The Power of Customer Misbehavior

Marty Cagan argues that product teams can find major opportunities by letting customers use their products for purposes the company never planned or officially supports. He describes this as a third path beyond following the market or following the technology, and illustrates it with eBay's experience of customers trading everything from concert tickets to cars. He frames the approach as a platform strategy where customers, not just third-party developers, extend the product, as Excel does. Rather than resenting these unintended uses, product people should study them, since the patterns reveal valuable product opportunities.

01Key takeaways

• Consider a third path to product ideas: observe and encourage how customers use your product beyond its intended scope.
• Treat unexpected customer use cases as valuable signals rather than support burdens to resist.
• Investigate what problem customers are solving and why they believe your product is a suitable foundation.
• Look for recurring patterns across unintended uses, as these can reveal large product opportunities.
• Consider designing the product as a platform that end customers can directly extend, not only third parties through APIs.

02Key sections

Two conventional approaches

Product ideas traditionally come from following market pain or following what new technology makes possible. Both can lead to product-market fit.

A third, under-used approach

Successful companies sometimes allow and encourage customers to solve problems beyond the planned and supported use cases.

The eBay example

eBay recognized early that much of its best innovation came from customers repurposing the marketplace, and nurtured it to support trading almost anything.

Customer use as a platform strategy

Platforms are usually APIs for third parties, but they can also be designed for direct end-customer extension, with Excel as an example.

Turning misuse into insight

Unintended use often signals valuable information, so teams should investigate the underlying problem and look for recurring patterns.

03From the post

“A partnership dedicated to teaching best practices to product teams and product leaders”

04Frameworks mentioned

Summary and takeaways written by PM Atlas; quotes are short excerpts. © the original author.