Question 1
You may already have exactly what you need.
The question isn’t whether your company has customer programs. It’s whether the people building your products have meaningful, ongoing relationships with customers themselves.
When a new problem appears, can they explore it with customers they already have a relationship with? Or do they have to request another research activity?
Existing programs can be a great foundation. My work helps turn direct customer relationships into a lasting resource for product builders.
Question 2
Keep your research firm.
Good research is valuable. It helps identify patterns, test hypotheses, and understand things individual customer experiences might miss.
But receiving someone else’s findings isn’t the same as developing your own understanding.
You can read a summary of a book and learn a lot. Actually reading the book gives you a different experience. And both can be more valuable together.
I help product builders develop that firsthand understanding, so they can make better use of the research they already have.
Question 3
Continuous discovery encourages regular customer contact and the use of those discoveries in product decisions. There’s substantial overlap with my work.
My particular emphasis is on the relationships themselves.
It’s possible to conduct regular interviews while treating every conversation as a separate research activity.
I’m interested in what happens when product builders develop relationships with history, familiarity, trust, and room for genuine exploration.
The goal isn’t simply more frequent customer contact. It’s a lasting source of understanding that can influence decisions throughout development and beyond launch.
Question 4
They probably don’t have time for another activity that doesn’t change what gets built.
That’s why the work starts with decisions and challenges they’re already facing.
Sometimes that means improving existing conversations. Sometimes it means bringing product builders into customer interactions already happening. Sometimes it means developing relationships that currently don’t exist.
The goal isn’t to fill calendars with more interviews.
It’s to make the time spent understanding customers more valuable.
Question 5
You can, and the capability should ultimately belong to your organization.
But learning to ask better questions is only part of the challenge.
There’s also customer access, identifying the right customers, sustaining relationships, developing confidence, and making sure what people learn influences actual decisions.
I help organizations work through those challenges in practice.
The goal is to create a capability you can sustain, not a dependency on me.
Question 6
By remembering that customers aren’t responsible for your product strategy. You are.
Customers understand their own experiences, needs, and frustrations. That doesn’t mean they should dictate what your company builds.
Lasting relationships give you richer context, not permission to treat every request as a requirement.
You still need diverse perspectives, quantitative evidence, business priorities, technical expertise, and sound product judgment.
Question 7
Some won’t. That’s fine.
Not every customer needs to participate.
The goal is to find people who have a genuine reason to engage and who receive value from the relationship themselves.
Good relationships are reciprocal. Customers shouldn’t feel they’re being constantly asked for favors without getting anything back.
Question 8
AI is making it easier to process, summarize, and analyze customer information. That’s valuable.
But faster access to information isn’t the same as firsthand understanding.
AI can help identify patterns, prepare questions, and examine evidence. It can’t give a product builder the lived experience of developing a relationship with a real customer.
These capabilities are complementary, not competing.
Question 9
We start by agreeing on what better decisions would look like in your situation.
That might include assumptions being challenged earlier, important customer discoveries influencing priorities, fewer repeated debates, or stronger explanations for why a particular product choice was made.
We can also examine longer-term product outcomes.
I wouldn’t claim relationships alone guarantee better launches or eliminate product failures.
What we can evaluate is whether stronger firsthand understanding is changing the decisions people make.
Question 10
If everything depends on me remaining involved, we haven’t accomplished enough.
The goal is to establish lasting customer relationships, confidence, practical working habits, and clear ownership inside the organization.
We also need to address what could cause those practices to disappear: shifting priorities, workload, access problems, and unclear responsibilities.
A successful engagement creates lasting capability.
Question 11
I’d first want to understand what happened.
Did the effort struggle to find customers? Did conversations become scripted? Did participation disappear? Did useful discoveries fail to influence decisions?
Those are different problems.
I wouldn’t recommend launching something new without understanding why the previous effort didn’t stick.
Sometimes improving an existing program is the right answer.
Question 12
Maybe you shouldn’t.
I wouldn’t recommend investing simply because customer relationships sound like a good idea.
But if you’re wrestling with an important product decision, questioning a major assumption, or wondering why your existing research isn’t changing what gets built, that may be worth exploring now.
Start with the decision, not a new program.
Question 13
Yes, but talking to customers and developing lasting relationships aren’t the same thing.
A PM might participate in interviews and usability sessions without developing relationships they can return to as new questions emerge.
And product decisions involve more people than PMs.
Designers, engineers, and others bring different perspectives and notice different things.
The objective isn’t to turn everyone into a researcher. It’s to improve firsthand understanding among the people shaping the product.
Question 14
Yes. Research and dashboards show patterns no single conversation can.
This work adds to them. When builders know customers firsthand, they read the data with more context and know which questions to ask next.
Question 15
No. More interviews can still leave every conversation as a one-time event.
The difference is the relationship. When you talk with the same people over time, you build history and trust. They tell you things they would never share with a stranger.
Question 16
Yes. Most teams start with one product challenge and a few of the right customers.
Once that works, it’s easier to see what to keep and grow.
Question 17
It’s a 20-minute call. You tell me what you’re building and where you’re stuck.
We talk about what you’ve learned so far and where uncertainty remains. No formal presentation or prepared problem statement needed.
Question 18
Within 48 hours you get a free, one-page document with four parts: the challenge, assumptions worth challenging, customer perspectives worth exploring, and where I’d start.
It’s my initial perspective and a starting point, not guaranteed answers or a full consulting engagement.
Question 19
We begin with your product challenge, not a predetermined framework. Most teams start with a Product Challenge Conversation.
We explore what you’re trying to decide, what customer understanding already exists, what’s missing, and where direct relationships could make a difference.
From there, we determine which existing consulting service or engagement is appropriate.
No one-size-fits-all program.
See the ways we can work together, or learn more about Jake.