[00:00:00] Matt Deunch: Welcome to Mistaken Identity, a podcast about unexpected lessons for building great products that customers love.

[00:00:06] I'm Matt Duench. Today I'll interview Trisha Price, Chief Product Officer at Pendo. She'll talk about the importance of constant experimentation and putting your product at the center of everything you do. Tune in to hear Trisha describe how to act smart within today's hype cycle, especially when it comes to AI, today, on Mistaken Identity.

[00:00:26] Today's episode of Mistaken Identity is brought to you by Okta. We do identity so you can do you. Find us at okta.com. 

[00:00:42] Trisha Price: Hi Matt. Thanks for having me today. Hi.

[00:00:44] Matt Deunch: To get started, why don't we let our listeners know a little bit more about what you do at Pendo and what it means to be a chief product officer?

[00:00:52] Trisha Price: At Pendo, we really help make software experiences better and as you know, Matt, pretty much every company today is a software company. And digital has really taken over how we do everything in our lives, whether it's work or home life. And so Pendo's mission is really to help make those experiences better, uh, to give, uh, product managers and others, the tools they need to really perfect those user experiences. To understand how people utilize their software, uh, and, and make 'em better. And, uh, my role at Pendo, as you said, is the Chief Product Officer, which is pretty fun because as the Chief Product Officer at Pendo, I get to create product for other product people, which is a really fun position to be in.

[00:01:39] Matt Deunch: It's very meta. Creating product for product people. I love it. That's awesome. And you, you hit it. That's the name of the game, right? Is creating amazing experiences that customers love. Uh, and I really think that, you know, that's, that's what it comes down to with, with being in product. But maybe tell us a little around how you got into your role. If we do a bit of a historical.

[00:01:57] Trisha Price: Yeah, sure. So, um, I was a engineer right outta college and I, um, you know, I've spent almost all of my CRE career building products. Um, before I came to Pendo, I was the Chief Product Officer at Encino, which is a cloud banking application. And, um, I was there from fairly early days all the way post I P O and as I started to think about what was next for me, I was so attracted to Pendo, um, sort of for that meta that you just talked about, like having the ability to create the tools that I had always wished I had over my 20 plus year career of building products.

[00:02:34] Um, I felt, you know, I was flying blind a lot of the time, not really understanding how my users were utilizing the products. Where should I invest? Right. As a, as a product leader, as a C P O, you're constantly thinking about the outcomes you're trying to drive, and being able to be a part of building those tools to help drive those business outcomes was pretty exciting to me.

[00:02:56] In addition, there's been such a focus on the product led movement and product led growth, and Pendo is such an important part of that movement that that was really attractive to me. So as I was looking for my next opportunity to learn and grow, And make a difference on the product community. This just felt like a great place to land.

[00:03:15] Matt Deunch: Oh, that's awesome. And you hit on something there, I think that's top of mind for a lot of product folks these days. And that's product led growth, right? Especially if you're a SaaS company. I think not only is it a new trend, I just think that if you are an application and you happen to be a SaaS application, it's really about product led growth. That's how you drive, uh, you know, users and drive a lot of retention and those amazing experiences that you talked about as well. But, what to you as you define it, what does being product led, actually, what does it mean?

[00:03:43] Trisha Price: To me, I talk a lot about product led and product led, to me, product led growth is just a subset of product led, right? Because a lot of times when we think about product led growth, we think about the buying experience. We think about free products, and we think about free to paid. And, and when I think about product led is putting your product at the center of.

[00:04:01] Everything you do, not just the buying experience, right? It's when we get help, when we're trying to do something, being able to do that within our product, right? When you think about your users and your customers journeys I think traditionally we thought about when they logged in and the activity and workflow they were trying to do, and now it's like, no, from the time they search for your product to how they try your product, to how they buy your product, to how they renew, to how they use, how they get help. Um, and really thinking about that holistic journey. And so that's how I think about product led. And I think that the great thing about the product led movement is you, you mentioned user experience and if you're going to have assisted buying experiences and trial experiences, you really have to nail that new user experience and the user experience overall. And that doesn't just benefit your free users or your new user onboarding. It benefits everybody in your community. And I think with, with the whole digital focus and transformation that we've seen over the last few years, users just don't have a lot of patience for friction anymore. None of us do. And so the product-led movement is a nice way for all of us to continue to measure and monitor that, uh, whole experience and continue to, to remove some of that friction.

[00:05:27] Matt Deunch: You hit on journey, and I think that's such an important part of it as well, is that the experience with your end user, with your customer starts at registration. It starts at that first touch point at registration. So,you talked about friction, and that's really important point as well, I think, especially at the registration process, because if there's a lot of friction at that account creation or registration process, it's really difficult for that user to have a positive experience immediately out the gate with, uh, with your brand. What are some things do you feel that make for a really great customer experience within an application itself?

[00:06:02] Trisha Price: First it's being intuitive. Right. It, it's understanding your user's mental model and what are they trying to do. And making it easy for them to do it. Like people don't wanna hunt and peck. They don't wanna have to go read a how to doc, to figure out how to do something. So it has to be natural and it has to be intuitive. Um, which means constant measurement and constant experimentation to achieve your outcomes. You know, you mentioned registrations a few minutes ago, right? That's one example. Um, it could be completing a workflow within your product post registration, but whatever it is that you're trying to optimize for, you need to know what your outcome is and have just constant improvement and constant experimentation to achieve that outcome. And if you're trying to get it down in steps or higher completion rates or higher conversion rates. Whatever that outcome is, it's just relentless focus on that, that number or that outcome that you're trying to achieve and experimentation to get there because it, it's the little things that matter in that experience, um, to to, to remove that friction.

[00:07:08] Matt Deunch: And are you seeing any trends around this within the industry, within peers or otherwise in terms of how you keep that customer experience at the center?

[00:07:18] Trisha Price: Oh, I, I definitely think so. I think everybody is more focused on it now than they ever were. You know, I think if, if you look back, B2C companies have been highly focused on this for quite some time, um, and have done some better than others, but most of them are really good job of. Of creating this culture of user experience at the center of everything they do and experimentation and measurement. But I think when you go to B2B companies or you even go to non-software companies who are creating digital experiences or digital channels for their customers, um, those, this might be a little newer of a muscle for those people. And this product-led movement and the user experience is something that is definitely growing in focus and maturity in those places, and they're almost sort of catching up in focus and maturity to, to some of the B2 C experiences that we've seen for some time.

[00:08:17] Matt Deunch: Yeah, I, I'd love and I love that, I'd love to chat a little more around your experience as well and how you've seen product management change across what's being required to build great products at a tech company like Encino that you mentioned in your past, um, versus maybe a financial services company like Primas Financial. Have you seen changes in, in sort of the approach there over time?

[00:08:37] Trisha Price: I, I sure have. You know, I think there's, there's a couple things. One, product management as a whole. One of the biggest things I've seen, and, and I talked about this a little bit with your outcomes. It used to be, show me your roadmap. And I'm holding you accountable to shipping your roadmap and success for a product manager or success for a product leader was all about did you ship what you said you were going to do and like do you have a good roadmap and did you ship against it?

[00:09:07] And. You know, there might have been some like mps and like do people like you and your product involved in there? But it felt like product was fairly separated from the true business outcomes, like revenue growth, right? Or churn or retention. Um, and now it feels like product leaders are much more accountable to being business leaders and having a seat at the table as a business leader.

[00:09:30] And now the craft of product management is. So much more focused on the market or the outcome, or what are you trying to achieve? Hey, I'm trying to help get my product into a new portion of the market, or I'm trying to increase retention in this part of the market that I'm already in. And yes, you have to ship features to do that, obviously, and you need a roadmap against it. And that part hasn't changed in the details of the craft, but it's much more, much more focused, I feel, in terms of business outcomes. And that's a trend. I think that's, you know, you just see more and more.

[00:10:02] Matt Deunch: It's that roadmap or that path to achieving your vision, um, and driving innovation. So, What are your thoughts on how folks can really balance innovation and the customer experience at the same time? Cause a lot of times it's really where you put your efforts and your focus, but do you have thoughts on where and how folks might be able to balance innovation with that user experience?

[00:10:20] Trisha Price: I mean, to me, I think they're one and the same. Right. Like I, if, if I'm, like, for me right now I'm working on like everybody else, some AI innovations and launching some new modules and products that are really AI based. It's like, okay, do I just check a box and say, oh, I innovated, I've got a new AI product. Or if I'm really saying no, what I'm trying to drive is an outcome. I'm trying to get more value to my customer base. So something's automated that wasn't automated, or they're getting an insight that they weren't getting before. I can't do that without user experience being at the center of it. Because, because otherwise they're not gonna get the value that you're, you're aiming for. Right. And so for me, like for me, my user experience team, my research and design teams are critical. When I'm thinking about new innovations in new product launches, like they are at the center of the research and the design teams, yes, product is obviously understanding the market and the requirements, but the how and what that experience will look like is, is equally important to me when we're innovating.

[00:11:23] Matt Deunch: I think you're absolutely right. They're intrinsically linked, right? It's, it's, it's around how you drive innovation for your customer. And I love that we've got a couple minutes into the podcast already and, and we've mentioned Ai. That's, that's perfect. So that's one check mark for the, the, uh, business buzzword bingo, uh, card there for folks kkeeping track at home. But, uh, Even if thinking about, you know, uh, balancing this, because, I mean, the user experience is really oftentimes perceived as a balancing act between security and, like you mentioned, friction. It's, it's really this balancing point between security and the experience. Security obviously is meant to put controls in place to validate you are who you say you are, or make sure that you have the right, you know, credentials to access this application. Um, and sometimes if it's, if there's too much friction in that process, right?

[00:12:11] If we're constantly challenging the user at login and subsequent login, et cetera, with an MFA challenge and you know, pick out all of the cats wearing the hats in this capture challenge, uh, you know, that that does it at the detriment a lot of times of the user experience. So, do you have any thoughts on, on how folks can really think about that balance of delivering security, without compromising the user experience and consequently delivering a great user experience without compromising security? I.

[00:12:38] Trisha Price: To me, whether your B2C or B2B or whatever digital product or channel you're trying to build for your customer's, trust is at the center. If, if customers can't trust you and can't trust your products, you're done. It doesn't matter what value you offer. You, you can't lose their trust. And so security has to be at the center of everything that you do. And that's how we certainly think about it at Pendo. And so I think you can balance the two of those, right? I think there's been. Um, a lot of advance advancements with single sign-on and other tools. And, you know, you mentioned mfa, like there's multiple ways you can go about MFA and Yeah. Does MFA create one more step in the process and a little bit of friction? Yes. But at the same time, if, if customers can't trust that they can do business with you and that their data, um, is, is to be protected. They're also not gonna do business with you no matter what value you deliver. And so, you know, finding that special intersection of the two is all of our jobs when we create digital experiences.

[00:13:41] Matt Deunch: And thinking about how you're doing that at Pendo, right, with with creating trust, are there things that you're thinking about from how you're building those experiences at Pendo with how you're actually trying to establish trust with your customers? Anything that you know, folks could kind of think about or glean from what you're doing at Pendo?

[00:13:57] Trisha Price: Yeah, I mean, I think there's a couple things. One is, you know, really limiting p i i and collection of p i I, except when you really need it, right? Like, don't capture, you know, important sensitive information that you don't need, which might be a completely different approach. Like if it's nonsensitive information, you might wanna collect everything you might ever need. Right. Because you don't always know when you're a data company, an analytics company, which we are, you don't know what you're gonna need now later. But when it comes to sensitive p i I type information, I think you really, you know, flip the way you think about that and collect only the minimum that you need. So, so for us, that's one piece of the puzzle in, in how we think about it. Um, And, and so that's one layer of protection for sure. AI's another example, right? Like now, You know, with all of the, the new large language models and all of the tools that are out there now, you're gonna have to share that information with those tools as well in order for your user base and customer base to take advantage of your new AI features.

[00:15:00] How do you think about that? How do you think about. What information is reasonable to share with those tools? Where do you need opt-ins? And we spend a lot of time thinking about that as a group cross-functionally with our ciso, our product team, our, our, our legal team, and really trying to make sure we're doing the right things for our customers and providing the value and balancing that with trust and security.

[00:15:23] Matt Deunch: Yeah, and, and what I love about that too, I think I like, that's such a, a great resonant point too. One of the things I think you said that really resonated with me is around pi. I and only collecting, you know, the, the information or the data or the insights from the customer that you're gonna use. And also letting them know, not only enabling them to consent that they could use, you could use that data, but also letting them know how that data's going to be used.

[00:15:45] When it comes to collecting and incorporating those identity level insights or information about your customer into your product roadmap, do you have thoughts on how that influences your development cycle or how folks can use that to better build an experience within their SaaS application, leveraging that data?

[00:16:01] Uh

[00:16:02] Trisha Price: Yeah, I don't, I don't know that we think about it as its own thing. Do you know what I mean? It's not like we're sitting there going like, Hey, when we think about our roadmap, which pieces of this is security and which pieces of this is. Minimizing or maximizing data collection. I think for us, we almost, we try to always start outside in versus inside out, right?

[00:16:21] And it's like, what is the customer problem we're trying to solve? What is the customer pain? What is the job to be done? How are we gonna deliver value for our customers so that they love this feature and they use it? And then you go into, okay, Well then how am I gonna deliver this in a safe way? How am I gonna deliver this in a secure way?

[00:16:41] How am I going to collect the information I need to solve this problem now and down the line while at the same time, um, not introducing risk where we don't need to?

[00:16:51] Matt Deunch: You know, for not only every company but tech companies specifically, I think a lot of time we get really excited about our own technology, so much so that we start to either speak ac in acronyms out to the market and to our customers instead of understanding what it is, what, what is the challenge or the problem that they're trying to solve.

[00:17:09] And then pairing, you know, our technology as the solution to that problem. Um, it's a very pragmatic way of thinking. There's actually in, in the theme of pragmatic. There was a, a former product leader, a colleague of mine that I worked with, he used to carry around a little coffee mug that said, your opinion, although interesting, is irrelevant and meaning you, you need to be thinking about what your customer thinks.

[00:17:29] It doesn't matter what I think or what the salespeople think or what we in engineering think or product think, it only matters what the customer thinks about that experience or their product experience, and it was really funny. Oftentimes he would carry that mug around. And, you know, someone would come up to him and ask him for a specific new feature or a requirement, and he would hold the cup and kind of take a sip of his coffee and say, oh yeah, tell me more about that feature.

[00:17:53] What's the, uh, what's the customer think about that? And, you know, the, the person would kind of say, what? No, like, it's, it's just something I think we need to develop. So I love that you said the, the outside in versus inside. Oh. Cause I think that's such a critical point.

[00:18:05] Trisha Price: And Matt, you know, we were talking about AI and the buzz a little bit so far, but we haven't dove into it much yet. I think like, I don't know about you, but I'm seeing very, a lot of varying approaches since ChatGPT came out around, just shipping to say you shipped something, right, kind of to your mug point. Right. Or people who have really put thought into solving real customer pain and delivering value and going outside in. And I think when it comes to features, we can always run that risk of inside out. But I think when you're rushing and there's a hype cycle like there is right now with ai, It's even easier to fall into that inside out trap of like, Hey, I wanna keep up with, with everybody in the industry and I wanna keep up with the hype cycle and say, I did something. And in that case, you typically go inside out because it takes time to go outside in you. You ask me about innovation versus user experience to go outside in when you innovate. And, and, and be able to get feedback about the pain you're solving. But at the same time, we're not creating faster horses. We're creating a car like that does take time. Um, and so to me, you know, I think again, back to that innovation and user experience and the outside in piece kind of all coming together there.

[00:19:25] Matt Deunch: It's such a good point and I think it comes down to the utility it provides, right? It's not a, just a matter of creating a new copilot because you can, because the models exist and that it would be a cool thing and maybe it is a cool thing, but it actually has to provide utility, and there's a lot of, uh, you know, even messaging applications that have implemented co-pilots now where you have your own AI assistant inside of the messaging application.

[00:19:48] I don't know if you've played around with any of those, but those AI copilots don't really provide a lot of utility. You'll ask it a question and it'll kind of like, It doesn't respond with, with anything like meaningful. It's basically just responding given the con in the context that you've given it. So, yeah, I think, uh, I am, I'm in full agreement with you that it's, it's not AI for the sake of AI or really tech for the sake of tech. It's, it's the focus of what is the outcome that that's driving. Again, you know, from an outside in perspective for that customer, for the end user of the user itself.

[00:20:18] Trisha Price: Yeah, and same for security, right? It's like you don't look at your roadmap just for the sake of a security feature. You look at your roadmap for the value you're delivering to your customer, and you make sure you do it in a safe, trusted, secure way.

[00:20:32] Matt Deunch: Yeah, I mean, don't get me wrong. With AI like and LLMs and chat gpt and everything that's out there, it's a hugely disruptive technology and I think it's something that will absolutely change, you know, the way that we think about how we approach and interact with applications, but, You know, it's, it's beyond being a disruptor, I think it's something that you need to think about is, is just that utility it provides. But staying on that point of disruption for a second, I'd love your thoughts on, do you think it's more important to be a disruptor, like in a large company or a smaller company or, or who should be more of a disruptor in that case? Uh,

[00:21:06] Trisha Price: You know, I'm gonna answer this in a couple parts, which is first, I think is like when AI comes out, which is kind of, a disruptor, to your point. I mean, right. It, it certainly has been over the last six months. Um, who has an advantage, sort of the big company and, and it's all relative, who you call a big company versus a small company, probably where you work.

[00:21:28] Um, but I do think that incumbents have an advantage because they have the data and they have the trust. But they have to move fast. When you're innovating and you're trying to make sure you deliver value like we were talking about earlier, and not just innovate for the sake of innovating and not just disrupt to say you disrupted, you don't disrupt because you have an announcement or a product announcement. You disrupt because people adopt and use your product and you change the way they do something, whether it's in their personal life or at work, right? You significantly can change, um, how they operated or the tools that they had or their ability to operate. And so, you know, that's what disruption's all about, which means you have to actually deliver value. I believe especially with, you know, sort of the advancements in AI and incumbents have an advantage because they have the data and it's really hard to build good AI and without the data.

[00:22:21] Matt Deunch: Yeah.

[00:22:22] Trisha Price: Um, The bigger you are, the harder it is to stay nimble. The harder it is to stop your roadmap, the more product commitments you have and customer commitments you have, and it's harder to just move sort of the ship from one way to the other. And so you gotta be careful. And sometimes that requires creativity about innovation teams or pulling people off to do something. It requires leadership, um, to do the hardest thing. The hardest thing, which is to say no to things, right? It's to, to stop and say this super valuable thing I loved and was doing, I am going to stop doing so that I can take advantage of this new, you know, disruption in the industry and, and innovate and take some risk generally, and that's really hard to do.

[00:23:07] Matt Deunch: Yeah, and there's a theme I think in what you're saying there too, around getting to market fast, right? Especially within, I think the SaaS industry in general. It's, it's really, there's this concept of like building versus buying, right? Do I, because I'm a smaller company, I'm a SaaS company. I love building things, so I feel like I need to build everything. But to some point, you know, it becomes too much to manage whether you're building an identity system or you're building, you know, a front end CMS or whatever you happen to be building as not your core product. And that's kind of the point is it takes you away from that innovation because your small teams are getting pulled off into things that don't make sense, but we're trying to build it because we're builders and we want to build things. Do you have thoughts on, or maybe even any stories on, this concept of like build versus buy.

[00:23:52] Trisha Price: I mean, I'm a big fan of, of buy partner, um, and, and lean on people for what they're good at. Right, and making sure your engineering teams are focused on delivering customer value and doing what you're really good at because there's always more work to be done. Integrations is a good one, right? We all built, you know, point to point integrations and now there's lots of IPAs providers out there that can help us scale integrations. I think that's a good example. I think actually Chat GPT and the large language models, we actually, a real story for us at Pendo, we actually built our own l l m to take, um, one of our features. We, we have in app nps and there's verbatims, right? And. I, most people, including me, have a group of people who every single month or every quarter, go look at all of those verbatims and then they write up an analysis of the promoters and the detractors and help me look at my product and think about where I should be investing to, to make improvements.

[00:24:54] And we, and, and we have the same thing on our feedback product, which is where we, you take enhancement requests, right? And the same thing, like what are the themes? What are you seeing? So we actually wrote our, our own large language models to do that. And right as we are releasing it, chat, G B T comes out and you're like, which one do you do?

[00:25:13] Right? And so it's interesting. There are differences in what we can do. Um, on our own versus what we can do with ache, BT, and there's pluses and minuses and there's probably certain parts of the market where one makes a lot of sense for us and the other doesn't. But like you got, you can't just keep the train running. You've gotta stop up and pause and go. This is a real moment in time to look ourselves in the mirror and not just have a sunk cost fallacy, but really evaluate which tool makes more sense. Given the market, and would we have done something different had we known? Maybe, maybe not. Right? Um, and same thing for integrations. Like just because you build a Salesforce integration or a HubSpot integration, you know, doesn't mean that now that these iPASS vendors are out there, you don't reevaluate and say, Hey, now it's time to move to one of them.

[00:25:59] Matt Deunch: I think oftentimes when we're building new products and new experiences, a lot of times we want to, you know, we wanna get to, you know, we want to get to market quickly, we wanna get to market fast, we want to have an mvp. How do you know if, I guess, a ...First, you're building the right thing. And what do you put into an MVP to know if you're actually launching something of value?

[00:26:23] Trisha Price: I struggle with MVPs a lot, what does that mean? Like is it a minimum lovable product? Is it a minimum sellable product? What does viable mean? So to me, it's getting very specific with outcomes and we tend to write down the outcomes we expect. So if this is early stage, it's. X number of design partners and that the design partners want to continue. And then once you get into more of a beta mode, it's like, this is how many subscribers we want to beta, but this is how often we want them to be continuing to use the product, not just that it's beta. And then at some point you need to ensure that they're getting the value, not just that they're using it, but that they're getting the value that they would want out of it to pay for it.

[00:27:04] Right? Whether they're paying now or, or after you come out of beta, you're gonna start charging. And so you start to think about product market fit scores and how do you measure product market fit scores and put real outcomes in there. Like, we expect this percentage of our user base to buy this product. We expect this percentage of our user base to use it and not just use it once, but be using it on a daily basis. Or a weekly basis and coming back and second week retention for this new product. So to me, it's getting very specific about the measurements around product market fit versus just saying, as long as I deliver these seven features, I've done an mvp.

[00:27:40] Matt Deunch: And I love that too cuz I think I, I've always found that MVP is even in the context of a minimum viable product is, is really monolithic, right? It's you're kind of working towards this thing that you're trying to launch in a minimum capacity because you, you're trying to, you're trying to test it. But something you said there about the outcomes and even just this concept of testing is I think what in SaaS and today and sort of this, this concept of B2B and digital applications is impactful experiments and it's having really great outcomes as you kind of mentioned. Um, would love to hear if you can think of any, if there's a really impactful experiment that you can think of that you've run recently. Um, you know, what are some things that you learned? What, what inspired you to conduct the experiment in the first place?

[00:28:25] Trisha Price: I mean one that is on top of mind cuz I just looked at it today with my team, um, was around some changes to our pricing transparency on our website. So you were talking about registrations. And we were talking about our PLG experience and being able for our, our buyer's journey to make sure they understand what's in each of our plans, what they cost, and how to choose the right plan for them. And we just recently ran an experiment on multiple different sort of pricing plan optionality, um, designs. And we talked about sort of sliders versus ads, and how people reacted to each of those different experiments. And which one helped get our customers most comfortable, that they understood what they were buying and that they were getting the right plan for them. And so that's a place that we've recently run some experiments to try to perfect that experience.

[00:29:20] Matt Deunch: Sometimes it can be just as simple as that, right? Do I add a slider here? Do I add a checkbox here? It doesn't have to be a, you know, a massively intensive experiment. It could be something where as long as you got, I think, good exit criteria or good outcomes that you're trying to measure against, uh, it can be a very simple experiment. It's something that could end up being very impactful.

[00:29:40] Trisha Price: It can. Yeah. And and sometimes it's much bigger, right? Sometimes it's like, how do we have discoverability of this feature and is it moving it in your navigation? Right. Is it just putting an in-app message or an in-app guide up to make sure that the right segments of your users know about it? Um, is it around enablement to your sales team or your sales engineering team so that they know how to talk about it, um, in the sales process and your customer success team? Like, so there's lots of different ways that you can run experiments to your, out to, to get your outcomes beyond not only. Making changes to your product and doing sort of the like AB testing experimentation we're used to.

[00:30:21] Matt Deunch: I think from the perspective of some of the, the interactions that I've had recently with customers is they're looking at, when we think about the digital experience, and they're looking across all of the digital touch points that they have with their customers. In some cases it can be dozens, some cases, hundreds of applications, or at least digital touchpoints for their customers. What, what are some ways that. You that you might think about or that maybe our listeners could think about and how they streamline the customer experience across all of those digital touch points?

[00:30:52] Trisha Price: Yeah, well, I mean, I think you need tools to, to monitor that usage. Of course. I think that, cuz that's what we do at Pendo. So maybe I'm a little bit biased here, Matt. Um, but, but for us, you know, how we do this using our own tool, um, using what I call Pendo on Pendo, um, is, you know. One, you can certainly just do very, very simple metrics like understanding what are your least used and highest used features, right? And that's one part you can certainly look at at Pass and funnels, um, and understand how people are navigating through your product and where they're getting stuck and have the, the sophisticated analytics to tell you that piece, right? Um, but then you can take it. In a different angle, right? Which is not just the technical aspect of like, what did the user do? Where did they click and where did they get stuck? But. But what were they trying to achieve? Like what was the workflow they were trying to do? Did they complete it? How long did they complete it? How can you compare one of your user's journey with another and say, why does it only take this person this amount of time?

[00:32:01] And it takes these people this amount of time and you know, whether that's clicks or amount of time to complete. And what, what, how do I help the people who are taking twice as long? Do it more effectively, like the people who are doing it really quickly, or man, I thought this workflow would only take X amount of seconds or minutes to complete and it's taking much longer.

[00:32:23] And so it's like, to me, it's not just looking at those click pass and stuck, you know, where do people fall off, but it's workflow completion time, and having that kind of more personal insight around what the person was trying to achieve and, and really focusing on that and making that better. That's another place you can do experimentation once you understand, okay, 50% of my users can do it in this amount of time. Well, I want 75, I want a hundred percent of my users to do it this way. More effective way. Right. Um, and so I, I, I think that's how I, I think a lot about the user's journey and measurement of it and, and perfection.

[00:33:00] Matt Deunch: And I think that's such a, a great point too, is I think it's, the measurement of multiple different touch points as well. Cuz I think of that in the context of even at Okta and how we think about identity and the journey, your digital journey of your customer as they interact with your brand. And some of the things that we're measuring as, as failed signups or, you know, um, fraudulent registrations, right? Where you have a bot effectively an automated attack coming in and registering fake accounts. That has an operational cost in the business. How long is someone taking to authenticate, right? That it has an impact? Whether you use a social login or a password and a username, like all of that impacts the customer experience. Thinking about passkey technology and how it's making it not only secure, but also a lot faster for you to log in. Um, how long is my password taking to reset? Uh, that's a big thing and it's a huge support cost for folks too. Um, if anyone here listening has ever had to reset a password, I'm sure it's nobody listening.

[00:34:01] Trisha Price: I've never had Matt have never had to reset a password before.

[00:34:05] Matt Deunch: And not even in like the last hour. So it's, uh, it's definitely something I think things are thinking like folks are thinking about as you're building.

[00:34:12] It becomes hugely important. And like you mentioned, even with Pendo, a lot of the, the analytics that you're getting from those interactions are hugely valuable for improving the customer experience, right? Because if you don't measure it, like what measures, what gets measured, gets done, right? And if you can't see it, you can't, you can't actually do anything about it. So I think it's so important to have those metrics on, uh, understanding the customer experience.

[00:34:34] Trisha Price: And I love your point about passwords. Um, to me, when you were asking me about my point of view on product led and I was talking about how it's very easy for product managers, I think, especially in b2b to focus on the workflows or the user journeys, and they don't think about the user journeys as also the registration and the buying and the password and the logging in. They tend to think about it as, you know, whatever task they were building or trying to complete. The user doesn't care, right? Your users, it's the whole thing. It's their experience with you.

[00:35:07] Matt Deunch: Absolutely. Absolutely. How have you thought about how you, you know, collect or interact with that data over time or that user? Have you thought, what ways are you thinking about making it easier for your customers to interact with Pendo?

[00:35:20] Trisha Price: So a couple things there in terms of, of collection of data, um, and, and Pendo. Segmentation is key in Pendo. And so what I mean by that is, Segmentation of it could be job role, but a lot of times it's how they used your product. Meaning this is the first time they logged in and the first time people log into your product, they behave like this or they get stuck here. Um, versus, the first time they ever used this feature versus people who are, um, expert users in your product and what are they saying? And like even we were talking about NPS and, and enhancement requests earlier, that that segmentation of what are people saying and how do they feel about your product and how do they use your product based on, um, how new they are, how experienced they are, maybe their company, is been a long time, um, customer, but they're new to the user experience. And what does that look like? Which might be different than the whole company just onboarding. And so for us at Pendo, we think a lot about, um, personalization of experiences based on that segmentation. Um, and so earlier, you know, Matt, you were asking me about p i I, and that was my point, is like you can collect a lot of information that's valuable to drive personalized experiences and understand segmentation without worrying about p i I.

[00:36:47] Right? The fact that you're a first time user of my product, I don't need. To know your address or social security number for that, right? And yet my ability to craft a specialized experience for you is much better if I focus on that segmentation.

[00:37:04] Matt Deunch: Yeah, it's such a good point because I feel like, like privacy and, you know, security and p I I. And all of these like regulations that are in place, like, it doesn't mean it's the death of personalization, it doesn't mean it's the death of providing a personalized experience tailored to your customer. You just, you need to make sure that you have the controls in place to collect the data from your customers in a consented way, right?

[00:37:30] That it's consent forward, that you're regularly validating from that customer, that you have the consent to use their data that. You are providing insight into how their data is going to be used, and even from an experience standpoint, that you're not trying to collect it all at account creation because it's gonna take forever and it's gonna impact the customer's experience, right?

[00:37:49] Think about the last time you signed up for any application. If it had more than five fields, what are the odds that you, you know, you went somewhere else, you're gone. And so I think there's ways, to your point that you can. You can collect that data like you, data that you can use to personalize the experience from your customers, but do it over time. 

[00:38:07] Trisha Price: Think creatively about, you know, what do you need to ask them for? Versus based on the data you already have, what can you interpret and still personalize based on versus every time data collection doesn't mean asking a user to type something

[00:38:23] Matt Deunch: Right.

[00:38:24] Trisha Price: Right? Don't put the burden of your personalization back on them to type something in and tell you things about them.

[00:38:31] Matt Deunch: I, I mean, I feel that would be an awful experience, right? It's, it's, I, I think about how simple some, uh, you know, creating an account, a digital account is now with some applications with something like a social sign in, I mean, or sign in with Google or sign with Apple or whatever you, whatever, uh, social ID you use.

[00:38:49] But that's so much easier. All I do is click sign in with Google. You know, it basically has instructed the metadata within that API to be pulled back and it populates cause I've given a consent, so it's already consent forward. I don't have to worry about creating a new password that I'm never gonna remember or that I'm gonna have to reset it and, you know, the next time I use the application, which is the case in many applications.

[00:39:11] But I think it's, it's such a critical point that you just said is that you don't, it doesn't mean the death of web per of personalization and a lot of times you have the data you need. Uh, and just make sure you're collecting into the consent forward way with your customers.

[00:39:24] Trisha Price: Matt, you just made me think of, um, when I think about experiences, how, all of the, the shopping experiences between Apple Pay and Google Pay and PayPal. I mean, I don't know about you, but I swear package shows up every single day on my front step. They have made it way too easy for me to go through their experience and buy things.

[00:39:44] And it's true though. Like I buy so much more cuz I just, and I don't even have to sign up to your point, like I don't even have to use those social logins. I don't have to use anything. And I don't have to type in my A address and I don't have to type in my credit card. And that magical experience really does reduce friction and really does, um, increase my likelihood to complete the experience and help them get their outcome of, of revenue.

[00:40:09] Matt Deunch: I think about how convenient those experiences are now versus 15, 20 years. Think about this. Just something,

[00:40:16] Trisha Price: or five years ago

[00:40:17] Matt Deunch: Five years ago. 

[00:40:19] It's just, it's such a, a, create like a magical experience to think about something as simple as ordering a coffee and how much that has changed, uh, and how convenient that experience is now.

[00:40:29] Trisha Price: It. It is. And then Matt, that comes back to what we were talking about earlier where I think those B2C experiences were the first ones to like figure out removing the friction. And then it's like as B2B product managers, as companies, traditional companies that are not SaaS companies who were creating digital experiences for their employees, not just for their customers.

[00:40:50] Those same principles. Are there. And that I think is now what's trying to catch up to, you know, over the last 20 years and especially five, I think covid like hyper accelerated that experience to the things you're talking about, about the coffee shop and my coffee's just sitting there to like, how does that relate to me getting my job done at the office? And how do we make those experiences as equally frictionless as getting our coffee?

[00:41:18] Matt Deunch: That's such a good point cuz we're still consumers at the end of the day and that doesn't change when I walk through the door of my office. Right. Like I still, I still want to be able to access my work applications with the speed and simplicity and convenience of accessing my coffee shop application. Like I. That is, that's what our customers expect in a B2B context today or in a consumer context today. It doesn't,

[00:41:38] Trisha Price: that's right. That's right.

[00:41:40] Matt Deunch: It. I wanna, I want to think a little bit more, maybe we can, uh, we can insert some business buzzword, bingo, uh, terms here, but thinking a little around the future. All right. We talked about ai.

[00:41:49] We talked, we've talked about, you know, Chat G P T and some of these, uh, these new technologies that, that, that were there, but maybe it could even be that, but what's, what's a tech development that you're most looking forward to?

[00:42:01] Trisha Price: I mean, I'm certainly laser focused on that right now, so it's top of mind. Right? We are, um, we, we just finished our, our hackathon about a month ago, and we had it all AI themed and it was really fun just to watch the incredible amount of progress that people can make in just a few days. Um, I think with the big data sets that we have and then being able to utilize these large language models, it's pretty, it's pretty fabulous to watch. So. The kinds of innovation that can happen and the problems we can solve. Um, and so it's, it's remarkable. It's fun to watch and, um, it certainly is probably one of the most top of mind things for me today. I think what's interesting, you know, I mean obviously large MA language models and there is a lot of text out there, um, that we can provide value, but there's also a lot of data, right? Non-text data where, you know, you're more traditional models. Um, data science models, et cetera, can, can provide value. I'm really interested to watch how the two of those come together to solve problems like who the think the people who are able to utilize the, the large language models that are out there and then combine them with some more of the traditional data science type models and really put that magic together to give insights and automation and solve customer problems are the people who will really come out, um, as winners in the software space.

[00:43:25] Matt Deunch: and the space is just, it's evolving so fast that you just, you need to be a sponge. You need to absorb everything as it's coming in and then apply it right away. And do run a, run a number of experiments, right, and experiment with things. If it doesn't work, then you move on to the next thing. And I think this, it's, if anything, it's almost, I feel it's sped up a lot of the innovation cycles that traditional SaaS companies have been, have been using. We talked about the monolith of like an mvp. I don't feel like you have that anymore. You're able to do things a lot faster and get results and understand what the value or the outputs of, of that experiment are a lot quicker than you ever have been. Yeah,

[00:44:03] Trisha Price: Yeah, then the challenge becomes more like pricing and packaging, right? Because it's like you're innovating so quickly, you're getting things out there so quickly, and then it's like, okay, how do you think about monetizing and getting some of those outcomes out of it? It's hard when you're experimenting and moving quickly, and then at some point you have to kind of come behind and rethink about pricing and packaging. I think that'll be fascinating to watch that as sort of the next phase of, of the AI advancements.

[00:44:29] Matt Deunch: That's, that's a really good one as well, and I think that's a skill even for product managers to have. Do you have thoughts on maybe underrated product management skills? Um,

[00:44:39] Trisha Price: Oh, I love it. I love it. Um, underrated product management skills. One is like people have the superpower, i. To know the product in and out and like what it can be capable of, like that can be incredibly valuable, right? Like to know what could be hard to know, how to push the limits, to know how to maximize customer value by minimizing r and d spend and do interesting, innovative things that don't take forever and can constantly make improvement that is like, A super powerful skill that great product managers have. And then like, on the complete opposite end of the spectrum, it's like who has the superpower to really understand the market And like, what are people gonna pay for and why are they gonna value it? It's like those are sort of like opposite ends of the spectrum, but equal superpowers in a pm.

[00:45:32] Matt Deunch: I love that too. And it's really that balance between understanding the market or the customer challenges and under deeply understanding the tech and then being able to, to marry that or put that, together, I think that's excellent.

[00:45:42] Trisha Price: Yeah. I don't know if you, Matt, you've probably seen like the whole, debate that's out there lately, like the whole Airbnb, like product managers, product marketing, and I mean, this kind of comes to that, right? And I, I think it's a little flippant to act like it's one or the other. Do you know what I mean? And it's like, to me, the magic comes when you're doing both. And you can have product managers or a function, maybe you can have people, but you can't have product management functions that are only technical writing tickets. And you and, and don't understand the market. And you can't just sit there and sort of hand wavy, oh, this is the outcome in the market. Like, you still have to dive in and do experiments and understand what features to build, um, and what those user experience are gonna be like. And so to me, like that magical of meeting those in the middle is, is the people that break away and win.

[00:46:34] Matt Deunch: I agree, and that's some really great advice. What, what other advice do you have for aspiring product managers that are looking to get into tech?

[00:46:42] Trisha Price: Spend time with customers. Spend time with sales. Um, be curious. Use your product a lot. If you have free versions of your product, download it, use it. Um, have your friend do it and watch 'em. Make your new employees do it.

[00:46:57] Matt Deunch: I love it. Those are all awesome. So just, uh, in the last little bit here, Trisha, we have a couple minutes left here. We'd love to, to get a sense for some of the things, uh, that you know, that you're thinking about. You've just some fun things. what's your favorite thing that you're reading or watching right now?

[00:47:11] Trisha Price: like everybody else, we just finished Ted Lasso and we're onto succession now. It's sort of, um, entertaining and ridiculous. 

[00:47:19] It's summertime for us. So I live at the beach, so it's a lot of time outside playing pickleball, going for walks on the beach, paddle boarding, things like that. So, you know, we're trying to spend less time indoors reading and watching TV right now and more time, um, That's why I'm so tan, uh, getting time outside and, and enjoying the weather.

[00:47:40] Matt Deunch: This is probably gonna end up being your, that's gonna probably be your answer to this next question, but if you had to live anywhere in the world, where would that be?

[00:47:48] Trisha Price: Yeah, I don't think I would move. I live in Wrightsville Beach, North Carolina, and it is an absolutely, um, special place. Um, I do love the mountains equally, but if I had a secondary place, I was able to spend a lot of time, it would probably be either, in Park City, Utah, and the mountains. Um, or I did have, um, an incredible experience being able to go to Switzerland last year and spend some time in Vermont. And that was also absolutely staying in. I don't know if I wanna live there, but man, I could spend some time there skiing and hiking.

[00:48:17] Matt Deunch: you have the mountains and it's, it's the adventure sport capital of the world, right? Interlochen, you can go hang gliding, paragliding. You know, canyoning through big, you know, the, the mountains effectively. 

[00:48:28] It's, it's such a great, great spot. I love it.

[00:48:30] Trisha Price: It is. We did all of that and I just closed my eyes and couldn't watch my children doing the things and just focused on my own safety through every day, not what they were doing.

[00:48:40] Matt Deunch: Well that's awesome. Well, listen, Trisha, this has been amazing, really great to get your perspective as a chief product officer at Pendo. Uh, you know, to understand a little more about how you're thinking about building great experiences that customers love across pen pandos applications. I wanna thank you again for, uh, for joining the Mistaken Identity Podcast today.

[00:48:56] Trisha Price: Thank you, Matt. Thanks for having me, and thanks for doing this podcast.

[00:49:00] Matt Deunch: That was Trisha Price. Chief Product Officer at Pendo. As we wrap up today's episode, remember that user trust and security is critical to great innovation and successful products. I'm Matt Deunch. Join me next time on Mistaken Identity as we explore how to leverage customer identity to your advantage.