How Customer Insights Help Product Teams Build Features People Want

The Million Dollar Feature Nobody Wanted

We've all been there. We've all seen it. At some point or another, we've watched brilliant product teams spend months of work and millions of dollars on a "game-changing feature." When they finally launch... crickets. Nothing. Nada. An infinitesimal amount of customers use it. Ouch.

The worst part? When these teams finally conduct user interviews (after the fact), customers invariably say something like, "Yeah, we never needed that. But you know what would be amazing? If you just fixed the reporting dashboard we use every day."

We've all seen this movie before, and let's be honest – the ending always sucks.

Look, we get it. Product decisions are hard. The CEO comes back from a conference with a "brilliant idea." The sales team breathes down everyone's neck about some feature a whale prospect mentioned. Before you know it, the roadmap looks like a Christmas wish list of unrealistic features.

But here's the reality: roughly 70% of product features are rarely or never used. That's not just a waste of money—it's a motivation killer for the teams building them.

The Expensive Habit of Building Blind

So why do smart product teams keep building stuff nobody wants? Across the industry, it usually boils down to this: making decisions based on what teams think customers want rather than what they know customers need.

Anyone who's worked in product development knows that person – the one who refuses to do customer research because of a single bad experience. Maybe a customer tore apart their design years ago, and they've been avoiding feedback ever since. We all know someone like that or hav had a bad experience oursleves.

The cost of flying blind is steeper than most executives realize:

• Development waste: The average mid-market company wastes $1M+ annually on unused features

• Opportunity cost: While teams build the wrong thing, competitors solve real problems

• Team burnout: Nothing kills morale faster than pouring your soul into features nobody uses

A pattern we see repeatedly in product organizations: each sprint spent on unwanted features costs around $50,000-$100,000 in development resources and approximately $250,000-$500,000 in missed revenue opportunities. Those numbers add up faster than most product teams' coffee budgets (which is saying something).

When Customer Insights Actually Move the Needle (And When They Don't)

Let's be brutally honest about something: not all customer research is created equal. Those satisfaction surveys with 3% response rates? They're not even remotely useful.

This will upset some people, but NPS scores are worthless. There, it's been said. The number of companies making million-dollar decisions based on a single question asked at the wrong time is baffling.

So what does actually work? Across the industry, the approaches that drive real revenue have a few things in common:

1. They uncover what customers do, not just what they say

You've experienced the disconnect: in surveys, users claim they love a new feature. But watch those same users actually trying to use it? A total train wreck. A fraction of the people complete basic tasks without getting frustrated and giving up halfway through.

Wanna know why this happens ALL THE TIME? Because people don't want to hurt feelings, and they're really bad at predicting their own behavior.

2. They identify specific friction that kills conversion

Ask any veteran product manager about their biggest "aha" moments, and they'll tell you about discovering those small but critical issues. Like the cybersecurity product where users abandoned onboarding because verification emails landed in spam folders. Fixing that one tiny issue can slash churn by 30-40% almost overnight.

3. They score insights by revenue impact, not just user preference

You might be thinking: "Great, another post telling me to talk to customers." But stick around—this isn't about sending another SurveyMonkey questionnaire that nobody fills out.

Here's the weird thing about customer research that experienced teams discover—sometimes the most valuable insights come from customers who absolutely HATE the product. Teams often learn more from angry user interviews than from a dozen positive ones. Which, yes, contradicts what was said earlier about people not wanting to hurt feelings. Product work is messy like that.

The 4-Week Customer Insights Sprint for Product Teams (that won't put you to sleep)

Got four weeks? Good. That's all it takes.

After observing hundreds of product teams, it's clear that anything longer than four weeks and teams lose momentum. Anything shorter and the insights get superficial. Four weeks is the sweet spot where magic happens.

Here's how an effective Customer Insights Sprint breaks down:

Week 1: Getting Real About Goals

Most customer research fails before it begins because teams ask the wrong questions. The first week should focus on figuring out what actually matters to the business:

• Is acquisition friction killing conversion?

• Is feature bloat confusing users?

• Are competitors eating your lunch with a simpler solution?

In workshops across industries, you'll notice fascinating team dynamics. Watch carefully when user feedback is mentioned – you can often tell by glances between team members exactly where the organizational friction points are.

By Friday of Week 1, teams should have:

• Research questions that actually matter to revenue

• Interview guides that get honest answers

• Participant recruitment underway (with the right users, not just whoever's available)

Week 2: Conversations That Actually Reveal Something

This is where real humans who use (or should use) the product get involved. And not in that stilted "on a scale of 1-10, how would you rate..." way.

Effective teams use a blend of behavioral interviewing techniques borrowed from FBI negotiators (not even joking) and cognitive psychology to get past the surface-level feedback.

Imagine this scenario we've all encountered: a fintech app team assumes users are abandoning the subscription flow because of price. But research reveals it's actually because the language around data security is vague and triggers trust concerns. That's the kind of insight surveys never uncover.

Week 3: Finding the Patterns (and the Money)

This week is where things get interesting. Analysis reveals:

• Behavioral patterns invisible when looking at individual users

• Feature gaps costing customer acquisitions

• Usability issues killing conversion

Professional teams don't just make a list of "stuff users want" — that's amateur hour. Instead, they score each insight based on:

• Revenue impact (direct and indirect)

• Implementation complexity

• Strategic alignment

A common pattern: companies discover features they were about to deprecate are actually the primary reason their highest-value customers stay. That kind of insight often saves seven figures in annual recurring revenue.

Week 4: Turning Insights Into Action (That Actually Happens)

We've all seen too many research reports end up as expensive shelf-ware. OneSpring delivers insights that make you want to follow though. Effective week 4 activities include:

• Creating a prioritized roadmap based on revenue impact

• Developing specific, actionable recommendations

• Building an executive presentation that gets buy-in

And yes, practicing the executive presentation is crucial because even the best insights are worthless without executive buy-in.

5 Signs Your Product Team is Flying Blind (Be Honest With Yourself)

If you recognize three or more of these warning signs, your team desperately needs customer insights.

1. Your feature adoption rates are lower than low.
   In 2025, with all the AI tools at our disposal, there's no excuse for launching features that flop this badly.

2. Every roadmap meeting turns into a battle of opinions rather than a discussion of evidence.
   "I think users want..." should be banned from product vocabulary unless it's followed by "...according to our research."

3. Your churn rate keeps climbing even though you're shipping new features.
   I hate to break it to you, but adding more features to a product that's not solving the right problems IS your biggest problem.

4. Sales keeps promising features that the product team doesn't think are important.
   Without customer insights, this holy war never ends. With them, both teams can focus on what actually drives revenue.

5. Your team can't clearly articulate who your power users are or what makes them successful.
   If you're nodding your head right now, it's time to consider getting help with Customer Insights.

What's This Going to Cost Me? (And What's the ROI?)

Traditional customer insights consulting from the big firms typically costs $50,000 to $200,000 and takes 3-6 months. For many teams, that's a non-starter.

A focused 4-week Customer Insights Sprint often costs around $14,000.

For Pete's sake, stop throwing junk at the wall. The average cost of a single failed feature is around $100,000 when you factor in design, development, marketing, and opportunity cost.

Here's a quick ROI calculation that experienced teams often use:

• Typical mid-market SaaS company: $10M ARR

• Average conversion improvement from customer insights: 2%

• Revenue impact: $200,000 annually

• Investment in customer insights: $14,000

• ROI: 1,328% in the first year

Across the industry, teams implementing targeted recommendations from customer insights often see 20-40% increases in trial-to-paid conversion within 90 days. At scale, that translates to millions in additional annual revenue.

Doing It Yourself vs. Bringing in the Pros

Let's be honest—most internal teams struggle with customer research. Not because they're not smart (they are), but because:

1. Customers don't tell the truth to the people who build the product. They'll tell a neutral third party that the onboarding flow is confusing as heck. They'll rarely tell product teams that directly.
   
   

2. Most product teams lack behavioral research expertise. It's not just about asking questions—it's about spotting the nonverbal cues, following up on hesitations, and using the right cognitive psychology techniques.
   
   

3. Internal politics skew research findings. When the VP of Product is invested in a particular direction, internal research mysteriously tends to support that direction. Funny how that works.

That said, for teams determined to DIY this, start with these basics:

• Talk to customers who recently churned (they'll be brutally honest)

• Watch new users try your product without guidance (painful but illuminating)

• Compare feature usage data with what people say they value (often wildly different)

Ready to Stop Building Features Nobody Wants?

Here's the deal: every week spent building without customer insights is likely a week working on the wrong things.

If you're cool with that, carry on. No judgment.

But if you're ready to build products people actually love and pay for, it might be time for professional help. A 4-week Customer Insights Sprint typically provides:

• A prioritized feature roadmap based on revenue impact

• Clear understanding of users' actual behavior (not just what they say)

• Specific friction points killing conversion

• Executive-ready presentation to get stakeholder buy-in

The first step is usually a quick 30-minute call to explore fit. The best partners don't do hard sells.

Book a 30-Minute Consultation

The OneSpring team has helped over 200 product teams stop building features nobody wants. We combine behavioral science expertise with rapid research methodologies to deliver actionable, revenue-focused customer insights in just 4 weeks.

Got questions about how customer insights could help your specific product challenges? Contact us directly.