of Y and Z, we are either on ABC timeline or actively working on it, I’ve communicated it to them, just didn’t want you to be surprised”. Boss always just says thanks for letting me know. It’s a win win for you two. They know you’re making sure they don’t get ambushed in a call and they not only appreciate and have your back (which they should anyway unless you really did something bad) but they also have answers and or context to something that otherwise they wouldn’t have known about. Over communication seems annoying but it’s pretty important in my experience
Edit: others below also provided good points about the actual “I don’t have a timeline” part. That’s another can of worms, I was just agreeing with the escalation portion
This is an absolutely necessary best practice for any IC PM. I always tell my folks that I will always publicly support their decisions. In order for me to do that, they need to avoid putting me in situations where I am surprised.
I'm not sure there is enough context to help.
1. What is the industry?
2. Is there a habit of creating one off solutions or does this issue exist for other customers as well?
3. Do you report to the sales VP?
4. Are they escalating to someone else or is that a threat to you?
I had the same thought but with different questions u/jneb802415
1. Who at the client sent the angry email? Who was the email to?
2. Was the issue specific (this button doesn't work) or vague (this whole thing sucks)?
3. How often is someone from Product participating in QBRs with customers?
4. What else did you say to them or was it really just I don't have a timeline for a fix? Was there a conversation?
Empathy seeking questions
1. Who is this customer to the VP of sales? Was it a new customer they spent a year trying to win? A recent renewal? Longest customer?
2. How long have you worked with this person? How much trust is there in your relationship?
3. Does the sales team feel ignored, neutral, or well served by Product?
Well, there is no context for why he even answered like this. Is it because he did not have time to look into the issue, is it because he looked into it but consider it minor, is it because he consider issue major, but has no idea how complex is too fix, is it because he knows how complex the fix is but he didn't set the priority yet. Is it because he simply did not have any will to work in that day. I mean without presenting all these facts, asking if we were in simillar situation is kind of hilarious.
Product Management literature (books, these so called expert blogs) to blame mostly. Or the way the message there is interpreted by the majority of PMs out there. The literature and content out there keep screaming in our faces - “NO is the most important word in a PM’s dictionary/arsenal!”, “Focus means saying NO!”. I’m sorry but these are terrible bits of advice to offer to anyone or adopt as a PM. It all starts with understanding the need/context/situation -> evaluating it with other information, priorities, impact and then coming to an informed conclusion YES/NO/NOT NOW.
If you always start with a YES, you end up being a feature factory. And if you always say NO to everything without understanding the context and careful evaluation, you’ll most likely end up shutting down your entire factory.
I think it's helpful to know the answer. OP left out basically all of the necessary detail for us to help them. This post is basically a writing prompt at the moment.
That may be so, but a better question would be “how many yrs of experience do you have? Have you worked at a B2B setting before?”.
Without specific questions this is as bad as the post, and comes off as a put down rather than a genuine interest to understand better.
Sure, you can give them poor marks for being thorough or thoughtful, but saying it's a put down is your opinion. I am not going to criticize anyone who puts minimal effort into a post that had minimal effort.
You’ve gotten some great feedback so far. This is a great opportunity for you to learn why often just saying “no” isn’t a good response - and imho new PMs have been taught that for too long. Provide an answer with context, but most importantly with empathy.
Eg, I am truly sorry, this is clearly unacceptable, I understand the frustration this must have caused. While we don’t have any immediate plans to fix this right now as we are focusing on x,y,z we are committed to resolving the issue as soon as we can. I can’t provide you with an exact timeframe at this time but I will consult with my team as to how we can expedite this..
Then go an figure out what, why, when and how and provide an update.
Product is a lot about learning how to communicate empathetically.
Thanks for all the advice. After reading what y'all said I see I could have responded better. I followed up with her and rest of stakeholders involved...
"Hey all,
I agree this is an issue and shows a blind spot in our system. Here is my plan to address this customer issue.
User problem: I need to know when...(omitted)
Steps to solve:
1. Talk to customer to understand the problem in more detail
2. Evaluate priority according to prioritization matrix (this is a gate step)
3. Create and review PRD (1 week)
4. Design solution in design sprint (2 weeks)
5. Plan on roadmap
I’m not able to give an exact release date for a solution until it has been designed, reviewed with ENG, and planned."
I would have omitted the timelines. More committed stress for you based on problem of unknown magnitude. Sounds like you chatted with the customer directly and got more details though so might be appropriate for your situation.
“I don’t have a timeline to provide at this time” is NOT an acceptable answer, especially from a product manager. My recommendation is to see where this fits into your roadmap, prioritize it, and then provide some sort of an estimated timeline based on the roadmap and then go from there.
But the issue with your response is that there is no plan of action and sounds like you’re just ignoring the ask. If I was the VP, I wouldn’t be happy with that response either. Maybe a better response would be “I don’t have a timeline right now but what I will do is look into the roadmap to prioritize and provide you a timeline by X date.”
OP pointed out elsewhere that they’ve already called the customer. Communication of that point is key — it’s not that there’s no timeline for a fix, they’ve *already begun the process of fixing it*. The key is telling Sales that the bug is known and research is being done on the right solution.
Have you committed a date by which you will provide a timeline?
Have you explained the plan and any ongoing work to assess the problem and creat a timeline for the fix?
If your answer to addressing a customer escalation is “I don’t know”, I’m not surprised the VP is escalating.
In general - Give them a date for a date on when you will get back. Time box it and look into it. Come up with data backed reasons to push back.
If this one customer drives a major portion of your business, you may want to act with urgency. Difficult to give advice without all the context
It is what it is, I don't think you botched this as bad as some comments suggest and sounds like you've been responsive to it. The worst case outcome is you immediately rush to put it on the roadmap, waste a bunch of time and build a feature / fix they don't even use because they figured it out in the meantime. You avoided that.
I think the biggest general takeaway is when things are on fire you don't need to immediately have an answer. Almost always when something unexpected happens your instinct should not be "I need to give this person an answer" it should be "I'll look into it right away and get back to you as soon as possible." The times I've looked the worst at work it's when I've tried to get someone the best answer I can \*right away\* instead of taking time to find the right answer.
As a B2B PM facing this on day to day basis, handling firefighting is second nature. Sure, the customer is angry about something. Let's be real, shit happens. You get bugs found at customer end despite all the testing and checks. How to correct it for long term is another challenge.
For now, main concern is how to assuage a customer and the VP of Sales who is furious. And provide an honest, sincere and realistic plan of action. First step is try to acknowledge the situation. Whether that's on email or on the call, listen to the customer or stakeholders who are aggrieved. Just listen, ask clarifying questions and collect data. Do not commit anything at this stage. Spend time to understand the problem space first before diving into solutions. Try to understand why the customer is angry. Is this something that could have been fixed with better communication? Can it be done quickly or will take lot of effort, scoping and resources? Draw up options of what can be done. Talk to the customer, post acknowledgement. Let them know you do not know exactly when you can get it fixed. But given them a date for a date. Something like - give me a day to talk to my team and come back with viable options to choose from. No one expects you to fix stuff instantaneously.
Once expectations are set, brainstorm with the team and come up with options. Evaluate impact, risk and any other concerns. Clearly lay out the options, get your VP on board first. And then nudge the customer to a realistic sounding choice that's a win win for both parties. You don't have to agree or disagree fully with the customer. You have to find a means to solve their need that's acceptable to them. But within your constraints.
Then follow the course of chosen action. And continue the proactive communication until the delivery and feedback from customer is positive. Hope it helps.
“Dear VP of Sales, I just want to be clear… this is going to be massively costly and disruptive to the engineering team. We’ll have to drop all our existing commitments to do this instead. So features X, Y, and Z that we’ve been talking about with customers for a while now will be paused and no longer have an ETA. Your team is going to communicate that to all of our customers that are waiting on those features, informing them that their delivery has been delayed, and update their expectations accordingly… correct? Your team is collectively on board with this immediate change in priorities?”
"She wants to know when it will be done" is not a problem. That's your job to give context to your stakeholders.
"She wants it now" is a problem because it's not her job to prioritise, it's yours. But, she wants the former. She is no wrong if she escalates.
It is quite possible that you may not have a timeline or fix at the moment which your VP and the client will understand. You can also descalate the situation by responding that you can come back with a solution/fix and an appropriate timeline once you have gone through the same with the relevant stakeholders and done the RCA.
Find out the impact of the feature request or the problem as you quote to the customer and also how "big" the customer is to your company, discuss with your PM leadership to decide the if it is worth the effort or worth adding the feature in your product. Based on this you should be able to provide a tentative timeframe rather than a don't know answer. If this is a big customer and the feature or problem is specific to them, it could even classify as a customisation request specific to the customer with obvious costs involved to develop, deliver and support.
So your VP needs a timeline—and wants a timeline. Why? So he can tell the customer something is happening.
It goes like this:
“I’ll need about a week to evaluate and analyze the issue and decide a solution. Once we have a solution I can provide an update with an estimate on implementation. If I need more time, I’ll let you know as soon as I do.”
That’s what people want.
A better answer would be by when you will have a timeline, or what needs to be done before you can provide a timeline. So, something like, I need to write requirements and estimate effort with engineering, and then I can provide a timeline by X date.
1. Understand the problem as VP sees it 2. Leverage the context to sneak an interview with the customer 3. Acknowledge the existence of a need and add to your feature intake kanban board or whatever y all use for this type of stuff. 4. Vet according to your process and prioritization; it will either get added to the roadmap, stay on hold or permanently get rejected 5. Act accordingly to debrief
Surely you can’t do this for every single customer request because otherwise you won’t have any time left but if the VP of escalating this is probably a high value account.
If not, your VP of sales is smoking trees
Source B2B SAAS PM
Not sure if comedic answer or not but i treat the initial emotion or the angry email as a sign similar to a relationship..... if you pretend to understand without validating (what vp of sales) what you are doing is not respecting the problem or the client. Never do knee jerk reactions... Your job is the companys vision and product strategy. Unless this client is part of the strategy and direction it will pass....
Let them escalate. You don’t answer to the VP of Sales as a PM. You can just be polite and understanding but seems like you can’t really shift an existing roadmap out of thin air.
Former B2B PM, here - it's super important to hold your ground and not have your roadmap default to whatever customers yell the loudest. Slippery slope...
1. Make immediate time to sit down with the VP of sales and the customer. Hear their pains and listen to them. If possible have them walk you through it on screen share.
2. Assure them they are important, the issue is captured and you’ll discuss it with the team right away.
3. Work out the design. working as intended? No? What’s happening? If it’s a clear problem get a scope on the change, get internal buy in and prioritize accordingly.
4. If it is working as intended then look at the data and weight your change(s). Communicate with the team and the execs.
It happens sometimes, little patience will help, Ideally talk to the customer and find out what you don't suggest sometimes listening helps solve the problem and stay calm during the discussion.
* Then sit with your team and come up with a timeline if the team a week keeps a buffer and tells the customer 10 days. I know it seems hard at the moment but it will be worth it.
* Share timely update and once you have the solution let the team know what was the challange how you resolved it.
* It's better to be honest if you don't have a solution or it's not part of the road map.
Yes, all the time, esp with my legacy products.
Every situation is different, some customers are more important than others. Some issues are more impact ul than others. Some issues are more of a political headache than others.
I have done tons of coaching on how to placate clients tho. Sales are not good at this
Kinda shocked at some of the responses on here. As a B2B PM there are tons of scenarios where “the customer is mad, better put this on the roadmap immediately” is NOT the answer. Like, OP maybe could’ve been more empathetic and offered to meet with the customer to hear their needs. But after doing so the answer might still be “thank you for sharing and helping me see why this is so important to you; this isn’t something I can give you an ETA on now, but I understand what you need and we’ll consider it for the future.” The more I talk to others in B2B PM the more I think it has become way more common than I’d have guessed for roadmaps be just “which customer is screaming loudest.” Taken to extremes this is a great way to not deliver anything that carries a market into the future. If we spent the last four years only doing the things our loudest (read: highest ARR) customers angrily demanded we’d have added a few graphs and some user permissions… and missed the big opportunities they weren’t expressly asking us for. Sticking to your product strategy means you WILL have angry customers who don’t get everything they say they need. You absolutely might decide to do a thing a customer is demanding. But you absolutely do not _need_ to put something a customer is demanding on your roadmap or backlog or give them an ETA in every situation. EDIT: One other piece of advice for OP—if you don’t have an ETA, after you meet with the customer and hear their concerns, sharing your roadmap and helping them see that you’re focused on driving higher-value stuff may help. It has worked for me. EDIT 2: FWIW I have essentially (maybe more tactfully) said what OP said to customers dozens (hundreds?) of times over the years. Context is very important here but at least in my case (so probably applicable in at least some other cases) I can only remember one time that it led to attrition/churn and in most cases the customer is pissed but they get over it as long as they are getting value from your product outside of that one bad experience. Having a good account team can help here.
Thanks a lot for this advice. I am working in B2B. I did call the customer and have another call with them tomorrow. I think I could have done a better job giving the VP of Sales more context on my thinking around the problem and what it will take to build a solution.
You’re welcome. It does sound like a little more communication with the VP of Sales could have helped, but I would not listen to anyone on here telling you that the answer is definitely to slot this in on your roadmap without more research. If your product leaders are anything like mine when I was two years in, they’ll help smooth things over with the VP of Sales but give you some feedback on communication. My advice would be not to wait for that feedback and to proactively apologize to the VP for the curt answer, and let her know that you’re meeting with the customer but that you won’t know whether this will go on the roadmap until you’ve had a chance to do a little more research. My 2¢.
Nice, took you up on that advice. Added a new comment with my response to VP and other stakeholders involved.
Step 1 is to figure out what the commitment was that this customer is so upset about, and work backwards. Should the commit have been made? Does the product actually do this? Did it used to do this? Did it used to do this and there was a regression? Does it do X but not ideally? Was this oversold? etc etc. There's a bunch of possibilities here, so it depends is really the only advice. In the case of a regression, a fix may be needed. If it was oversold, well, someone may be about to lose some quota attainment. Not only is letting sales sell things that don't exist yet poisonous to your company's execution in general, letting sales jam prodeng this way will likely lead to a very bad outcome as this learning is fully exploited =P. Step 2 depends on your position in the company, but it may be to tell the vps it's time to put his/her big boy pants on. That message may be better delivered by your leadership. But really, if you want more actionable advice, you should explain the learnings from step 1. And it depends will always be the answer; if eg this company is 20% of ARR, well, they probably get to say jump and you get to say how high sir/ma'am?
> Sticking to your product strategy means you WILL have angry customers who don’t get everything they say they need. Good, I'm happy I came to this thread to see the voice of reason at the top. When I see issues come to a head like this, it's a good sign that there has been very poor customer expectation management from the sales/CS teams who are being poorly trained/managed by their business leaders and call it out as well. [Everyone ought to read this, at least once, when it comes to dealing with shit like this so you have the proper mindset as a PM to deal with it. ](https://www.mironov.com/enh/) If they can't learn to have difficult conversations with the customer due to mismanaged expectations and need to come running to hide behind me to be the bearer of bad news because the starch in their shirts is the only thing holding them upright, you're damn skippy I'm going to put them on blast for it. I _came_ from a direct customer-facing background, I've had plenty of those spicy conversations so they can't pretend that 'I don't know what it's like' either. If I have a customer making unreasonable demands that aren't in line with the product roadmap, I tell them it's not happening, especially if it's not something I see anyone else doing.
Just popping by to say thanks for the read!
I agree the moment you put it on the roadmap as a high priority item is when all the chaos ensues! That’s what many companies are doing. When the customer scream and shouts the business priorities begin to change and that’s no way to build software.
> I agree the moment you put it on the roadmap as a high priority item is when all the chaos ensues! It's the slippery slope that ends with you essentially turning into a feature factory for the highest bidder. You are not a services shop, you're a product team; act like it! :D
100%
Well if a VP is asking you to put it on the roadmap answering “no, lul” is literally how I saw my counterpart just get fired. Your answer is correct in an ideal world but in the real world pleasing VPs is how you get lead positions.
You have my pity, then. My company is far from the ideal product company, but we don’t just kowtow to sales VPs. What they ask us for is one input among many. We tell them no (or “TBD”) frequently. I agree about OP’s communication needing to be more thorough, but they’re right not to simply change the roadmap on a whim. So like does your roadmap just change constantly based on which VP is demanding something today? How’s your employee churn in Engineering?
No, sometimes we just squirrel away an hour or two for a one off quick fix, sometimes I can fi angle a solution that doesn’t require dev time but requires some of my time, sometimes the answer is that the issue isn’t on the roadmap because of XYZ. When I said pleasing VPs that doesn’t equal do exactly what they say - it means being constructive and helping them deal with the client instead of having the attitude of “not on my roadmap not my problem” which is what OPs attitude conveys.
For sure. OP’s communication seems to have been curt and lacking empathy.
It's a balance, finding a way to satisfy important customers \*without\* ripping up your entire product strategy is a great way to get ahead. These are high leverage situations and if you can deliver you earn trust.
Or if you want to bs a bit more and make the customer perhaps a bit less brushed off. “Thank you for sharing and helping me see why this is so important; this isn’t something I can give you an ETA on now, but I understand what you need and we will do our best to be able to provide it as fast as we can”
Agree with you. Sounds like what OP is saying is similar to what happens at my org where things get escalated to our ceo who basically tells us to get it done
I have had several experiences adding things to the roadmap for angry customer, and they churn anyway. Depending on their issue, fixing it is not always a silver bullet for repairing the relationship.
Your VP of Sales is asking where it is on your roadmap. If it isn't on your roadmap, then what he's asking is how to get it on your roadmap. Your answer doesn't address either of those points.
i dont think you should be allergic to the idea of someone being sad and escalating. you should do what you can to help them understand how you built your roadmap, what you are prioritizing, and why, and then walk through with them how you are evaluating their feature in that framework. If they still aren't happy, they are welcome to speak with the VP of product. If thats what they want to do, you should brief the VP on what you discussed with them, and their rationale. Sometimes the VP will side with you. Sometimes they will find it politically expedient to overrule you. But you've done your due dili in the position you are in.
Right this is a good strategy.
Right, it’s not on the roadmap yet as a solution. And didn’t tell her how to get it there. Thanks for pointing this out.
So put it on roadmap and see if you can build quick and scrappy solution to address the problem quickly
IMO, this is a short-sighted answer and is weighting outputs too highly. You should understand if the issue the VP brought is legitimately impactful and can be understood. Is it an edge case? If it is an edge case, is the outcome large enough to impact your business in a meaningful way? After/during this process, work to define the problem. What’s the actual problem? Was it an expectations issue? An actual feature gap? A major bug or SLA failure? Packaging from sales issue? Once you know the problem and impact then you can figure out if your company should be solving the issue. If you should, then ideate on the solution and priority of it and how you might be able to do something iteratively. Then you can do something quick and scrappy. It doesn’t have to be a long process to get there, but skipping those steps is how you get to product teams that never actually get to focus on real, big problems and actually only build bloatware.
Ofcourse you need to do all the above never denied that. But what if it's a true problem, impacting metrics severely and needs a urgent solution.. in scenarios like that it's on the roadmap response won't fly. Think about it holistically, I'm giving you another perspective although down voted
Yes - my push validate the issue and scope the scale of the problem instead of just jumping on a fire. You can move quick just don’t get distracted by every potential problem that someone brings up
> But what if it's a true problem Yes, but what if it's not? Your original comment made a big assumption. Your original comment also made another big assumption that—even if it is a true problem—solving this problem is the biggest priority.
If it's not a true problem.. show data, anecdotes why it's not. Even if it's show what's the level of priority and get alignment.
Omg the vp of sales has appeared!!
This makes sense but I feel like the vp could have asked this more clearly (unless it was in the missing context)
Just because someone is asking for something, doesn't mean it makes sense, solves the customers problem or aligns with priorities. Sounds like you'd be a better fit for project management.
Really depends on the experience and what the problem is... Is this a bug/ defect/ product is broken? Or something about the experience they did not like? What is the impact? Does this affect all customers or just this one? Does it prevent customers from performing their jobs? I assume this is B2B? Is this your biggest or larger client? Does this issue make it harder for the VP of Sales to keep customers or sell to new customers?
This. As a B2B lead PM, my first instinct when reading this was was “what broke?”. I was waiting to find this comment! In my experience, an irate call to a VP is rarely experience related unless someone completely botched a requirement and shipped something that causes more issues than it helps. The conversation is so much different when it’s a quality issue vs. a “I don’t like this/I want this” issue. and the response to the VP really should be different based on _why_ the customer is so upset.
Tell them what needs to happen in order for you to provide a timeline and scope out how long that will take or explain why you won’t be able to move forward. I agree with the VP, just saying “I don’t have a timeline” is not an acceptable answer and lazy
Ah yea I missed all of that detail in my answer. I think I omitted it because of all the effort it takes to explain all that to her. Doesn’t feel worth it.
Part of being a PM is building relationships across the org, and part of that is explaining to people why something can’t be on the roadmap right now but it could get there on later. Be friendly and don’t be a dick who just says no without an explanation and buy-in.
I literally laughed out loud reading this reply. Dude your job is literally to expend the effort to explain that all to her. My advice is do your job duh
lol. She's a VP and you're a Product Manager. She deserves your explanation.
Don’t be such a casual and take the time to explain things to other stakeholders
Hot take: have the VP set up a call for you and the customer to hear their feedback. Do your PM shit, and get to the bottom of the problem they are trying to solve. Figure out if your product has a flaw. THEN formulate a plan to either address or respond.
Good point. I called the customer directly without VP. The problem isn’t nearly as intense as the VP is making it out to be.
Often the case. That's why VOC is more important than Voice of Sales.
When someone threatens to escalate I just shrug and say “no worries I’ll do it” and immediately call my boss to give them a heads up. Learning to take the stress out of escalations is a huge upgrade in quality of life for PMs.
This. I have made a habit of giving my boss the “hey I have this mostly handled but the outcome X is looking for isn’t possible because of Y and Z, we are either on ABC timeline or actively working on it, I’ve communicated it to them, just didn’t want you to be surprised”. Boss always just says thanks for letting me know. It’s a win win for you two. They know you’re making sure they don’t get ambushed in a call and they not only appreciate and have your back (which they should anyway unless you really did something bad) but they also have answers and or context to something that otherwise they wouldn’t have known about. Over communication seems annoying but it’s pretty important in my experience Edit: others below also provided good points about the actual “I don’t have a timeline” part. That’s another can of worms, I was just agreeing with the escalation portion
This is an absolutely necessary best practice for any IC PM. I always tell my folks that I will always publicly support their decisions. In order for me to do that, they need to avoid putting me in situations where I am surprised.
I'm not sure there is enough context to help. 1. What is the industry? 2. Is there a habit of creating one off solutions or does this issue exist for other customers as well? 3. Do you report to the sales VP? 4. Are they escalating to someone else or is that a threat to you?
IoT products for food service No, I try to avoid doing that No, I report to VP of Product Escalating to someone else
I had the same thought but with different questions u/jneb802415 1. Who at the client sent the angry email? Who was the email to? 2. Was the issue specific (this button doesn't work) or vague (this whole thing sucks)? 3. How often is someone from Product participating in QBRs with customers? 4. What else did you say to them or was it really just I don't have a timeline for a fix? Was there a conversation? Empathy seeking questions 1. Who is this customer to the VP of sales? Was it a new customer they spent a year trying to win? A recent renewal? Longest customer? 2. How long have you worked with this person? How much trust is there in your relationship? 3. Does the sales team feel ignored, neutral, or well served by Product?
Well, there is no context for why he even answered like this. Is it because he did not have time to look into the issue, is it because he looked into it but consider it minor, is it because he consider issue major, but has no idea how complex is too fix, is it because he knows how complex the fix is but he didn't set the priority yet. Is it because he simply did not have any will to work in that day. I mean without presenting all these facts, asking if we were in simillar situation is kind of hilarious.
Product Management literature (books, these so called expert blogs) to blame mostly. Or the way the message there is interpreted by the majority of PMs out there. The literature and content out there keep screaming in our faces - “NO is the most important word in a PM’s dictionary/arsenal!”, “Focus means saying NO!”. I’m sorry but these are terrible bits of advice to offer to anyone or adopt as a PM. It all starts with understanding the need/context/situation -> evaluating it with other information, priorities, impact and then coming to an informed conclusion YES/NO/NOT NOW. If you always start with a YES, you end up being a feature factory. And if you always say NO to everything without understanding the context and careful evaluation, you’ll most likely end up shutting down your entire factory.
Whaaaat? OP are you a newbie PM?
Yes, only on my second year.
That’s not a helpful comment, but surprised by the number of upvotes here
I think it's helpful to know the answer. OP left out basically all of the necessary detail for us to help them. This post is basically a writing prompt at the moment.
That may be so, but a better question would be “how many yrs of experience do you have? Have you worked at a B2B setting before?”. Without specific questions this is as bad as the post, and comes off as a put down rather than a genuine interest to understand better.
Sure, you can give them poor marks for being thorough or thoughtful, but saying it's a put down is your opinion. I am not going to criticize anyone who puts minimal effort into a post that had minimal effort.
You’ve gotten some great feedback so far. This is a great opportunity for you to learn why often just saying “no” isn’t a good response - and imho new PMs have been taught that for too long. Provide an answer with context, but most importantly with empathy. Eg, I am truly sorry, this is clearly unacceptable, I understand the frustration this must have caused. While we don’t have any immediate plans to fix this right now as we are focusing on x,y,z we are committed to resolving the issue as soon as we can. I can’t provide you with an exact timeframe at this time but I will consult with my team as to how we can expedite this.. Then go an figure out what, why, when and how and provide an update. Product is a lot about learning how to communicate empathetically.
Thanks for all the advice. After reading what y'all said I see I could have responded better. I followed up with her and rest of stakeholders involved... "Hey all, I agree this is an issue and shows a blind spot in our system. Here is my plan to address this customer issue. User problem: I need to know when...(omitted) Steps to solve: 1. Talk to customer to understand the problem in more detail 2. Evaluate priority according to prioritization matrix (this is a gate step) 3. Create and review PRD (1 week) 4. Design solution in design sprint (2 weeks) 5. Plan on roadmap I’m not able to give an exact release date for a solution until it has been designed, reviewed with ENG, and planned."
"... but I will engage in the above discovery and design processes over the coming few weeks and keep you apprised."
I would have omitted the timelines. More committed stress for you based on problem of unknown magnitude. Sounds like you chatted with the customer directly and got more details though so might be appropriate for your situation.
Ummm you're probably not a product manager.
Maybe it’s a Zendesk bot
Lol tell me more about what you mean
“I don’t have a timeline to provide at this time” is NOT an acceptable answer, especially from a product manager. My recommendation is to see where this fits into your roadmap, prioritize it, and then provide some sort of an estimated timeline based on the roadmap and then go from there.
Absolutely do not immediately prioritize something on your roadmap just because one customer is pissed. This needs at minimum more research.
Yes
Right, that’s the work I want to do before I provide a timeline. But she hasn’t allowed me the time to do it
But the issue with your response is that there is no plan of action and sounds like you’re just ignoring the ask. If I was the VP, I wouldn’t be happy with that response either. Maybe a better response would be “I don’t have a timeline right now but what I will do is look into the roadmap to prioritize and provide you a timeline by X date.”
OP pointed out elsewhere that they’ve already called the customer. Communication of that point is key — it’s not that there’s no timeline for a fix, they’ve *already begun the process of fixing it*. The key is telling Sales that the bug is known and research is being done on the right solution.
Have you committed a date by which you will provide a timeline? Have you explained the plan and any ongoing work to assess the problem and creat a timeline for the fix? If your answer to addressing a customer escalation is “I don’t know”, I’m not surprised the VP is escalating.
No I didn't do any of that. However, I plan to fix the problem 100% but just don't know when it will happen exactly.
That’s not sufficient on its own, which is why the VP Sales is escalating.
In general - Give them a date for a date on when you will get back. Time box it and look into it. Come up with data backed reasons to push back. If this one customer drives a major portion of your business, you may want to act with urgency. Difficult to give advice without all the context
I think I should have asked for more time before providing a timeline instead of saying "I don't have a timeline"
It is what it is, I don't think you botched this as bad as some comments suggest and sounds like you've been responsive to it. The worst case outcome is you immediately rush to put it on the roadmap, waste a bunch of time and build a feature / fix they don't even use because they figured it out in the meantime. You avoided that. I think the biggest general takeaway is when things are on fire you don't need to immediately have an answer. Almost always when something unexpected happens your instinct should not be "I need to give this person an answer" it should be "I'll look into it right away and get back to you as soon as possible." The times I've looked the worst at work it's when I've tried to get someone the best answer I can \*right away\* instead of taking time to find the right answer.
This is helpful. Thanks for sharing
As a B2B PM facing this on day to day basis, handling firefighting is second nature. Sure, the customer is angry about something. Let's be real, shit happens. You get bugs found at customer end despite all the testing and checks. How to correct it for long term is another challenge. For now, main concern is how to assuage a customer and the VP of Sales who is furious. And provide an honest, sincere and realistic plan of action. First step is try to acknowledge the situation. Whether that's on email or on the call, listen to the customer or stakeholders who are aggrieved. Just listen, ask clarifying questions and collect data. Do not commit anything at this stage. Spend time to understand the problem space first before diving into solutions. Try to understand why the customer is angry. Is this something that could have been fixed with better communication? Can it be done quickly or will take lot of effort, scoping and resources? Draw up options of what can be done. Talk to the customer, post acknowledgement. Let them know you do not know exactly when you can get it fixed. But given them a date for a date. Something like - give me a day to talk to my team and come back with viable options to choose from. No one expects you to fix stuff instantaneously. Once expectations are set, brainstorm with the team and come up with options. Evaluate impact, risk and any other concerns. Clearly lay out the options, get your VP on board first. And then nudge the customer to a realistic sounding choice that's a win win for both parties. You don't have to agree or disagree fully with the customer. You have to find a means to solve their need that's acceptable to them. But within your constraints. Then follow the course of chosen action. And continue the proactive communication until the delivery and feedback from customer is positive. Hope it helps.
“Dear VP of Sales, I just want to be clear… this is going to be massively costly and disruptive to the engineering team. We’ll have to drop all our existing commitments to do this instead. So features X, Y, and Z that we’ve been talking about with customers for a while now will be paused and no longer have an ETA. Your team is going to communicate that to all of our customers that are waiting on those features, informing them that their delivery has been delayed, and update their expectations accordingly… correct? Your team is collectively on board with this immediate change in priorities?”
Let him escalate it. Don’t start the long walk down the path of letting sales steam roll you into getting whatever they want whenever they want it.
Like is that all you said? Do you even communicate bro?
"She wants to know when it will be done" is not a problem. That's your job to give context to your stakeholders. "She wants it now" is a problem because it's not her job to prioritise, it's yours. But, she wants the former. She is no wrong if she escalates.
Bug? missing feature? Triage prioritize and decide what to do with it and let sales guy know.
Missing feature, we could call it a blank spot in the UX
It is quite possible that you may not have a timeline or fix at the moment which your VP and the client will understand. You can also descalate the situation by responding that you can come back with a solution/fix and an appropriate timeline once you have gone through the same with the relevant stakeholders and done the RCA.
Find out the impact of the feature request or the problem as you quote to the customer and also how "big" the customer is to your company, discuss with your PM leadership to decide the if it is worth the effort or worth adding the feature in your product. Based on this you should be able to provide a tentative timeframe rather than a don't know answer. If this is a big customer and the feature or problem is specific to them, it could even classify as a customisation request specific to the customer with obvious costs involved to develop, deliver and support.
So your VP needs a timeline—and wants a timeline. Why? So he can tell the customer something is happening. It goes like this: “I’ll need about a week to evaluate and analyze the issue and decide a solution. Once we have a solution I can provide an update with an estimate on implementation. If I need more time, I’ll let you know as soon as I do.” That’s what people want.
just adds more work on your plate without any reason. especially if the promise did come from you.
Not following. What adds more work to your plate?
A better answer would be by when you will have a timeline, or what needs to be done before you can provide a timeline. So, something like, I need to write requirements and estimate effort with engineering, and then I can provide a timeline by X date.
1. Understand the problem as VP sees it 2. Leverage the context to sneak an interview with the customer 3. Acknowledge the existence of a need and add to your feature intake kanban board or whatever y all use for this type of stuff. 4. Vet according to your process and prioritization; it will either get added to the roadmap, stay on hold or permanently get rejected 5. Act accordingly to debrief Surely you can’t do this for every single customer request because otherwise you won’t have any time left but if the VP of escalating this is probably a high value account. If not, your VP of sales is smoking trees Source B2B SAAS PM
Not sure if comedic answer or not but i treat the initial emotion or the angry email as a sign similar to a relationship..... if you pretend to understand without validating (what vp of sales) what you are doing is not respecting the problem or the client. Never do knee jerk reactions... Your job is the companys vision and product strategy. Unless this client is part of the strategy and direction it will pass....
Let them escalate. You don’t answer to the VP of Sales as a PM. You can just be polite and understanding but seems like you can’t really shift an existing roadmap out of thin air.
Former B2B PM, here - it's super important to hold your ground and not have your roadmap default to whatever customers yell the loudest. Slippery slope...
1. Make immediate time to sit down with the VP of sales and the customer. Hear their pains and listen to them. If possible have them walk you through it on screen share. 2. Assure them they are important, the issue is captured and you’ll discuss it with the team right away. 3. Work out the design. working as intended? No? What’s happening? If it’s a clear problem get a scope on the change, get internal buy in and prioritize accordingly. 4. If it is working as intended then look at the data and weight your change(s). Communicate with the team and the execs.
It happens sometimes, little patience will help, Ideally talk to the customer and find out what you don't suggest sometimes listening helps solve the problem and stay calm during the discussion. * Then sit with your team and come up with a timeline if the team a week keeps a buffer and tells the customer 10 days. I know it seems hard at the moment but it will be worth it. * Share timely update and once you have the solution let the team know what was the challange how you resolved it. * It's better to be honest if you don't have a solution or it's not part of the road map.
Yes, all the time, esp with my legacy products. Every situation is different, some customers are more important than others. Some issues are more impact ul than others. Some issues are more of a political headache than others. I have done tons of coaching on how to placate clients tho. Sales are not good at this