[Book Sip] Former BankSalad CPO Reveals the Secrets of a ‘Best-Selling Product’

Some sentences encapsulate the entire content of the book itself, while others instantly reach the reader's heart and create a connection with the book. We introduce such meaningful sentences excerpted from the book. - Editor's note

Majored in Industrial Design at university and earned the title of UX/UI designer. When I said I wanted to conduct customer research, I was told, "Just draw pictures." I quit my job right then and there to find a company where I could truly experience UX, and that’s how I joined ‘BankSalad.’ From 2015 to 2019, it was a series of failures. I stopped chasing famous theories and blindly sought out prospective, potential, and current customers. I met over 1,000 customers. After that process, a product was born with 1.5 million loyal customers and a corporate value of 600 billion KRW.

Even before the term customer experience became popular, customer experience has always existed. Buying an ice cream at a supermarket, or eating tteokbokki on the street?these are all customer experiences. Even if you planned or designed without customer research, if someone discovers, purchases, and uses that product, you have designed a customer experience. Customer experience is like ‘air’ in business. It is so obvious that it can easily be overlooked, but at the same time, it must never be missed.

What I realized through various trials and errors is that I must first be able to judge the product objectively and coldly. Especially in the early stages of a startup or when a new business project has just begun, you should not view the situation too optimistically. Customers decide in an instant whether to continue using the product without knowing the background or process of making it. Customers do not invest enough time and money in products that do not provide the experience they expected.

Have you ever felt intimidated because you think you know less about customer research or product planning compared to your team members? Don’t worry about it. Again, theory is just theory. Knowing theory itself is not important. I advise those who have just started product planning not to spend too much time studying theory. Instead of spending time on theory, I tell them to try setting customer hypotheses themselves, even if somewhat clumsy at first, and verify them through actual customer reactions, learning from the results as much as possible. These experiences accumulate meaningful big data about our product and customers. And through that process, your own know-how and insights are created. That will become your asset that no book or article can teach you.

Sellable Product | Written by Park Jisoo | Tal-ing | 16,000 KRW