Balancing Customer Needs with Business Objectives in Research
The old adage of customer is king remains true, but there’s more to the story. See what Research and Design can do to achieve business objectives.
Malia Nagle is VP of Product Design & Insights at Tala. This article is adapted from a presentation she gave at Co-Lab Continued, Reflections on Power, Priorities, and Perspectives.
Tala is a fintech company offering fast, seamless, and affordable credit in installments of around $10-200 USD across Latin America, Southeast Asia, and East Africa.
While at Tala, I’ve gone through a few major transitions. I was first a design leader, before eventually landing in a hybrid role overseeing design and research. As my role has evolved, I’ve gained a new perspective on leadership and strategy which I’m excited to share with you.
With each transition, I’ve developed a new understanding of Tala's relationship with our customers and what our role as customer champions entails. This evolved understanding impacts everything from the research my teams conduct, what we no longer focus on, and how we ensure that the products and features we launch are usable by our customers.
The customer is king, BUT…
Before I shifted to design leadership, I was a research leader at PayPal and Venmo from 2014 to 2019. Like most, my team and I were driven by the notion that the customer is king.
We thought, with very good intentions, that by deeply understanding the customer and their pain points—and funneling that back up to the decision-makers—we would have an impact on how the products were developed.
That's why we all got into this field, right? We're passionate about making products more usable, more friendly, and more accessible. We celebrated when leadership brought up the customer in a meeting or when teams talked about the user-centered design process. But with all our focus on the customer, we were overlooking something equally as important: our business objectives. Naturally, those two things sometimes have tension.
Our team often identified customer pain points and worked hard to surface them internally. But at times, those issues weren’t prioritized due to broader business considerations.
Over time, I’ve learned to take a more balanced approach—understanding the customer’s needs while also considering the wider business context. This shift has helped me approach solutions more strategically and align customer outcomes with business goals.
I now view the customer as an important piece of a larger puzzle that includes:
- Product roadmaps and priorities
- Engineering timelines and capacity
- Business impact and profitability
Regardless of the occasional tension, I sincerely believe that we can keep our customer orientation while stepping into more of a business role.
A new approach moving forward
✔ Adding business strategy as a core competency
One of the first things I did with this new perspective in mind was update my team’s growth rubric to include business strategy and acumen as a core competency, right alongside design and research abilities. Not only did I want them to be familiar with our Annual Operating Plan (AOP), but I needed them to understand how the work they're executing drives that AOP, and where we can continue to push and have an impact.
To do my part, I started giving a financial update during our monthly product all hands. Folks were able to hear directly from leadership about how the business was doing, so they could have a more holistic understanding of their work’s impact.
✔ Facilitating autonomy and focus
Another priority of mine was making sure that my teams have autonomy in the research they conduct. Not only do I give them ownership of their learning plans and agendas, but I empower them to say no to inbound research requests that ultimately don’t serve our business strategy or help customers.
Saying no can be difficult, but it's my job to protect their time so that they can focus on research that supports long-term goals and key roadmap priorities.
✔ Making time for deep dives and global perspective
While the teams focus, I make time to dive deep into customer insights and visit our markets to stay connected to their evolving needs.
For example, we recently conducted research to understand how people’s financial goals and attitudes toward credit have shifted post-COVID. The findings were meaningful and helped shape a new credit product that we’ll be launching soon.
We also sponsored global research to understand why some customers borrow and repay but don’t return. We learned that initial credit limits weren’t meeting their needs, so we partnered with the credit team to explore lending the exact amount they need. I’m excited to see the results and how they might shape the way we deliver credit in the future.
Sweating the small stuff
Finally, we do a lot of research that historically has been seen as boring, repetitive, and unsexy. Think methods like usability, RITE testing, moderated, and unmoderated.
We don’t just hand off a Figma file to engineering and hope for the best. We stay closely involved from design through launch––actively tracking progress, filing design bugs when things aren’t working, and focus on getting everything from micro-interactions to pixels just right. After launch, we continue to monitor performance and gather feedback to make sure every experience meets customer expectations.
Balancing customer needs with business priorities isn’t always easy, but it’s essential for creating products that are both impactful and sustainable. By staying close to customer insights, empowering my team, and focusing on execution at every level, I’m confident we’re building solutions that make a real difference.
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