[Alex3917]

Most times when users say they won't use a product because it's missing a feature:

- Those specific users won't use it anyway even if you add it

- The problem they identified is a legitimate problem that was preventing other people from using it

- Whether your metrics actually go up depends on where that feature was in the critical path of your funnel. All else being equal, fixing legitimate problems with your product is unlikely to move your metrics much, because most (randomly distributed) problems aren't at the frontier of the critical path.

It's a mistake to think that adding features that customers ask for will immediately improve your core metrics, but it's also a mistake to think that features that don't visibly improve your core metrics were a mistake to add.

[cgriswald]

> Those specific users won't use it anyway even if you add it

I think people read this and think, "Why bother, then?"

As someone who is often this user, I don't end up using your product because I've already moved onto a competing product or service; or because I never hear that you have added the feature. Whether your metrics move after adding the feature might be a matter of timing.

There's also the chance I will come to your product in the future. Hypothetically, let's say you offer a password vault application, but I dislike it because it lacks a feature I want, so I end up going with your competitor who offers the feature. You add the feature, but I don't switch because I'm now content with your competitor. Later, your competitor starts pushing towards a subscription model while simultaneously showing a real lack of professionalism and social grace towards customers in public. Since you've added the feature that I thought was lacking, your product might now be an option for me. If you haven't added the feature, there's still no chance.

[dennisgorelik]

> competitor starts ... showing a real lack of professionalism

Betting on eventual competitor's incompetence in the future - is not a reliable strategy.

In such situation it may be better to implement that feature only when entrenched competitor with that feature will start pushing their customers away.

[kube-system]

This situation is further complicated when you’re making enterprise software where the purchaser often isn’t a user and the majority of the users don’t have a say in the purchasing decision.

A smart purchaser will define their purchasing criteria based on the needs of their users, but in practice, I’ve found that some haven’t done an accurate job of determining their users needs, and/or inject their own agendas into the requirements.

[jyrkesh]

Some of the best advice I've been given on this is to look at how the potential customer is already solving the problem today. If they're just ignoring the problem altogether, then they're not going to spend any money on you to solve it. If they're spending considerable time and/or money working around or manually solving the problem (maybe by working weekends, or buying a whole team of vendors, or outsourcing to Mechanical Turk type stuff), and you can solve the problem for them for less money and/or time, then it's a feature worth shipping.

It can give false negatives, especially with future looking and platform-type work, but it's a great heuristic for weeding out useless feature work

[hrktb]

> Those specific users won't use it anyway even if you add it

These users often understand what features are missing because they rely on them in other products. At that point your product is already dead to them.