Build Customer-Centric Decision Making

Company Context

TaskFlow is a B2B SaaS workflow platform used by 25,000 small and mid-sized businesses to manage approvals, internal requests, and recurring operations. The company is growing steadily, but leadership believes product teams are over-weighting internal opinions and large-customer requests instead of making decisions from a clear understanding of customer needs.

Problem

Over the last two quarters, TaskFlow shipped 14 roadmap items, but only 5 reached target adoption. Post-launch interviews show a recurring pattern: teams moved quickly from stakeholder requests to solutions without validating the underlying user problem. Customer satisfaction for new features is 31/100, and churn among accounts under 50 seats has increased from 2.8% to 4.1% quarterly. The CPO wants a repeatable system that helps product, design, and engineering make decisions with the customer in mind while still moving fast.

You are the PM for TaskFlow's core product team. Design an approach to ensure your team consistently makes customer-centered decisions across discovery, prioritization, and execution.

Deliverables

1. Define what “customer in mind” should mean in practical terms for this team.
2. Identify which users or segments you would prioritize and how you would gather the right inputs.
3. Propose the operating mechanisms, rituals, and decision criteria you would put in place.
4. Explain how you would balance customer feedback with business goals, technical constraints, and sales pressure.
5. Define how you would measure whether the team is actually becoming more customer-centric.

Constraints

• You have 1 product designer, 6 engineers, and shared access to a user researcher.
• You can change team process immediately, but major tooling changes are limited for the next 3 months.
• Sales wants faster responses to enterprise requests, while leadership wants improved retention in SMB accounts.
• You must show measurable progress within 2 quarters.