In a recent LinkedIn post, Janna Bastow explores a common paradox in product development: the disconnect between teams identifying as “customer-centric” and the reality of shipping products their users haven’t requested. Bastow, a prominent voice in product management, highlights a critical issue that many product teams face.
As Janna Bastow notes:
“I have never met a product team that didn’t call itself customer-centric. I’ve met plenty shipping things their customers never asked for.”
Bastow argues that this gap is not typically born of arrogance, but rather from a systemic failure to effectively process and act upon customer feedback. She points out that while teams may possess a wealth of feedback, it often resides in disparate systems, making it difficult to synthesize and utilize.
The Challenge of Scattered Feedback
Bastow elaborates on the logistical hurdles product teams encounter when trying to remain genuinely customer-centric. The core problem, she suggests, lies in the fragmentation of customer insights.
“The gap isn’t arrogance. Most of these teams are sitting on tonnes of feedback; it’s just scattered across six systems and reading it is nobody’s job.”
This scattering of data means that even with good intentions, the actionable insights are buried, and there’s no dedicated process to unearth them. Bastow uses the analogy of her own knitting project to illustrate the iterative and sometimes messy process of creation, implying that product development requires a similar, focused approach to feedback.
Measuring True Customer Centricity
To gauge the effectiveness of a product team’s customer focus, Bastow poses a direct question, prompting reflection on tangible actions taken based on recent customer input.
“When did your team last change a roadmap item because of something a customer said that week?”
This question serves as a litmus test, moving beyond self-proclaimed labels to assess the practical application of customer feedback in strategic decision-making. According to Bastow, a team’s ability to answer this question affirmatively, with recent and specific examples, is a strong indicator of genuine customer centricity. She implies that the lack of such examples points to a significant gap between aspiration and execution in many product organizations.
The Path Forward: Centralizing and Actioning Insights
While Bastow’s post doesn’t delve into prescriptive solutions, her analysis clearly points towards the need for better systems and processes for feedback management. The implication is that product teams must not only collect feedback but also establish clear ownership and workflows for reviewing, analyzing, and integrating that feedback into their development cycles. By centralizing scattered information and making the analysis of customer input a defined responsibility, teams can begin to close the gap between calling themselves customer-centric and truly acting in their customers’ best interests.
📝 About This Content
This article is based on insights shared by Janna Bastow on LinkedIn.
📅 Originally posted on July 15, 2026 | View original post on LinkedIn →