Susan
===

Jeff: [00:00:00] All right. This is gonna be a fun one. Susan excited to have you here. I mean, I have watched so much of you speaking over the past several weeks leading up to this. And I think this could be a fun conversation, 

Susan: Oh, thanks for having me.

Jeff: Yeah, no, this is always a great game to talk to people from different industries about different experiences.

And you find so much as applies or at least inspires new ideas. But talking about that, I think the first thing I wanted to ask you about is at one point you talked about the idea at CarMax being, you're really focused on driving an iconic. Customer experience and that's such a keyword like iconic is such a it's a big word, right?

Susan: This full word.

Jeff: yeah, so and I figured that was a selected word Like that's not usually in someone's vernacular where that just tumbles out accidentally. Can you maybe elaborate on that? What is an iconic customer experience? First of all

Susan: Yeah, so I think when it comes to building any iconic customer experience, whether it is a physical product or a fully digital product, you want to think about what is your customer [00:01:00] trying to do? And how do we make that as seamless and as enjoyable as possible? So I think that's what we are definitely trying to do here is just making sure that when you think about buying a car, you're Thinking of, wow, it's going to be so much enjoyable and great experience.

If I go to CarMax, cause I know what to expect from them. I know what kind of selection I can get, from the moment I walk in the door, the moment I go to their website or whatever it is that I'm doing to engage with that. Company, I know I'm going to be taken care of, right? I have a great experience when I'm doing those things with that company and just keeping that in mind through the entire product process is so important.

So whenever we're building new experiences or just improving on existing experiences, really thinking about that in customer and the in outcome that we want them to have. Of course, we want you to drive away with a car. That's the ultimate goal is we hope you find the car. Like we want to sell cars.

We are all car salesmen. But at the end of the day, like it's not just about buying the car. It's about finding the right car for you. And hopefully that's with us. But if not, at least maybe you've gotten the education or the knowledge that will [00:02:00] help you find the right car for you and making sure that when you walk in the door of any store or coming to the site, you can find what you need as seamlessly as possible and just making sure people feel good using your product. 

Jeff: That especially in the car buying industry is one right where there's almost a joke about it being a tough experience. So being able to take that and making it a positive thing. 

Susan: And that's really where Carmex started is just saying, wow, this industry is ripe for disruption. So how can we take all that away and make it an enjoyable experience?

Jeff: right. And I think you described it as at one point, you want people to remember how they felt when they worked with you, and then also tell their friends. How it felt when they worked. He's big NPS stuff here. 

Susan: that's a big one for us. And there's plenty of people who love and hate NPS at the same time, but it is a tried and true, like, how are we doing? How can we see if we can make some improvements and find out more from our customers of how to make this experience better.

Jeff: I guess, is there anything specific you're looking at to drive that, how do you get people to tell their friends [00:03:00] how they felt kind of thing? 

Susan: Yeah, I mean, it's one of those where there's plenty of like surveys you can do right and like engagement when it comes to the actual time of using the product or being in store to shop for your car. I think it's a matter of just talking people, right? One of the big things that I've done over my whole career, but certainly is really encouraged here at CarMax is just.

Talk to as many customers as possible, go out and be with them, talk to them, see what they're doing, see how they're shopping, see what is important to them, what pains them and just spending as much time with them as possible so that when we think about building our experiences, it is for our customers.

Jeff: no, I mean that I was literally just talking to one of our, one of our team here and they're in marketing, but similar idea. And he was walking through, like, how do we get this feedback? And finally came down to just go talk to a ton of people. Like you cannot, you can, like you said, you can do surveys, you can do that, but nothing replaces just speaking to humans and really digging into a couple of people.

So but the word iconic, was there [00:04:00] a process that went into, selecting that word? Again, that feels very intentional. Like, where did that come from? What was the drive behind that idea? Yeah.

Susan: I will say I've been in Carmex for three years, so I can't promise I know the history of the word iconic. I, this was far before my time.

Jeff: We're testing you on CarMax history.

Susan: yes I don't know. If anyone watches this later, this is this later, I apologize. I don't know that piece of Carmex history, but I know that and you being a marketing person, I'm sure there was people who were like, Plenty of conversations that went into choosing the right word, but it is something that is reminded constantly is when, one of our core values is do the right thing.

And so when you think about building an iconic experience, it is because we want to do the right thing, not only for our customers, but also our internal associates who are all helping our customers. So making sure that both of those groups of people are taken care of so that we can create an iconic experience is really core to all of the things we do inside of the company, but especially in product. 

Jeff: And following along the scene, but I'll stop grilling you on the word choice of

Susan: I'm going to need to go to a [00:05:00] thesaurus and be like, all right, next time I talk to Jeff, what are other

Jeff: No more iconic. He's got to drop the word iconic. But right you had the story you were talking about where over kind of the peak car buying and selling period over COVID. You and your team were looking at how do you move the in store experience to a self serve appraisal model, or I guess not just the in store, but the, move it to a more self serve appraisal and help people with the loss of selling their cars.

I guess first of all, cause I'm butchering your story right now. Can you maybe give a quick. Recap on what this is and what happened. And then

Susan: Yes, absolutely. So I can't take credit for the actual self serve appraisal process. Another team launched that. I actually joined Carmex mere weeks after it had, or mere weeks before it had launched. So I was seeing it from the ground up, which was really an exciting time to be joining the company, but it was truly revolutionary for how Carmex worked.

buys cars, right? We were purchasing cars from, auction and from customers, but being able to have a way that you could go online and get an [00:06:00] appraisal immediately within, seconds for answering a couple of quick questions on your car was a game changer. It brought so many more customers into the stores to sell their cars.

And at the time, it was, wrapping, I don't know, wrapping up COVID or it was, like that time where the market was like really great. Like it was a good time to sell your car. So we had a lot of people flooding the stores, but it was a lot of people coming in and we're going, Oh my goodness, how are we going to continue having this iconic experience with so many people coming in?

And there wasn't a way to really self serve. So leadership said, Hey, go in and just, Observe, see what's happening. See what opportunities exist. Is there an opportunity for a product solution here? Because we balance, how to make great experience with operations, sales, product, everyone's working together to drive that for the customer.

And so my team went in and just. Followed people around. You talked about the best way to see what a customer is experiencing. We truly walked around with customers through the store from the moment they came in stopwatch in hand, how long did they wait before they were welcomed? How long did it [00:07:00] take to do their paperwork?

How long did it take to review their vehicle and where were their opportunities that maybe a product or a system could come into place and make that experience a little bit better. And a big one that we found was truly that bottleneck at the front door. That is a story I love to tell because when we thought about it, we're like, Whoa we're really just collecting some basic customer information here, name, vehicle information, phone number things like that, just so that we can go ahead and get your vehicle verified so that we can buy this car from you.

And so our team went through and said what if we let people just do it themselves? And so we were able to, come up with a quick prototype, get a store to partner with us that we went in. And then for two days, we kind of wizard of Oz did, it was a, truly just a form online that people went in and filled it out and were behind the scenes in a spreadsheet like checking them in like true like scrappy quick like we had an idea would people even do it like we didn't know and so we went through and everyone loved it they're like yeah i would love to just do this myself And I think, the pandemic really did change customers expectations for things that they [00:08:00] were allowed to do themselves.

I now can order food from anywhere and get it delivered. I can now order something and just drive up and pick it up. Like the expectations of self service has dramatically changed over the last couple years. And so having this, It's almost felt like a no brainer, but it was something very new to our company and our experience.

So getting it rolled out was a really exciting. It was a really cool way to jump on top of this great product experience that had just rolled out and then improving that in store experience for the customer as well. 

Jeff: First of all I can picture is you guys actually following someone around with a stopwatch. And do you ever see the movie the founder about McDonald's

Susan: yes.

Jeff: and the two McDonald brothers are like literally in their fake laid out taped out kitchen with a stopwatch and just, that's 

all I'm picturing is you guys just following around like a tape there and be like, And right here's the bottleneck. 

Susan: We had to follow a couple of people around, right? Cause everyone just was like, there's something missing. There's something that we need to do to make this easier. And there was plenty of opportunities discovered, but we were like [00:09:00] what's the first thing that as an iconic experience, you walk in and what impacts you waiting in this line?

Okay, wait, we gotta get rid of that.

Jeff: And I, I just love the simplicity of, how are we going to solve this? Let's just make a form. We're going to pipe it over there and literally we're just going to be the wizard behind the curtain typing it in manually because we've. On the past few episodes, I feel like minimum viable products have come up and MVPs and, I think I've been hate to say, hating on the idea for a little bit.

But it's really minimum viable experience. And this is a great example. Like the product was, the first iteration you did was a little, strapped together with duct tape. You guys were just behind there typing it in, but for the customer, it was seamless and looked magic. And that's, I think that's the key there and such a great way to validate an idea in just a cheap.

Way. That is just super high quality data though. So

I 

Susan: absolutely. And you don't have to build something to start with, right? Like when you're just trying to validate an idea and say, would this even work? You should really challenge yourself to not build something. What could we do to just see if this would work? There's plenty of, ideas out [00:10:00] there that you could come up with, or even just challenge your team.

I'm sure your team could come up with something where it's what if we tried it this way just to know, and then now you feel good about continuing on with the product. Process and saying, yeah, okay. We've proved that this is a problem. We've proved that this is a potential solution. How do we iterate a little bit more to maybe a higher fidelity, right?

So like the next thing we did was actually mocked up a real product and went online and showed the prototype to multiple different people and got feedback on it before we ever started building anything. So it was good to get that validation early.

Jeff: Yeah. And what I love here too is beyond just the just absolute scrappiness. I feel like a company the size of CarMax, you don't often see a company that size and just wonderful to see, how you looked at the most basic first principles and how you're going to scrap through this and just awesome to see high results from very cheap, putting together, but also, I feel like there's always this problem whenever you are doing handoffs in a product experience, and it can be digital do in person or person to another person.

There's always friction there that you're going to, it's the same thing as write steps in a funnel. [00:11:00] And seeing how you all looked at that and elongated the digital experience and kept the handoff. And then when the handoff happened, it was really smooth to a human. But I guess looking at that, why do you think handoffs like that can be dangerous?

, where does the friction come from when it's changing like that?

Susan: Yeah, I think every product has some sort of handoff portion, right? Whether it is all digital and there's multiple teams that are working on one product and maybe not communicating as seamlessly as they could be, or if there is this online to in person experience or whatever it might be. But anytime the customer transitions from one thing to the next, You have to be thoughtful of what happens there.

A lot of times teams can get really focused on their product, their problem, their silo, and they're like well, I did my thing. Like they came in and they left. And , our experience is the best as possible for that part. But if you don't think about where are they going? Or where did they come from?

And how did I make sure that they came in the door really easy and they were able to get to their next location easy? [00:12:00] Then you run the risk of having really expensive, Strange experiences for the customer to go in between. And, you can think of anything where scheduling a meeting, right?

If there's two teams that are doing email versus the calendar and they're not talking to each other, that could be really weird for you to send an email with a calendar invite and it doesn't work the way you would expect it to because to a customer. I don't know you have, 30 plus product teams or whatever behind the scenes building something, or I don't think about, oh, I did this online and then now I'm coming to the store.

I expect you to know that it's Susan who did both of those things and you're going to help me seamlessly and that's ultimately right. But every company hopes to achieve is that the experience is seamless regardless of where you are, but there's a lot more work to it than you would think.

Jeff: It's like the referee in any kind of sports event, the more it just blends into the background, the better it's probably doing. And when you don't think about the experience of something like selling your car. I feel like that's the height of perfection, right? It's

Susan: Oh, absolutely. Yeah. When we were doing the testing for that self check in product, we were sitting with people in the waiting [00:13:00] room, getting them to try it out. And the feedback was very like baseline. They're like yeah, of course I can check it on my own. Like they weren't dazzled because it just was like of course it's supposed to work.

Like I expect this to work. And I don't think that's negative. That is actually Oh, we've made it so easy. It's thoughtless if you will. Or it's of course, like this is just what I would expect to do. Okay, great. Like we, we are meeting expectations and we're not dropping the ball or not, it's exactly what a customer would want to be able to do.

Jeff: right. Sometimes you look at and you're looking for the fanfare and the hoorays and the hugs. And sometimes the best outcome is just, yeah, this is exactly how it should happen, of course. And that's, that's the height of praise at some level.

Susan: Yeah.

Jeff: Now can we drill in a little bit to The whole kind of a lot of the stuff you talked about, how you move this project for it, how the team moved this project forward had to do with you and other folks being out in the field.

I absolutely love that. I think there's nothing better than you can do to, than to be out with customers, talking to them, observing, looking, [00:14:00] being, , is that a CarMax thing? Is that just a Susan thing? And, lucky coincidence or, where's that come from? I at the foundation there.

Susan: It's a combination. So my full career, even pre product, I was building experiences. I was an event planner. I did catering before moving into sales, which then moved me into product. And through that whole thing, you have to know your customer in order to meet what they need, right? Whether you're, Doing a luncheon or a wedding or a trade show or building an experience.

You have to know your customers really well. So I think I bring a lot of that to any company I go to, which is fantastic. I probably my favorite part of my job is just. Spending time with customers and talking to them and understanding their problem because you are never your customer, no matter if you use that product, if you've bought a car, if you've, gone shopping, you are not your customer and you can't build for yourself.

You have to go out and talk because everyone has a unique story and a unique perspective and something that happened to them. So the more people you talk to the better, but specifically at CarMax, it is [00:15:00] highly encouraged, right? It is dual track agile is it's ingrained in all the teams. You should constantly be learning, constantly be doing discovery as you're delivering on product, just so that you're staying up to date with what our customers need and meeting their demands as they change.

So it was a really nice, like a blending of two worlds for me joining this company that truly believes and encourages that, but we do build a lot of experiences for specifically our field. So all of our 260 plus locations have customers that come in every day. They're using technology in those stores every day.

So we have teams that are supporting those people in the stores, as well as the customers in the stores. So we have to know both really well.

Jeff: Yeah. And, there's obviously like a cost associated to this , how is that looked at, right? Are you flying out to places just for a day? Is it more when you're, trying to stay local, but when you go abroad, you know, maybe , you go for a little bit longer, you need a bigger goal or something?

A

Susan: Yeah, no, great question. I would also question what's the cost of building the wrong product. 

Jeff: Lot of people don't do that. It's, It's [00:16:00] amazing.

Susan: It is. It is amazing. If you spend a lot of time investing in a team and they build the wrong thing, that is a large cost, right? So I really am a big advocate for doing the discovery and the research up front so that you build the right thing as close to the right thing as possible.

You're never going to get a perfect, but you're getting, you're going to be as close as you possibly can. But you're right. We do have, Local stores. So we are based the home office is based in Richmond, Virginia. We have a lot of Virginia stores that are easy drivable to get to that.

Welcome people to come anytime they want. They're like, yes, please come in. We'll tell you how it's going. You can shadow, you can sit with us. You can ask questions. I'm very open. Carmex has built an amazing discovery pipeline that way of just field associates being very welcoming to us coming in and asking a bunch of questions, but really that mentality is across the country.

So I work a lot with our L. A. stores and they are inextricably welcoming. They love to answer our questions. They're not drivable, right? So I don't get to go out and see them very often, but I do get to call on them anytime and they're more than happy to help us when it comes to understanding [00:17:00] problems better, which has been really cool.

Jeff: Nice. And I feel like one other component here that you've talked about is you have a principal field lead on every product team. And this is a cool idea. Like basically it's this one who worked in the stores, right? And then transit, where'd that come from? And I guess, can you describe it better than I just mumbled through, please. 

Susan: so product is still, I would consider like relatively new at Carmax about six or seven years old. So we're growing incredibly quickly, but recognize fast that in order for us to truly know the field, there's nothing better than having someone who has worked in the field. So there is a principal field lead on majority of product teams.

If you don't have the, Products directly impacting the field, you wouldn't, but majority of us do. And it is somebody who truly represents either that role or that problem space or that department, and will be your like inside knowledge base. So they really can help us unblock challenges or questions that we have immediately, or they already have such a great network with each other.

People in the field still from working that it's like, [00:18:00] Oh, I've never actually had that problem because maybe I didn't work with the store that does auctions. But let me call Jennifer who does and I, we can go ahead and get a call set up with her in two days. And so like we are quicker when it comes to discovery and understanding how we can move forward as a team because we have the same this person who is just a wealth of knowledge that can help us get connected.

It was truly a blessing joining CarMax and trying to learn all the ins and outs of the business, having that role, because that person has been working here for sometimes up to a decade. They could be working at CarMax and they're like, Oh yeah, I know exactly how this works. Let's get the right people in the room and make the call or do the workshop or whatever it might be.

Jeff: That sounds like such a great resource that you rarely get is the experience of just a lot of time in the field, working and doing the role, both that you have to build product for, obviously, sometimes, but also who interacted and really lived with. In the world of the customer as well.

Susan: When I was at Snagajob, we actually did a very similar Thing. We didn't have a principal field deed, but we actually built out a charter customer group. So we [00:19:00] had five customers who had been with us for a few years, who said, yes, I'm open to you calling on me anytime you have a challenge. And we would do like quarterly calls with all of them and get on and.

Share different challenges that we were trying to overcome in the field to understand their world because they had been working in, restaurant retail hospitality for decades. So like any company can do something very similar to this. It just might take a little extra work.

Jeff: and you mentioned snag a job there. That's, that was early on in your product journey. Now I guess there you, you talked briefly about this, but you went from event planning to, being a principal product manager. We've talked so often on this show about how the road to product .

There's so many on ramps there, but I think this is the first time I've. Heard that path. That said I used to run a company that did food festivals and stuff like that. And I can completely understand like event planning to product. Actually, when you think about you said, being focused on the overall experience you want to deliver, there's no better way to learn that than to [00:20:00] actually run physical events.

How much do you think that weighed into how you look at products now?

Susan: I think it's been a huge blessing to have that as my background, honestly, because when you are running a in person physical event, you can't hide if something goes wrong, right? You have to be on your feet. You have to be ready to move. You have to have that backup plan already ready to go. Your plan B is not, Oh, we'll fix that in the next release.

It is, I have 20 minutes to make sure that this looks better because if not, the customers will not have a great day. You have. Whatever the timeframe of your event is to deliver a great outcome. So I'm not sure there's higher pressure that can happen, but I think that definitely has played a big role in products because all the prep that goes into planning one great day.

It's really influenced how I think about product, right? You have to do so much prep and so much learning ahead of time to deliver on the outcome that you're hoping to achieve with product. And it's not a waste of time. It's probably the most valuable time that you could put into building a product is [00:21:00] fully understanding what are we hope to, what do we hope to accomplish?

Jeff: Now I'm going to off track us a little bit here. I was always impressed when I was in the event world that, basically what the customer sees is this polished, great experience, and it is just absolute chaos up until about the end. Three and a half seconds before they come in the door. And I just wanted to check.

And is that just a me problem? Or is

that common across the board? 

Susan: Absolutely. No, absolutely. I was, behind the scenes, like sweating Oh my gosh, I don't have this. How can I get it and like calling on people and whatever it might be. And then, yeah, the customer arrives, you're like, we're ready for you. Everything's perfect. Don't even worry about it.

And that's what you want them to feel is I'm, I have you guys to have my back. You're making sure everything goes off without a hitch. And if something's not, you will make sure it's better. And that was what you're on the hook for. And it is a adrenaline rush to say the least, but it is, it's also like really accomplishing by the end of the day, you're like, we did it.

We pulled this off. It was fantastic. Everyone's happy. Let's go on to the next one.

Jeff: I feel like there's very little better training for [00:22:00] working in a startup or a smaller company than that, because it would be like running around the phone in one ear, radio earpiece in the other health, health code what is it? Health inspector, checking food temperatures. And then all of a sudden it just has to be like full wipe.

Everything's perfect because customers are here. And it's the same thing, right? You, like in a startup or any company, you have to deliver the results. It has to happen at a certain time. There's no excuse, it can there's chaos behind the scenes. It's

like, you know, the 

Susan: yeah. And in a startup, you probably live in a state of chaos. It's not ever really a, we cleaned it up. It's more of okay, what do we do to get from today to tomorrow? And then from tomorrow to the end of the week?

Jeff: I feel like that's so many companies I've seen where you, even big companies, everyone thinks it has, they have it all wrapped up and all processized and perfect. And then you actually live it. And even I had a good friend of mine who worked in the white house for a little bit. And he talked about everyone thinks, this it's the federal government.

This is big machination behind it. And he was like, no one even knew how to use the phones for the first two years. It was complete insanity.

Susan: Oh, no, absolutely. No company has it [00:23:00] together. No matter what, like you go in and you work there, go behind the scenes, meet someone who works there. And you're like, Oh, you're still using spreadsheets too. Cool. Good to know. 

Jeff: Except for car max and log rocket, we have everything completely

Susan: We're we it's all done.

Jeff: We're all smooth and great. But that actually brings up like you I think you talked about An anecdote where you were out in the field and you actually found people still writing things on paper that the product team had thought had been solved a while back.

So that kind of goes into just, there's more to product than shipping, right? Can 

Susan: Absolutely. Yes. Oh gosh, that happens. Probably more times than I count. Every company that I've worked at, it's the same, right? Is you go through the process of uncovering this problem and building a solution and getting it out the door and then no one's using it or something you're like, we did it wrong.

Oh my goodness. And it's Oh no, we actually just didn't tell anyone that it was out there. So like product marketing. Huge job, a huge responsibility, amazing role. I got to do product marketing for a year and a half when I was at Snagjob and it was [00:24:00] truly like ingrained in me, like the power of communication.

You're marketing, so you know, like it's, you can't just build it. It's not a build it and they will come like you have to build it and Tell them it's coming. 

Jeff: And then tell them again and tell them again and tell them again.

Susan: you have to keep reminding them. But yeah we went out in the field once and they were still scribbling these notes on these pieces of paper.

And I was like, it's right here. And they're like, what do you mean? And I was like when you just click on this, but that was good learning, right? Because we realized like, Oh, like we needed to save them a click. This was more important information that we thought where it doesn't need to be hidden behind a click, show it on the main screen.

So they don't feel like they have to write it down. So that was a change and it was really great learning. But again, The power of observation, right? No, one's going to think on a discovery call or submit a feedback survey that like, Oh, I really wish I could see this data point. They just write it down.

They just move on with their day. But if you sit there and you watch them and you're like, Oh, if I just showed it to you on this screen, would that save you this time? And that would be amazing. And you're like, okay, give me literally one day with an engineer and it'll be there.

Jeff: [00:25:00] You're like, we did it all. We just did 90 percent already. So that, it shows the value, right? Just being out and with the customer, even if the customer is internal. Now we glossed over something there where you spent a year and a half also in product marketing. And I feel like in your career, everyone kind of has those like moments are just big catalysts. And I feel like snag job seems to be one of those,

Susan: It really 

Jeff: you, but you also have to work with Christian. I'm going to 

butcher his name, but idiotic. Who's now over at Silicon Valley product group with Marty Kagan.

That's an incredible person to learn product from.

Susan: Yes. No, it was amazing. And at the time I will be honest, like I did not really relish all of the opportunities that I got early in my product career. We had workshops from Jeff Patton and Teresa Torres and Christian was running a team while I was there. So I definitely, say like through osmosis and like being able to be around all these amazing people in the space.

I really am so grateful for growing up in product the way that I did and getting exposure to all of these things that are very unique and special in the industry [00:26:00] now. But yeah, I still remember like the first product. Product launch that Christian shared out in the, in like we used to all go down to the kitchen, had like this big open area that we'd sit down.

There's a big screen and he was presenting this brand new product that was coming out and it was just so exciting and I'm sure you've heard Christian speak, like he can make anything sound like so amazing and exciting. You just get so much energy listening to him. And I left there and was just like, holy cow, how is that happening?

What is that going on? And I went and asked his operations partner and was like, can I see it? And she was like, what are you talking about? It's a spreadsheet. Like we're figuring out this is great. Don't get me wrong. Like it's working, but we are truly in the like wizard of Oz phase so that we can prove that this product makes sense.

But they were already making money. They were already like, have proven product market fit. Now it's time to actually productize it so that it was a UI that we could engage with and the customers can engage with, but it was just another great reinforcement that you can make money and you can get product market fit before you build like some big elaborate [00:27:00] product.

And so that really helped me because I was in product marketing at the time to just learn Oh, wow, like you can be super scrappy and do all these cool things.

Jeff: You can be, entering form data in by hand behind a curtain while people are checking in to sell their cars.

Susan: Absolutely. Yeah, they are none the wiser. All I had was a fancy sign. I had to get a fancy sign printed. That was it. 

Jeff: you know, kind of 

Going through this, we've talked a lot about shipping and how you can, inexpensively and efficiently get big insights. But all this kind of goes back to first of all, what problem are you going to set out to solve? And that kind of comes before any of this, right?

I think you've spoken a good bit on setting business priorities and our product plans based on business priorities. What does this look like over at CarMax? Or how do you operate on this? What, how do you go from? Let's discover the problem to what's the most important problem to solve and what kind of data you use and how do you weigh benefit and

Susan: Yeah, no, for sure. There's lots of different frameworks out there of like how you could go about [00:28:00] uncovering the problem and really knowing how to prioritize what we should go after, right? There's multiple different teams that work over here. For our space, really, we look at like the opportunity size.

So again We want to sell cars like that's the goal, right? Like we want to sell as many cars as possible. So what do we need to do in order to sell as many cars as possible, but also balance that with a great customer experience, right? Like we could go out and do some crazy things to sell a bunch of cars, but if the customers aren't happy with it.

Is it a good trade off? So truly understanding like the true opportunity size, both qualitatively and quantitatively. So you need to balance both of those things. But when you think about like opportunity sizing, like what are, what's the ROI of doing this initiative versus something else? So we do set up with an outcome, like we want to accomplish this within the next year or so.

How would we go about doing that? What opportunities do we have to influence that objective for us to really make an impact? And then we take, we, we love opportunity solution trees here. Teresa Torres, like absolutely. I'm obsessed. Just did one yesterday with my team. We had a half day [00:29:00] workshop, lots of post it notes all over the wall.

We all came in person. It was pretty cool. But we go out and we say, what are the opportunities that we've uncovered? By this point, we've done plenty of discovery. We understand the problem space. We've talked to a lot of customers. How do we really move this metric that we're trying to get as an outcome?

And then we rank them against each other and say, which is the one that we should go after from there? Very traditional okay, what solutions could exist? How could we test those solutions? And then how could we find the right fit? I would say like it's not magic by any means, it's pretty basic principles, but it does take a lot of work, right?

It's not going to be something that you can sit in a room for an hour and say, Oh, we've found out how to make all this money. Like you have to really go out and uncover the opportunities that exist when it comes to trying to move that outcome.

Jeff: Yeah, no, I think that's important for the people misses is it's not a genius sitting in a room, with an aha for an hour. It's. Doing the hard work of

Susan: And if that's happening, it probably was just their idea and you should validate it.

Jeff: Yeah, it might just be a matter of opinion. You should probably [00:30:00] double check before you build a whole thing around it. Nice. I think again, to just real fast, quick quick topic change one benefit we've had in getting to know you is, not just being able to listen to, read past things that you've you know, been on or talks you've given, but you've actually, you've Some people might know we have a product management blog on the site too.

And you've written for us a few 

times. And it's good stuff. But I was looking through this stuff and I saw it's something I've been thinking a lot about lately and I saw you'd written. So I wanted to Bring it up. The idea of switching costs. It is one of those things that looking back maybe more during the, Zerp times I feel like people would switch almost easier.

Maybe it was, they didn't feel like they had, layoffs over there, looming over their head or something. And if you made a mistake, it was a mistake. But now it seems like I, I do a lot of talking to prospects and talking to customers as, I've learned from many wise product folks.

And one of the things I've heard a lot is people talk about this idea of people are, I feel are taking into account [00:31:00] switching costs a lot more, not just, Oh, your product costs this, this only costs this, but it costs money to switch. And there's a whole set of switching costs in here.

This might not be very specific to CarMax, but how you view product, like, why do you think that's become more salient in the past couple of years?

Susan: think it's pretty open very deep question Jeff? There's probably plenty of reasons but I would say a good chunk of it is, maybe this will be a little harsh, but I don't think there's as many unique things. The technology has advanced so quickly that there are so many competitors.

There's so many other companies trying to do what you do or what somebody else does, but just a little bit different, a little bit better at a different price, or whatever it might be that I think a lot of consumers are flooded with options. So once I find one. It's a lot of like mental load to go and figure out if I should get a better one.

I think this is very obvious with like cell phone providers, right? Like they're always trying to get you to switch and get you to say Oh we'll pay for your contract, your, to end your last contract or whatever it might be. But that's really like a [00:32:00] price driven network driven kind of thing.

But yeah, it just feels like there's. There's so much, almost like option paralysis, if you will, maybe also is a kind of a part of that. It's just, there's so many different ways that I could go about doing this. Is yours really more unique than someone else's? And do I want to spend the time as a consumer to like, dig out all of the different things that it would take for me to truly know This is a better choice for me.

Jeff: right I thought about this a lot recently, like I said, because also we just had a G who does you on and he's one of the people you just talked to for a little bit and you realize Oh, I don't think I'm actually that smart. He's really smart. Um, but just brilliant to talk to and learn from and super entertaining guy, but he had this framework he was talking about called zone of benefit and it's basically, One of the PC plug is how much better does something have to be worth switching?

Cause a, you always have the kind of, I feel like default human setting of you're more, more risk in switching than doing nothing. And then on top of that, there is cost to it. He had this [00:33:00] interesting framework and oftentimes I think. The point was the zone of benefit where you'll switch is actually much, much higher than people think.

And I feel like that's become more and more sound as people are less risk tolerant, more, things that work, they just want to let them work. So and then I think you said the way you framed it is there's just a lot of choices and sometimes they're not that differentiated.

And people are realizing it. So yeah,

Susan: I think there is like one aspect, of like thinking again, of like iconic experiences. Like you can buy a car from a lot of different places, but what are you going to get part of buying that car? Are you going to have a great experience? Are you going to have trust in that brand? Are you going to have great service?

Whatever it might be. There's a lot of different things that are going to go into that, but that is something a company can control. We, from a car's perspective cars are cars. You can go a lot of places and get a car, but you can't get that experience everywhere. Same with other products, right?

Like your team, right? There's great data products out there, but like what experience am I getting when I use log rocket versus another one, your team can control that. Your team can make you feel really great about being a log rocket customer. [00:34:00] And I think that's where companies and products and teams really should focus in on is our product may not be.

Incredibly unique or have all these crazy bells and whistles or features or whatever it might be. But are we taking care of our customers? Are we making it as easy to use as possible so that they don't want to switch? Like they are having a great experience. I think that is a hundred percent within your control when it comes to mitigating the switching costs, if you 

Jeff: Yeah. I love that. We brought it full cycle back to the iconic customer experience. And

Susan: I thought you'd like that. I brought

Jeff: yeah, no way. We went full circle here and but it's also right. I think it goes both ways. One is. If you have customers, how do you protect them? And it's providing, an iconic, I'm going to use this so often now.

People are gonna get so sick of me talking about this in the office. I'm going to completely blame you, Susan. Um, but if you want to keep customers, it's provide that, whatever that is. And it's understanding your customers, but it's also, you want to escape that zone of benefit and surpass that it's, what is the thing that, that people are going to look at and go that's the iconic thing.

That's the differentiator. That's going to make [00:35:00] me sit up and go, wow. And that's, I'm not going to toot our horn, , but we just had a product release today. And this is, of course, going to come out in two weeks. So by the time this comes out, it's already two weeks in the past.

But I think some of the movement in AI around enabling people to use analytics better. We got some really cool stuff going on and that's, what we're pushing for is what we've seen is a big push forward. And how do we differentiate is making it, easier to pull out that data and find.

The kernels of insight, they're going to help you move your business forward. That didn't used to be for you guys. It's, a super seamless, easy experience where it's a pleasure to sell your car versus something that people historically have joked about being terrible. So also I think that's, we brought it full circle.

Let's go with, I don't want to take up too much of your day here. We're running a little short and then. People looking to build that iconic customer experience. Do you have a couple of words of wisdom for those people dreaming of creating iconic experiences?

Susan: Yeah, absolutely. So I would say for any product team, the number one thing, and especially for product managers is. Focus on your [00:36:00] why always come back to why are we building this? Who is it for? Why does it matter? That will be your North star as a team consistently. And if you lose sight of that's when things go hayrider, where you can't build that kind of experience.

You start entertaining things that just don't matter. You feel like you've lost your way, but if you can really just hone in and drive that home for yourself and for your team, you will make sure that you are going to go to bat for your customers and make sure that you deliver on the outcome that you want.

But in order to like really reinforce that, why it's talk to people, like every PM I talked to who'd you talk to this week? How many people have you talked to this week? Get out there, talk to your customers. They're not scary. They're humans. Just like we are humans. They will talk to you. They want their experience to be better, especially if they're current customers.

They, I'm sure they have opinions on how to make your product better. So go out and talk to people. I've also found that sometimes talking to your scariest customers will help you get over your fear of talking to people. So go spend time with your support team, listening on phone calls, listen to the angry ones, because I [00:37:00] promise everything else is easy after that.

But knowing why people are upset also is great because it helps you understand the full spectrum of how to make your product experience much better, but that'll help really drive your why and making sure that nobody has that poor experience again.

Jeff: I love it. Talk to people. It's such a simple, elegant solution, but it works wonders. Susan, it's been a pleasure having you on. I really appreciate you taking the time. If people want to follow up and have questions LinkedIn, or what's a good place for people to reach

Susan: Yeah. Yeah. Anytime I linked in or I do publish on medium. So if you want to follow up on anything customer related, I share a lot of articles on there of just different ways to grow in your product management skills.

Jeff: Awesome. Thanks so much for coming on. I know I learned a lot. I think people will too. So thank

Susan: This was a blast, almost iconic, if you will.

Jeff: Almost.