Payment Pulse – Ep. 45

Learn how software platforms can look beyond feature requests, identify the real customer problem, and make smarter product investment decisions.

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Episode Transcript

Shannon:  Welcome back to The Payment Pulse. I’m Shannon, and I’m here with Michelle. Michelle, hey, it’s good to see you again. How are you doing?

Michelle: Doing great, and I’m really excited to talk about today’s topic.

Shannon: Awesome. Awesome. Well, let’s jump into it. So I wanna start with something that I think almost every software platform struggles with. So your customers are telling you what they want. Sales has a list, customer success has a list, marketing is hearing things too, and obviously product already has a roadmap.

So when everybody has an opinion about what should come next, how do you know which customer problem actually deserves investment?

Michelle: Yeah, I think the tricky part is that listening to your customers and building what they ask for aren’t necessarily the same thing.

Shannon: Exactly. Yeah, because a customer might come to you and say, “I need this feature,” but what they’re really telling you is they have a problem, and that feature is the solution that they’ve come up with.

Michelle: And it might be the right solution, but before you put it on the roadmap, you probably need to understand why they’re asking for it in the first place.

Shannon: So that’s what we wanna dig into today. How do you get underneath that request and recognize when something is truly becoming a pattern, and figure out whether you’re dealing with a product problem, an experience problem, or something else entirely? And ultimately, how do you decide what’s actually worth investing in?

Michelle: Sure. So I think the first thing is to not dismiss the feature request. If a customer takes the time to tell you that they need something, that’s very valuable information. But instead of immediately asking, “Should we build this?” Maybe the first question is, “What are they actually trying to accomplish?”

Shannon: Yeah. So, you know, with you and I working in marketing, I think we see this a lot. So someone will come to us and say, “We need an email campaign,” or, “We need a flyer,” or, “Can you build this landing page for us?” And I know that, you know, we like to first ask, like, “Okay, but, like, what is your goal? What are we trying to accomplish?”

And really get to the root of it because the problem isn’t that they don’t have a flyer. The real problem might be that merchants don’t understand the value of something, or maybe sales is struggling to explain it. Um, but maybe customers don’t even know that the capability even exists

Michelle: Each of those would require a different response, even though they could all come to marketing and say, “Hey, we need a campaign.”

Shannon: Mm-hmm. And I think the same thing happens with product requests. So say, for example, a customer asks for a report or a button or a different workflow. The request is useful, of course, but you still wanna understand, understand when do they need it? Like, what are they doing instead of that today? Is there a workaround that they’re using?

How often is it happening? And what is frustrating about the current process?

Michelle: ‘Cause once you understand that, you may still decide to build exactly what they asked for.

Shannon: But now you’re making that decision based on the problem you’re trying to solve and not just the request itself.

Michelle: Right. So the request gives you somewhere to start, but it doesn’t necessarily tell you where to finish.

Shannon: Yeah, I like that. So let’s dig in a little bit further. So what happens when it’s a really important customer making the request? And I know that’s tricky because it’s easy for us to sit here and say, “Don’t overreact. It’s just one customer that’s saying it.” But it’s a lot harder, of course, when sales come in and says, “This is one of our biggest customers, and they need this, and they need it now.”

Michelle: Of course, and that will definitely get your attention, and it should. But I’d want to know whether we’re hearing versions of the same problem somewhere else. Are other customers asking for it? Is sales hearing it from prospects? Is customer success hearing it? And are people creating workarounds?

Shannon: So that’s where I think the cross-functional piece becomes really important because marketing sees one part of the customer, sales sees another, the same with like customer success. And product can see how customers are actually using the software. So one customer request is information, but if you start seeing that same underlying problem from several directions, that’s a lot more interesting.

Michelle: And I think that’s also why a roadmap has to be able to move. You can have a plan for where you’re investing, but as you learn more from customers and start seeing patterns across the business, some things are naturally going to move up or down in priority.

Shannon: Yeah, so maybe sales keeps running into the same objection or support might be getting the same question, or, for example, even like for our world in marketing, maybe we’re noticing that customers consistently respond to content about the same challenge. So individually, none of those tells you what to build.

Michelle: But together, they’re evidence that there’s a broader customer problem worth understanding.

Shannon: Mm-hmm. And to that point, you’re not just reacting to the loudest voice of the room. You’re really adjusting based on what you’re learning, and I think that’s really critical.

Michelle: Yeah, it doesn’t automatically mean that something moves to the top of the roadmap. It just means that you know enough to dig deeper before deciding what the solution should be.

Shannon: Yeah, so first you need to understand the problem and then decide what, if anything, you need to build. So there’s another side of this that I think is especially interesting from a marketing perspective. So let’s say a software platform launches integrated payments. Technically everything is working, the integration is live, merchants can sign up, sales has been trained, and everybody considers the launch a success, but then a few months later, adoption isn’t where you expect it to be.

Michelle: Yeah. And you know what? The immediate reaction might be like, “What do we need to change?”

Shannon: Mm-hmm. Yeah, exactly. So maybe merchants need another feature, or perhaps pricing could be the problem, or maybe there is something about the product that needs to change. But we’ve seen situations when you start digging into it and you realize that merchants don’t really understand why they should switch.

They already have a payments provider, and it works well enough, or so they think. And when they hear we now offer integrated payments, their reaction is basically, “Okay, but why do I care?”

Michelle: Yeah, and that is a completely different problem.

Shannon: Yeah. Right. Exactly. So, maybe the real value is that payments are connected to the software they already use every day, and they can eliminate manual work, simplify reconciliation, or manage their business all in one place. And if we haven’t made that clear, building another feature isn’t necessarily going to fix adoption.

Michelle: It’s true, and that’s where you have to figure out whether you’re looking at a product problem, an experience problem, or a communication problem.

Shannon: Mm-hmm. Yeah, exactly. And sometimes it can even be an enablement problem. So does sales know how to have that conversation? Are we explaining the value in terms of the merchant’s day-to-day business to show them how it’s truly applying? Or are we just telling them that payments are available? And that’s why I think customers aren’t adopting this.

It isn’t really a diagnosis, it’s just simply an observation.

Michelle: Yeah, that’s a really good way to put it because, you know, at the end of the day, you still have to figure out why.

Shannon: And that’s something that we truly spend a lot of time on here at Xplor Pay with our software partners. Because getting the integration live, it’s just one part of it, but then we’re working with partners on the launch, how they’re positioning payments, how sales is talking about it, what merchants are responding to, and where we’re seeing friction.

Michelle: Yeah, because if adoption isn’t where you want it to be, you need to understand where the breakdown is before you decide what to change

Shannon: Yeah, and sometimes that answer, like it can be product, but sometimes it could be marketing, sales, or the overall merchant experience, and that’s actually consistent with what we’re hearing from merchants more broadly. There was this interesting report that I was looking at recently. It was this 2026 insider report, and it found that 85% of users say their management software is more important to their business today than it was three to five years ago.

But when businesses talked about why they might switch software platforms, the issues weren’t simply about missing features. They included better solutions becoming available. Perhaps there were integration problems. And then the one that we hear most frequently is poor customer payments experience and poor customer service.

Michelle: That’s a really interesting statistic. And it does go back to what we were saying earlier, you know, that there are a whole bunch of very different problems: an integration issue, a poor customer service issue, and a missing capability aren’t going to have the same solution.

Shannon: And that’s why I think it’s so important to diagnose the problem before you invest in the answer. So sometimes you don’t need to build something new, but sometimes the bigger opportunity is just improving the experience around something that you’ve already built.

Michelle: That can be just as valuable to the customer.

Shannon: Yeah, and I think potentially to the business too. And that brings us to the bigger question is how do you actually decide what deserves investment? Here’s an example. Let’s say that I’m a software provider listening to this, and I have 50 customer requests and limited development resources, as a lot of companies do.

But sales is pushing for things, marketing’s pushing for things, and customer success is also pushing for things. How do I start sorting through all of that?

Michelle: Sure. So I would probably start by taking the requested solution off the table for a minute. So we have to step back and think, what is the customer actually trying to solve? I’d wanna understand how significant that problem is. How often does it happen? How much friction does it create?

How important is it to the customer’s business? And then what evidence do we have that extends beyond one conversation?

Shannon: And I would add one more. So what happens to the business if we solve it? Because something can absolutely be useful to customers and still not be where you should put your next batch of investment dollars.

Michelle: That’s true. I mean, ideally, you’re looking for that overlap between customer value and business value. Does it help retention? Does it help win new customers? Does it allow the platform to own more of the customer’s workflow? Does it create a revenue opportunity? Does it really differentiate the product?

Shannon: Mm-hmm. Yeah, and I think payments are a really good example of where those things can start to reinforce each other. Because you’re solving for something that’s part of the customer’s day-to-day workflow, but you’re also creating an opportunity for that software platform to generate revenue and strengthen the customer relationship.

So the question isn’t just, would customers use this? It’s also if we solve this well, what does it do for the business and what other capabilities could it enable?

Michelle: I think that’s a very important distinction. You’re looking for investments that create meaningful value on both sides.

Shannon: Yeah, and there’s also a marketing test that I like, and I know you do this too, is, can we clearly explain why this matters? Because if we can’t describe the customer problem and why solving it makes their life or business better in one to two sentences, I’d wanna understand it better before making a major investment.

Michelle: Sure, because, you know, if it’s difficult for us to articulate the value internally, it’s probably going to be difficult for sales to explain it and for customers to also understand it.

Shannon: Yeah, for sure. And sometimes, that can be a messaging problem, but sometimes it’s telling you that we aren’t actually clear enough about the problem that we’re trying to solve. So today, I really wanna end on this because, we’re both marketers, but I don’t think marketing’s role should begin when product says, “Okay, let’s build it. Go launch it.”

Michelle: Yeah, I agree. Definitely not.

Shannon: Mm-hmm. Yeah, marketing has access to a lot of customer information, like before we even get to that point, so we see which messages can resonate, which ones fall flat, and we hear what sales is struggling to explain.We see what customers engage with, we hear from partners, and we see which questions keep coming up.

But none of that replaces actually talking to customers.

Michelle: Right. It adds another perspective, and the more sales, marketing, customer service, and product are sharing what they’re hearing, the better the picture becomes.

Shannon: Yeah, because customer listening shouldn’t just produce a giant list of things that people have asked you to build. The goal is to understand your customers well enough to make better decisions about where you’re going to invest. Okay, so let’s make this practical. If I’m staring at a roadmap full of requests, what is the test?

Michelle: Yes. So I’d start with the problem. What is the customer actually trying to accomplish? Why does it matter? And what are they doing today instead?

Shannon: Mm-hmm. Yeah. So then I’d look for evidence, right? So were we hearing this from other customers, from our sales team, customer success, marketing? And does customer behavior back up what we’re hearing?

Michelle: Then there’s value. So if we solve it, does it create a meaningfully better outcome for the customer?

Shannon: And does that customer value translate into business value for the software platform? So essentially it’s problem, evidence, and value. It’s a pretty simple test, but it’s a lot better than a customer asked for it, so let’s build it.

Michelle: And sometimes you go through that process and you do end up building exactly what the customer asked for. But other times, you realize the better answer is improving the workflow, the experience, the onboarding, or even how you’re communicating the value.

Shannon: Mm-hmm. And then sometimes, you might decide that it’s not the problem you’re going to solve right now, and I think that’s an important part of this too, because good customer listening isn’t about saying yes more often. It’s about making better decisions about what deserves a yes.

Michelle: Making sure that when you do invest, you understand the problem you’re investing in.

Shannon: Mm-hmm. Yeah. So start with the problem, look for evidence, understand the value, and then decide what deserves to move. Well, Michelle, thanks again for joining me today. This was a really great episode.

Michelle: I really enjoyed it. Thank you for having me on. It was a lot of fun!

Shannon: Yeah, and thanks to everyone for listening to the Payments Pulse, and we’ll see you next time.

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