6 Tips on How to Say No To Customers - Sharon Moorhouse, Intercom

This resource first appeared in issue #6 on 14 Feb 2020 and has tags Working With A Research Community: Other, Strategy: Product/Service Management

We work closely with researchers, and that can make it hard to say no to a feature request. This article walks through the process, which is normally pretty routine but can run the risk of leaving hurt feelings. The tips most relevant to us are:

Explain why
Involve the (researcher) in finding another solution
Focus on the job to be done, not the `no’
Understand both sides
It’s ok to lose a user

Of course, to say no (or even worse, yes!) to a change request from a user can really get you in trouble if you don’t have a clear picture of where the product is going, what its purpose is, and what is in and out of scope. Mathais Meyer writes about drafting such a strategy when coming in to a team for the first time; there are also approaches for more rigorously deciding what decisions to take with data and experiments. Whether it comes from those approaches or from an original product vision, saying yes and no to suggestions is a lot easier when you know where you’re going.