In the fast-paced world of tech product management, where dozens of competitors are all vying to slot into customers’ lives and win their loyalties, understanding and anticipating customer needs is paramount.
Missing this vital connection with customers risks falling short, while getting it right can catapult a product into widespread use. Products and services that customers are happy with don’t just get used and reused—they also get recommended to friends and family, reaping massive rewards for the companies behind them.
Today we’re looking at a successful product manager who’s mastered this skill to drive past numerous competitors and achieve product-market fit. Syed Aamir Aarfi emerges as a forward-thinker who brings together technical expertise with an unwavering dedication to user needs. In an age where designing around user experience determines product success, Aamir exemplifies the power of using in-depth customer insights to build solutions that resonate, boost engagement, and drive sustainable growth.
With over a decade in the tech industry, Aamir has skillfully navigated this complex landscape, crafting impactful solutions in fields ranging from supply chain to e-commerce, travel, and SaaS. His experience includes critical roles at major tech companies, including Amazon and Expedia, where he served as Product Manager for Expedia Rewards, enhancing loyalty features for global travelers and underscoring his international influence in product leadership. He has also left a significant mark at BookMyShow, leading mobile user experience initiatives that contributed to the app’s recognition as one of Google Play’s Best Apps of 2017. Known for sharing insights with industry peers, Aamir has participated in various speaking engagements, including the Branch.io Mobile Growth Meetup, where he discusses emerging trends and shares his user-centric approach to product design.
Armed with a master’s degree in Product Management from Carnegie Mellon University, with concentrations in Data Science, Applied Machine Learning, and Digital Service Design, Aamir combines academic expertise with real-world experience, setting him apart in his field. His journey at Amazon includes leading intricate product strategies and guiding cross-functional teams to deliver high-impact, user-focused solutions. By turning data insights into actionable decisions, he consistently delivers products that not only meet but exceed user expectations.
Aamir shared his comprehensive approach to understanding and meeting customer needs through practical, user-centered features. His work at MakeMyTrip exemplifies this approach, particularly with the goSafe initiative, which responded to travelers’ COVID-19 concerns by emphasizing hygiene and safety. Similarly, his development of a digital, contactless check-in system addressed the demand for reduced contact during the pandemic. Beyond travel, Aamir made a notable impact at AWS by implementing an Identity Management system for AWS Marketplace, streamlining onboarding and enhancing partner experience. Through these initiatives, Aamir has consistently demonstrated how agility, data-driven decisions, and collaboration can shape user-focused solutions, setting a high standard in product leadership across tech.
Aamir, thank you for joining us today. Product management is often about deeply understanding customer needs. Can you walk us through your process for gathering customer insights and translating them into product features?
As a tech product leader, gathering customer insights is crucial, and it’s something I approach through a well-structured feedback loop. When designing a product, it’s essential to build empathy with customers to truly understand and represent them at every stage of the product life cycle. There are several effective ways to do this. For example, talking to customers regularly—aiming to speak with at least one or two each week—helps to identify gaps and areas where the product could improve. I also value the role of UX research in providing an unbiased view of customer needs across different segments.
Another important step is usability testing, which allows us to observe firsthand how users interact with the product, whether in person or through tools like heatmaps. This helps us understand their behaviors and preferences. Customer support channels, like emails, calls, and product reviews, are also invaluable resources, as they often reveal pain points that customers experience. Similarly, well-designed surveys are a great way to validate and prioritize issues that resonate across a broad user base. And finally, product usage data tells an important story about user engagement, showing where customers are interacting with the product, converting, or dropping off. Having strong analytics in place is a must for any effective product manager.
Ultimately, for any tech leader in product, gathering customer insights through interviews, research, testing, feedback, surveys, and usage data is essential. This feedback loop not only builds empathy but allows us to develop features that resonate with users and, ultimately, drive the product’s success.
The goSafe initiative at MakeMyTrip is a great example of a user-focused solution. What inspired this project, and how did you ensure it addressed customers’ concerns and ultimately boosted user engagement?
The goSafe initiative by MakeMyTrip was directly inspired by customer concerns around safety, hygiene, and social distancing that arose during the COVID-19 pandemic. As travel resumed in India after the lockdowns, we conducted surveys that highlighted these as top priorities for travelers. To address these concerns and help regain customer confidence, MakeMyTrip collaborated with over 30 key leaders from the hospitality, airline, and ancillary industries.
We launched a video campaign featuring leaders from companies like SpiceJet, IRCTC, The Indian Hotels Company, and OYO, who reassured travelers about the rigorous safety, hygiene, and social distancing measures being implemented. This campaign was designed to reach Indian travelers and reassure them about the efforts being taken across the travel industry to prioritize their safety, which we hoped would help restore their confidence in staying at hotels and traveling once again.
Additionally, we rolled out initiatives like ‘MySafety’ on MakeMyTrip and ‘GoSafe’ on Goibibo to raise awareness about the safety and hygiene standards being maintained across hotels, travel partners, and cabs. The message was clear: safety was a top agenda across the industry. By directly addressing customer concerns, the campaign helped to boost user engagement and instill confidence among travelers.
With the contactless check-in feature you launched at MakeMyTrip, what were the key challenges in developing a user-centric solution during the pandemic, and how did you adapt to meet changing user expectations?
The Contactless Check-in product by MakeMyTrip was developed in response to a growing need from hotel customers who wanted to avoid any direct contact with hotel staff during check-in. As travel resumed after the first wave of COVID lockdowns, we noticed that travelers were particularly concerned about minimizing contact, even when it came to showing identification or travel documents.
To address this concern, I collaborated with multiple stakeholders and engaged with customers to understand what functionality was needed to make the check-in process entirely digital and contactless. We partnered with major hotel chains to create a service that allowed customers to upload all their identity information immediately after booking, which we then passed along digitally to the hotel before check-in.
This digitization of check-in documents effectively enabled a contactless experience for travelers who preferred to limit interaction with hotel staff for personal safety and hygiene. The response was highly positive, with around 50% of travelers opting for contactless check-in, underscoring the success of this initiative in enhancing customer confidence during COVID.
From ideation to launch, what are some strategies you use to maintain a customer-focused approach throughout the product lifecycle? How do you ensure that customer needs remain at the forefront of each stage?
As a product thought leader, keeping a customer-focused approach throughout the product life cycle is absolutely essential. One of the primary strategies I recommend is establishing continuous customer research and feedback loops. Before even beginning the ideation phase, it’s vital to thoroughly understand your target customers—their pain points, needs, and desired outcomes. This can be achieved through extensive user research, surveys, interviews, and focus groups, which all help inform the product roadmap. Additionally, having ongoing feedback mechanisms in place throughout development, beta testing, and post-launch ensures that customer needs stay top-of-mind and allows for necessary adjustments along the way.
Developing empathy maps and detailed customer personas is also key. These personas represent the different user segments and help teams across the organization genuinely connect with customers’ mindsets, motivations, and behaviors. This empathy-building approach fosters a customer-centric culture that guides every aspect of the product.
Cross-functional collaboration is another essential aspect. Involving team members from departments like sales, customer support, and marketing in the product development process provides invaluable customer insights that can shape product features, user experience, and overall messaging.
I also advocate for iterative development and agile methodologies. By adopting an agile approach, we can create smaller, testable increments, gather feedback, and make adjustments accordingly. This iterative process allows for consistent customer validation and ensures that customer needs are always prioritized.
User testing and usability studies are important throughout the development cycle as well. These studies reveal how customers interact with the product and identify any pain points or usability issues, ensuring the product meets user expectations.
Another effective approach is to set up a customer advisory board that includes key customers or representatives from the target market. Engaging with them regularly provides insights, feedback, and validation for product concepts and features, directly from the people we’re designing for.
Finally, it’s crucial to maintain a mindset of continuous improvement and adaptability. Even after launch, staying vigilant about customer needs and market changes is essential. By gathering ongoing customer feedback, analyzing usage data, and monitoring industry trends, we can iterate and adapt the product to ensure it remains relevant and valuable.
By embedding these customer-focused strategies throughout the product life cycle, you ensure that customer needs drive every decision, leading to products that truly resonate with users and deliver value.
How do you approach refining product features based on user feedback, and can you share an example where this approach led to significant improvements in user experience?
User feedback is critical for understanding gaps and identifying improvement opportunities in your product. Feedback can be collected directly through support calls, emails, and user reviews, or indirectly via heatmap tools, click metrics, and third-party websites. This feedback should be categorized and prioritized based on volume, severity, effort, and impact. Depending on the ROI for the business or the customer experience, these enhancements can be planned into the product roadmap or ongoing product support.
For example, in India, there are more than 30 languages spoken, with over 10 languages widely used for publishing movies and entertainment. However, our product at BookMyShow was initially designed entirely in English, and many non-English users (more than 10%) struggled to comprehend content such as cast or movie information. Feedback came through various channels, including support. Initially, we added language support for customer service to assist non-English speakers. Eventually, we partnered with third-party localization providers to convert content into over 10 native languages, supporting 90% of non-native speakers. This change significantly improved the user experience on the app and website. Native language speakers could select their language instead of English to book movie tickets on BookMyShow.com. As a result, our user base expanded by 10%, showing the substantial business impact of customer feedback.
For products like mobile apps, user engagement is critical. What are some specific techniques or tools you use to continuously improve user engagement and satisfaction in mobile and SaaS products?
To continuously improve engagement and satisfaction, I use a variety of specific techniques and tools tailored for both mobile and SaaS environments.
For mobile apps, we rely on tools like Google Analytics SDK, which enables us to track key metrics such as screen views, time spent, funnel analysis, and conversions. By analyzing these insights, we can pinpoint areas for improvement in the user journey, making data-driven decisions to enhance engagement and boost conversions. We also integrate the Facebook SDK, which helps us understand how users acquired through our Facebook campaigns interact with the app. This SDK allows us to segment users based on their behavior and retarget them with personalized campaigns on Facebook and Instagram, encouraging higher engagement from returning users. Additionally, tools like Clevertap or Signal SDK are vital for measuring real-time engagement through push notifications and in-app campaigns. By assessing campaign performance, we can refine our messaging, timing, and targeting to maximize engagement and retention.
In the SaaS space, we utilize HubSpot as a CRM and marketing automation platform to track user interactions, manage leads, and nurture them through personalized email campaigns and content. HubSpot’s analytics provide insights that help us improve lead nurturing and customer success processes, driving higher engagement and satisfaction. Pendo is another key tool, offering product analytics and user experience insights. It allows us to track feature usage, collect user feedback, and run in-app surveys, helping us identify improvement areas, prioritize enhancements, and deliver a more engaging user experience. Additionally, we use Hotjar to record user sessions, create heatmaps, and gather feedback through surveys and polls. By observing how users navigate our SaaS product and identifying pain points, we can make informed, data-driven decisions to improve the user experience and boost engagement.
On top of these analytics tools, we conduct regular user interviews, analyze customer support tickets, and monitor social media channels for qualitative feedback and insights. Combining these approaches with the analytics and engagement tools allows us to continuously optimize our mobile and SaaS products, driving higher user engagement, satisfaction, and ultimately, business growth.
Looking forward, what trends in user experience and customer behavior do you think will shape the future of product design, and how do you see yourself leveraging these trends in upcoming projects?
As a product leader, I’m always keeping an eye on emerging trends in user experience and customer behavior that are likely to shape the future of product design. Several trends stand out to me as particularly influential, and I plan to leverage them in upcoming projects to create more impactful user experiences.
One key trend is personalization and hyper-customization. With the vast amount of data available and advancements in machine learning, users now expect highly personalized experiences that align with their preferences, behaviors, and contexts. In future projects, I intend to incorporate AI-driven personalization engines that dynamically adapt the user interface, content, and features based on individual user profiles, providing a truly customized experience.
Another major trend is the rise of voice interfaces and conversational UX. With the popularity of virtual assistants and the growing adoption of voice-enabled devices, voice interaction is becoming a natural mode of engagement. In upcoming projects, I’m excited to integrate conversational experiences, enabling users to interact with our products through natural language processing and voice commands. This will enhance accessibility and offer a more intuitive, hands-free experience.
Immersive technologies like augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) are also evolving rapidly and offer unique opportunities for engaging users. I plan to explore integrating AR and VR into future projects, potentially allowing for virtual product demonstrations, interactive tutorials, or even gamified experiences that can deepen user engagement and understanding.
Lastly, micro-interactions and creating delightful user experiences are essential in today’s digital landscape. As users expect even the smallest interactions to be intuitive, responsive, and visually appealing, I’ll be focusing on crafting thoughtful micro-interactions, such as subtle animations, haptic feedback, and seamless transitions. These elements can elevate the overall user experience, creating a sense of delight and satisfaction.
By staying ahead of these trends and proactively incorporating them into our design processes, we can deliver user experiences that are cutting-edge and aligned with the evolving expectations of our customers. This approach will allow us to differentiate our offerings, foster stronger user engagement, and ultimately drive long-term product success.
Aamir’s career in product management highlights how a deep commitment to user-centered design can influence success in today’s tech-driven world. His innovative projects, from the goSafe program and contactless check-ins at MakeMyTrip to the Identity Management system at AWS, reveal his dedication to truly understanding customer needs. His global experience with US-based companies like Amazon and Expedia and his impactful work with BookMyShow in India underscore his adaptability and ability to deliver user-focused solutions across diverse markets. Known for sharing his insights as a speaker at events, Aamir has set a benchmark for product managers aiming to deliver impactful, user-oriented experiences. His work exemplifies how empathy and flexibility in design are crucial, offering a guide for fostering engagement and driving sustainable growth in a constantly changing industry.
