In product management, you're constantly balancing two forces: what’s best for the customer, and what’s best for the business. Ideally, the two align — but that’s not always the case. Sometimes what makes life easier for users adds friction for the company, and vice versa.
You’ve probably been there:
These decisions aren’t just about features. They’re about trade-offs. And making the right call requires context, empathy, and a bit of strategy.
Let’s break it down.
Glossary Note: If you're unfamiliar with any of the product terms or acronyms used in this post, there’s a help guide at the end of the article.
Customer-centric means designing your product with the user’s needs, pain points, and success as the north star — even if those efforts don’t immediately translate to ROI.
It’s about solving real problems for real users. That could include improving accessibility, speeding up page loads, simplifying user flows, or reducing the friction to convert. These aren’t always features that make it into a press release, but they’re often the things customers remember — and the reason they return.
Being customer-centric typically relies on qualitative inputs: feedback, interviews, support tickets, or user testing insights. These sources reveal what users are struggling with, what they value, and how they actually behave — not just what they click.
When it works well:
You build trust, loyalty, and long-term value. A product that feels effortless to use, one that customers recommend, is often the result of deeply customer-led thinking.
When it goes too far:
You can end up chasing edge cases or spending weeks polishing something that only helps 3% of your users. Endless iteration without clear strategic focus can stall progress.
Real-world example:
At a travel company I worked for, we tested reducing our enquiry form to just three fields: first name, last name, and email. It was simple. Frictionless. Submission rates skyrocketed — customers loved it.
But internally, it created new problems.
The Qualification Team had almost no information to work from. They didn’t know when or where the customer wanted to travel, or even how many people were going. The Marketing Team couldn’t segment the leads based on destination interest, so retargeting became less effective. And since we couldn’t call customers directly, conversion dropped. Many of the leads were just browsing and hard to qualify.
It was a great move for the customer — but not for the business. The balance tipped too far.
Company-centric decision-making focuses on driving revenue, improving internal efficiency, or aligning with leadership and investor goals. It’s about building what benefits the business — even if it’s not what the user would ask for.
That might include cost-saving tools, backend automation, or monetisation features like upsells, trials, or referral programs. It’s often driven by quantitative metrics like CAC, LTV, MRR, and churn — the numbers that keep a company afloat.
When it works well:
Company-centric choices can lead to stability, profitability, and better internal operations — which ultimately benefit users too. Not everything has to be visible to the end user to deliver value.
When it goes too far:
It can lead to growth hacks that erode trust, experiences that frustrate users, or features that look great on a pitch deck but do little for the people using the product.
Real-world example:
One day, a customer called support with an unusual request — she had bought a holiday as a gift for her son and wanted to share the itinerary, but without showing the cost. Our itineraries were costed by default, and this wasn’t a feature we had on the roadmap.
From a business perspective, this wasn’t a priority. But we still solved it — company-first.
Instead of spinning up a fully customisable gift-giving flow, we added a lightweight share button that generated a link to a stripped-down version of the itinerary (no prices, no legal footers). It wasn’t flashy, but it got the job done with minimal dev work.
The result? The customer was happy, and we didn’t overinvest in a niche scenario we never saw again. It was lean. Business-aware. Effective.
It’s easy to frame decisions as a tug-of-war between what the customer wants and what the business needs. But that binary mindset can be misleading. In reality, some of the best product decisions serve both sides — just not always in equal measure.
Take onboarding: improving it helps customers get value faster. But it also lowers support volume and improves conversion rates, which directly benefits the business.
Or think about self-serve help tools. They reduce costs, yes. But they also give users autonomy and speed — improving satisfaction. Even internal tools like content editors or sales dashboards can improve the customer experience by enabling faster updates, more tailored responses, or quicker turnaround times.
Here’s a real-world contrast:
At one point a well known TV provider, made it notoriously difficult to cancel subscriptions. Long phone queues, limited self-serve options — it was a deliberate choice. Speaking to other PMs in the industry, I learned this was a strategy: a painful cancellation flow reduces churn, or at least delays it. That’s company-centric prioritisation at work.
Meanwhile, an Online travel agent went the opposite route. Their cancellation and modification flows are lightning fast — even when the company makes no money on the transaction. Why? Because making it easy for customers means they need fewer support staff and can scale without exploding headcount. What looks like a customer-centric move is also a savvy business one.
The trick isn’t to always pick one side — it’s to understand the trade-off and make an intentional choice.
As I wrote in this guide to writing dev tickets, if you clearly define the different users (internal and external) and list their goals in priority order, you’ll start to see where there’s alignment — and where you need to consciously make a call.
And when you’re leaning toward the customer side, don’t forget the financial upside. Retaining a user is almost always cheaper than acquiring a new one. So even “small” UX improvements can add up.
You don’t need a perfect formula — but a rough calculation helps strengthen your case:
What’s the value of a retained customer?
Look at your average revenue per user (ARPU), or lifetime value (LTV). Even if it’s back-of-the-napkin, that gives you a benchmark.
What’s the cost of acquiring a new customer (CAC)?
If your marketing spend is high, retaining someone for “free” is a major win.
How many customers could this feature retain (or lose)?
Use past patterns, survey data, or support logs. Sometimes a feature that stops 3% of users from churning has a bigger ROI than a splashy new upsell feature.
What’s the timeline to see impact?
Can this feature help within a quarter? Or is it a long-tail bet?
What is the secondary value?
Customer happiness often leads to word-of-mouth marketing. That includes positive reviews, recommendations, social media shares, and community goodwill. These are difficult to quantify — but undeniably valuable.
Even rough numbers here help you avoid decisions based solely on “gut feel.” Over time, customer-centricity that drives retention and word-of-mouth marketing almost always outpaces short-term growth hacks.
So, how do you actually make the call between customer-first and business-first? Gut feel only gets you so far.
That’s where prioritisation frameworks help — by forcing you to ask the right questions and add structure to the decision-making process.
Here are a few simple but powerful ones:
What it is:
A classic 2x2 grid. You assess how much impact a feature will have and how much effort it will take.
How to use it:
Plot each item on the grid. Features with high impact, low effort go in the “quick wins” zone. High impact/high effort items might still be worth doing — but you’ll want to scope them carefully.
Customer vs company angle:
A customer-centric UX tweak might be low effort and medium impact — don’t let it get buried just because it’s not revenue-tied. Similarly, a massive backend feature might be high effort, but if it unlocks both speed and support savings, it’s worth pushing forward.
Pros:
Cons:
Best used in:
Miro (for collaboration), Jira (w/custom fields), or any whiteboard tool.
What it is:
A more nuanced take. Instead of effort, you map how much value a feature provides to the customer vs. to the business.
How to use it:
Create a quadrant with Customer Value on one axis and Business Value on the other. Plot features accordingly.
Great for visualising:
Pros:
Cons:
Best used in:
ProdPad (has a built-in version), Miro, Notion (custom templates)
What it is:
A scoring framework where each idea gets a numerical score.
How to use it:
You assign scores to:
Score = (Reach × Impact × Confidence) ÷ Effort
Customer vs company angle:
Reach and impact can be weighted to either customer satisfaction or business goals — but you’ll want to explicitly agree on which is the priority.
Pros:
Cons:
Best used in:
Aha!, Notion, Google Sheets
What it is:
A way to rank features by necessity, rather than score.
How to use it:
You assign each feature as:
Customer vs company angle:
Use MoSCoW to clarify trade-offs. A company-initiated request might be marked “Should,” while a known customer pain point becomes a “Must.”
Pros:
Cons:
Best used in:
Jira (tags or labels), Trello, or product spec docs
What it was:
A weighted scoring spreadsheet that assessed potential features across company goals and effort estimates, with input from multiple disciplines.
How it worked:
Define Key Business Outcomes:
Across the top of the spreadsheet, I listed metrics that mattered to the business, like:
Weight by Importance:
The CEO assigned a weighting to each of those metrics based on strategic importance at the time.
Add Effort Dimensions:
Score Each Feature Row:
Each potential feature was scored against all metrics. The spreadsheet applied weightings and factored in effort to calculate a final score.
Rank by Priority:
The higher the score, the more valuable (and feasible) the feature appeared to be.
What made it great:
Limitations:
🛠️ Tool used: Good old Google Sheets
Here’s a simple way to think about when each of these might help:
| Framework | Best For | Strengths | Watch Outs |
|---|---|---|---|
| Impact vs Effort | Quick triage of a backlog | Visual, fast to apply | Oversimplifies nuance |
| Customer Value vs Business Value | Balancing competing priorities | Helps align two perspectives | Scoring subjectivity |
| Custom Scoring System | Complex orgs with lots of stakeholders | Tailored, structured, clear decision audit | Maintenance overhead |
| Gut Check with Stakeholders | Early-stage teams or startups | Fast, low-cost, collaborative | Can be biased or reactive |
| Hybrid Systems | Scaling teams with some process maturity | Mix of structure + flexibility | Needs clear ownership to keep clean |
👉 None of these are perfect on their own — but used with care, they help turn subjective conversations into more grounded ones.
🧠 Coming soon: We’re planning a full blog exploring prioritisation frameworks, with templates and examples. You’ll be able to see how to actually score, run team sessions, and avoid the common traps. (We’ll link it here when it’s live!)
Balancing customer value and company value isn’t just a prioritisation exercise — it’s a communication challenge.
Different stakeholders will see different things as “urgent,” and you’ll often need to justify why something that seems “easy” or “obvious” for the user may not be what the business needs — or vice versa.
Here are three real-world-style scenarios and how to navigate them:
The Ask:
Customer support is flooded with complaints about how difficult it is to cancel a subscription. They want to implement a one-click cancel feature. But Finance argues that churn will spike and revenue will take a hit.
The Tradeoff:
Customer trust and long-term brand reputation vs. short-term revenue retention.
How to Communicate It:
Phrase it like:
“While churn might increase short-term, the reputational boost and reduction in support tickets could offset that. We can also cap exposure by rolling out to 10% of users first and measuring.”
The Ask:
Sales needs more data to qualify leads efficiently — date of travel, destination, number of travellers, budget, etc. But Marketing and Product argue that a long form kills conversions and results in fewer leads.
The Tradeoff:
More leads vs. better-qualified leads.
How to Communicate It:
Phrase it like:
“If shortening the form drops cost per qualified lead by even 15%, that’s a win for both teams. Let’s test a version with minimal fields and see how it performs.”
The Ask:
Leadership wants new monetisation features prioritised, but your devs are asking to improve technical performance, accessibility, and loading speeds — all things users won’t “see,” but will feel.
The Tradeoff:
Short-term revenue potential vs. long-term customer experience and retention.
How to Communicate It:
Phrase it like:
“This isn’t just cleanup. Improving site speed could lift conversion by 5–10%, and it’s cheaper to do now than to retrofit it later.”
Make these tradeoffs visual. A simple “customer value vs business value” matrix can go a long way in showing why a decision was made. And whenever you say “no” to one side, show them what they’re getting instead — or what’s needed to say yes in the future.
Customer-centric and company-centric aren’t opposing forces — they’re two ends of the same lever. The best product decisions don’t choose one instead of the other. They find ways to support both.
That doesn’t mean every feature has to do everything. It means learning to articulate tradeoffs, test assumptions, and align work with both value and values.
Sometimes the customer wins because it builds trust and loyalty.
Sometimes the business wins because the lights need to stay on.
And sometimes, if you’re really intentional, they both win.
That’s the kind of product thinking that earns respect from your stakeholders, your team — and your users.
Here’s a quick glossary of common product acronyms and concepts used in this article:
CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost):
How much it costs your business to acquire a new customer, including marketing, sales, and onboarding costs.
LTV (Lifetime Value):
The total revenue you expect to earn from a customer over the entire period of their relationship with your company.
MRR (Monthly Recurring Revenue):
The predictable revenue your company earns each month from subscriptions or repeat customers.
Churn:
The percentage of customers who stop using your product or service over a given period.
KPI (Key Performance Indicator):
A measurable value that indicates how effectively a company is achieving key business objectives.
MVP (Minimum Viable Product):
A version of a product with just enough features to be usable by early adopters, who can then provide feedback for future development.
NPS (Net Promoter Score):
A customer satisfaction metric based on how likely customers are to recommend your product.