When Customer Collaboration Creates Better Products Than Customer Requests (The Co-Creation Framework)

A customer mentioned during a call that Boon's reward tracking could work better for their finance team. Instead of adding it to the backlog, we asked if they wanted to help fix it.

A casual sidebar conversation turned into something unexpected. They fired up screen shares to show exactly where bottlenecks were happening. They sent unprompted Slack messages with ideas. Their finance team jumped on calls.

Within weeks, they'd become an honorary part of Boon's product team.

Customer-vendor became co-developers. They got excited about the product the same way Boon's internal team did because they helped create it. When it launched, they championed it to their entire organization.

Together, they built one of Boon's most used tools.

That's what happens when you collaborate with customers instead of just implementing their requests.

Turning feature requests into development partnerships requires knowing which customers to collaborate with, how to guide conversations from solutions to problems, and when to say no to requests that don't serve your broader customer base.

Product teams get this wrong two ways: ignore customers completely and build in isolation, or say yes to every request and become a custom software shop. Strategic co-creation means collaborating with a few customers to build features that serve many.

The Challenge: Balancing Two Extremes

Studies show 72% of failed products ignored customer feedback during development. You need customers to guide your roadmap.

But there's a trap. Big clients wave money and demand custom features. You say yes to keep them happy. Six months later, you've built a custom software shop serving one customer instead of many.

The answer isn't ignoring customers or implementing everything they ask for. Customers describe what they want built, not what problem they're trying to solve. They say "add button X in location Y" when they mean "my team wastes hours on manual processes."

Listen to the pain instead of the prescription.

The Selection: Which Customers To Collaborate With

Not every customer becomes a development partner. Wrong collaborations waste months building features nobody else needs.

Three criteria matter.

First, they represent broader patterns. When a customer describes a problem, ask if five other customers face similar challenges. If not, it's an edge case. Edge cases make poor collaboration partners because solutions won't scale beyond that single customer.

Second, they articulate problems without prescribing solutions. Customers who say "I need button X in location Y" think in features. Customers who say "My team wastes three hours weekly reconciling data" think in problems. That second conversation leads to scalable solutions.

Third, they invest time in process. Real collaboration requires customers who'll jump on calls, share workflows, and explain bottlenecks. They send unprompted ideas. They treat product conversations like their own project.

Features must serve at least 80% of the customer base. If a customer's needs only apply to their specific workflow, they're not the right collaboration partner. If their problem shows up in conversations with multiple customers, they might be.

From Casual Conversation to Development Partnership

Productive collaborations rarely start with formal partnerships. They evolve from routine check-ins.

A customer mentions a challenge during a regular call. Instead of promising to "look into it," product teams ask deeper questions. What are you actually trying to achieve? Where does this break down in your workflow?

Those questions reveal whether customers can articulate underlying problems or just want specific features implemented.

Ask if they're willing to show how they currently work around problems. Customers who immediately offer to share their screen, walk through their process, or connect you with their team signal genuine partnership potential.

Boon recently worked with a customer on a new feature this way. Conversation started as a sidebar discussion in a routine meeting. As they talked through problems, customers got more engaged. They pulled up examples, connected Boon's team with their stakeholders, and sent follow-up ideas between meetings.

Dynamics shifted from "here's what we need" to "let's figure this out together." That shift transforms customer requests into development partnerships.

Collaboration intensified naturally. Customers weren't waiting for Boon to build something and deliver it. They actively shaped what got built, offered feedback on early iterations, and tested assumptions in real-time with their team.

When customers have ownership in development process, they champion results internally with the same enthusiasm your product team has. They understand why you made decisions because they were part of conversations.

The Discipline: Understanding Problems, Not Implementing Solutions

A customer requests an Excel export button for referral data. Build it and you've addressed their stated need while missing the real issue: their finance team can't access data that already exists in your system.

Understand problems before building solutions. Look for patterns across similar requests.

Boon's payment automation demonstrates this. Three customers made three requests: instant payments, finance tracking, payroll integration. Different features on the surface.

Product team looked for common problems. All three customers struggled to manage referral rewards at scale. Same underlying issue, three different proposed fixes.

Instead of building three features, Boon built one payment automation system. One solution solved the actual problem for everyone.

The Outcome: Features That Serve Everyone

Building for one customer creates a custom feature. Building with one customer to solve a shared problem creates a platform feature.

Adoption rates show this difference. Up to 70% of software features remain unused by customers. Platform features get immediate traction because they solve problems multiple teams already face—discover why adoption beats innovation every time.

One conversation surfaces a pattern. That pattern exists across your entire customer base. Features built for three serve thirty, and solutions developed through collaboration reach far beyond original participants.

This approach creates advocates. Customers who help build features become invested in product success. They've shaped something that bears their fingerprints.

[One talent acquisition partner took this approach further than Boon expected.](https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:share:7330306508334813184#:~:text=One talent acquisition partner saw the widget not just as an internal solution%2C but as a premium feature they could sell directly to their own clients. They didn't stop there%3B they created an exclusive referral community%2C transforming the widget into a revenue stream and entirely new business model.)

Boon designed a referral widget to simplify internal hiring. This partner saw different potential. They turned it into a premium feature to sell directly to their own clients. They built an exclusive referral community around it, creating an entirely new business model.

They even used it as an affiliate tool, getting paid when their clients signed up for Boon while those clients' jobs populated their exclusive community. They essentially created their own micro version of Boon's business model, offering a referral marketplace and monetizing it.

Widget became their revenue stream. They understood their market better than Boon could. Collaboration solved their problem and sparked business model innovation that they drove themselves.

Building the Framework Into Your Process

Co-creation sounds simple until you try to scale it. Without structure, you end up building everything customers ask for or cherry-picking based on who yells loudest.

Listen for problems instead of solutions. Dig beneath requested solutions to underlying needs.

Look for patterns across customers. Wait to see patterns before building.

Apply the 80% rule. Features must serve at least 80% of your customer base.

Invite select customers into process. Choose customers representing broader needs. Transform them from requesters to partners by asking them to show workflows and involve their teams.

Build once, serve many. Solve root problems, not surface symptoms. Identify common themes and build one solution that serves everyone, rather than separate features for individual clients.

Iterate with feedback. Share features early with select customers and refine based on their real-world usage. Make them part of testing process.

Protecting Your Roadmap Without Losing Customer Input

Innovation happens in spaces between customer pain and product solutions. Best outcomes appear when customers and product teams own roadmaps together.

Your roadmap is your strategy. Protect it from one-off requests that look lucrative but don't serve bigger pictures. That doesn't mean isolation. It means being selective about which customers to collaborate with deeply and being strategic about turning their insights into features that serve everyone.

Ready to see how strategic customer collaboration translates into features serving your entire organization? Schedule a demo to learn how Boon builds products that scale across your entire base.