Having product autonomy helps to streamline managerial & customer facing interactions.
We should strive towards building products capable of reaching a certain level of autonomy, much like a living organism. They should be engineered in a manner that allows them to intelligently interact and serve their users a satisfying experience without requiring human intervention. If a user needs human intervention this means our product failed to deliver a satisfying experience along the user journey.
Another way of looking at product autonomy is by examining what I call, “management minimization”
In order to streamline management of a product, minimization tactics may be employed by building in features to our products such as:
- Self Transaction/Signup – users MUST have ability to purchase and manage their subscription online
- Online Account Management – ability to upgrade, downgrade, or cancel subscription completely online
- Automated Onboarding Process – easy to get started and perceive value
- Freemium Business Model – Where applicable offer basic usage for free, paid upgrades for expanded capability
- Enticement & Engagement – Small bites for free / pay for the whole meal
- Native Nurturing Automation – Built into platform experience + email integration
- Cancel Retention Automation – When user wishes to downgrade/cancel we take them through a series of screens they must get through in order to complete the account change, during this user journey we re-present our value proposition, offer discounts, and gather feedback before processing the change
- Continuous Feedback Loop – Was this helpful? Report a Bug / Live chat / Session Recording / Heatmaps
