2. The Three Pillars of Product Operations

In this section, we will discuss the three pillars of Product Operations and provide examples of their implementation at VTEX, from when the Product Ops area was first established.

Pillar 1: Voice of the Customer

The Voice of the Customer pillar focuses on ensuring that the product team has access to the right data and insights about the customer journey. This becomes particularly important as companies grow and start dealing with large clients who have significant influence over the product roadmap.

Without a structured approach, product teams may end up in a situation where multiple PMs are speaking to the same clients repeatedly, leading to confusion and a lack of clear information on which to base decisions. Additionally, without the proper framework, product teams risk becoming reactive, working only on requests rather than proactively developing the product.

This pillar can be broken down into two key aspects:

Access to Customer Journey Data: The product team must have access to the full customer journey data, from sales to implementation, through to customer success, and ultimately renewal or churn. Each stage of the customer journey can provide valuable insights that inform product decisions.
Proactive Customer Research: Product teams should be able to conduct proactive research with the right customers. It’s common for product teams to fall into the habit of conducting discovery sessions only with familiar customers. While these relationships are convenient, they may not provide the best insights. Including new customers, especially as the company grows, can offer fresh perspectives and lead to better product development.

Understanding the Customer Journey

The customer journey includes several stages, each providing different opportunities for gathering insights:

Sales Pipeline: Analysis of win/loss reports can reveal why deals were lost or what could be improved in the product to align better with customer needs.
Implementation and Customer Lifecycle: Insights from the implementation phase and the ongoing relationship with the customer can highlight potential areas for product improvement.
Churn or Renewal: A customer leaving (churn) or renewing their contract offers crucial data on product satisfaction and areas where the product might be falling short.

While many companies already collect this type of data to some extent, Product Operations ensures that the right questions are asked at each stage and that the product team has access to this data in a way that they can act on. For example, Product Ops may partner with Growth Ops to ensure that questions about product features and performance are asked during customer reviews and that these insights reach the product team.

Quick Wins

If you're just starting to build out Product Operations and this is a major pain point for your company, here are a few quick wins to get started:

Catalog Existing Data: Identify what data is already being collected, such as churn analysis or support tickets. These insights may not be fully utilized by the product team yet.
Contextualize Data: Once you’ve identified existing data sources, ask how this data can be leveraged for the product team. For example, if you have a ticketing system for customer issues, you might not be tracking the root causes of these tickets to inform product improvements.
Create and Provide Data: After organizing and contextualizing the data, ensure it is not only available but also actionable for the product team. Make sure the team knows how to access and use this data, and help them track the impact over time.

Pillar 2: Product Data

The second pillar is Product Data, which focuses on gathering quantitative data about product performance and usage. This pillar provides the product team with insights into how the product is performing and how it is being used by customers. The goal is to enable the product team to make data-driven decisions to improve efficiency and effectiveness.

Product Data can take many forms, including:

Performance Metrics: Tracking key performance indicators (KPIs) such as response times, feature adoption rates, or error rates.
Usage Data: Understanding how customers interact with the product, which features they use most often, and where they encounter difficulties.

This pillar is about giving product teams the tools and frameworks to collect, analyze, and interpret data efficiently. For example, dashboards can be created to provide real-time insights into product performance, and automated alerts can notify teams when certain thresholds are reached, such as a spike in error rates.

Pillar 3: Tools and Processes

The third pillar of Product Operations is Tools and Processes. This pillar ensures that the product team has the necessary tools and processes in place to work efficiently and scale effectively. As a company grows, maintaining best practices becomes increasingly important to avoid chaos and ensure consistent delivery.

This pillar includes:

Scalability: Implementing processes and tools that allow the product team to scale as the company grows.
Best Practices: Ensuring that teams follow best practices in product management, such as using standardized templates for product roadmaps or having structured rituals like sprint planning and retrospectives.
Automation: Automating repetitive tasks, such as reporting, to free up time for higher-value work.

Product Operations focuses on making sure that these tools and processes are aligned with the needs of the product team and that they are actually being used to improve efficiency.

Practical Examples from VTEX

At VTEX, several initiatives were implemented to address these pillars. Here are three real-world examples that illustrate how Product Operations was leveraged to improve efficiency and product outcomes:

Voice of the Customer Dashboard: A dashboard was created to aggregate customer feedback, allowing product teams to see trends in customer pain points and quickly identify areas for improvement. This included data from support tickets, churn analysis, and sales feedback.
Product Performance Metrics: A set of real-time performance dashboards was implemented, providing insights into how customers were using key product features. These dashboards helped the team identify bottlenecks and areas where feature adoption was lagging.
Process Automation for Feedback Loops: Automated processes were established to ensure that product data collected from various sources (like surveys, sales interactions, and customer support) was not only stored but also analyzed and shared with the product team. This allowed for quicker decision-making and more data-driven feature prioritization.

Conclusion

The three pillars of Product Operations—Voice of the Customer, Product Data, and Tools and Processes—are critical for ensuring that product teams operate efficiently and are aligned with customer needs. By implementing these pillars, companies can scale more effectively, maintain high levels of customer satisfaction, and make data-driven decisions that improve product outcomes.