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Known as the voice of the customer, our product team is responsible for translating the needs of businesses into products that are easy to use, move the needle, and customised to many different needs.
If you’ve ever wondered what a career in the world of product looks like, this piece is for you! Here, we meet our product maestros, get to know what their work is like, and hear from other teams about what it’s like to work with them.
Product teams need to read and translate signals from our customers, some subtle, some overt, and turn them into features and solutions that make a difference.
These signals come from many places like product usage data, customer support and feature requests, and direct meetings with customers from different industries and roles that focus on what they care about and how we can make their lives easier. A great product team, at root, listens and watches before acting so that they can shape the tools that can really solve problems that face different roles, businesses, and entire industries.
With this feedback process being constant, the product team constantly prioritises and looks after a roadmap to meet these needs with helpful solutions.
That may be a simple feature that makes reporting easier, an overhaul of a user interface, or making support services and documentation better for example.
The process starts with feeding back these needs to our internal teams in a coordinated way; even a simple change can take a village in practice! Our product managers are not necessarily super-techy; rather, they are bridges and translators between the customers that use our products, and the people that design and build them.
Across the ecosystem of Creditsafe products, the product team is involved across their whole lifecycle, including the continuous support, maintenance and upgrades of products we’ve launched.
Alongside this, a normal day can involve dialoguing with customers and other internal teams, keeping a finger on the pulse about their industry, technology and evolving regulations, as well as wireframing features and user interfaces for products.
The product team is passionate about their work with our customers, and gradually the team has built genuinely close relationships with many of them. One way they’ve done this is by hosting focus groups where candid discussions take place. It builds trust and insight while cultivating a great feedback loop that deepens their ability to be the voice of the customer.
Our Product team is structured a little differently to achieve a great end-to-end product experience, and to work closely with other teams to support their execution.
One difference is that our Product team houses a product support function, so it’s not a separate department as is often the case. Instead, it’s an integral part of the Product team and keeps the lifecycle management and evolution of our products and how they work together easier to manage.
Likewise, the Product team works very closely with other teams on the practical, logistical and regulatory aspects of developing products. With a lot of collaboration occurring with various engineering teams as well as the Project Management Office.
Nileema is a Senior Product Manager who looks after our KYC Protect product lines. Her work centres on balancing customer needs, keeping up with the compliance landscape, and collaboration across teams. Day to day, her role spans strategy, delivery, customer engagement, and keeping pace with a fast‑changing regulatory landscape.
“To always have the customers’ best interests always at heart and a collaborative and knowledge‑sharing working environment.”
“Seeing the positive impact of a change, i.e. customers confirming that an update has been helpful in reducing operational costs or workload — and sometimes we get the occasional customer that will tell us they actually caught a ‘bad actor’ trying to use their services, saving them thousands if not millions in penalties and fines…not to mention the PR disaster!”
“My day revolves around meetings with the team to ensure that implementations are progressing as planned, not just technically but operationally as well — and trying to unblock them if they are not going according to plan. I may have meetings with other countries to align on strategy or knowledge transfer, then usually move to taking a customer call or two during the day, horizon‑scanning and researching as regulations change daily, and identifying how we should implement them and how we should validate the idea. I’m also doing an ACAMS during the week.”
“There are quite a lot of areas that you can get involved in, so there’s no day that is the same — it’s never boring, certainly!”
Wouter is a Product Director at Creditsafe and plays a key role in shaping the vision for our product line and how our product strategy is being delivered across the business. Passionate about the impact companies like Creditsafe can have on the world, he plays a role in deepening the ties we have with our customers and placing Creditsafe as a strategic, consultative partner to them, rather than being just a provider of products.
“For me, product at its core is about making peoples lives better, to make the economy tick better. And we can do that by deeply understanding what our customers need and building around that. The product itself is the ‘shop front’ so to speak, but what really makes it valuable, is the entire process behind it. It takes listening, creativity, passion, and vision across the team and business.”
“A challenging but rewarding thing for me is that working in product is dynamic and full of creative opportunities, and that means you can do anything but not everything! Every decision has a tradeoff and there’s many voices and sources of data that go into carefully crafting a product that truly helps our customers across the entire product lifecycle.”
“I have the opportunity to carve out what a product looks like by drawing on the voice of the customer. A typical day for me looks like many meetings with colleagues and customers, coordinating product projects, time for creating product roadmaps and ideas, and staying up to date with product data and more.
“My favourite thing about working here comes from the fact I’m something of a credit geek! It’s not about the tech for me, it’s about the fact that we can change the world and have a good impact on it. The changes we make might not always feel tangible, but all over the world, the intelligence we offer is helping businesses to get credit, allowing shipments and deals to go ahead, and creating new jobs! What we build affects all of these things globally, and that’s amazing to me.”
Alex is a Product Designer at Creditsafe and is responsible for developing and maintaining user interfaces and design documentation. Day to day, he contributes to our growing design system so that designers have a suite of UI components and design decisions to work from, and reviews new work to ensure that Creditsafe’s UX is accessible, efficient and enjoyable for all customers.
You need to always be thinking from the customers’ perspective and thinking about what’s best for them. Good communication is crucial too – in a product of this size, there are so many moving parts – everyone needs to be on the same page and needs to be aware of what’s going on around them.
“Good” design is subjective, but can be backed up by psychology, mathematics and art theory, certainly in the context of accessible design. Sometimes justifying a design decision to someone not as familiar with these concepts can be difficult, if through their eyes, “it doesn’t look quite right”. That’s not to say that how they feel is wrong, but it might be the case that there are other critical factors that need to be considered – it can be difficult to find the balance.
After talking through the scientific rationale for a decision with someone, it’s satisfying to see the moment that it clicks for them. It’s even more satisfying when they then apply that principle in their next designs.
Day to day I’ll spend time designing new user flows, interfaces and interactions. As I’m in the early stages of building a design system, I’ve got an opportunity to review existing UI from the ground up. I’ll make sure that any new components or patterns that I produce are documented thoroughly so that other people can use them in their own designs, with confidence.
I support my colleagues by reviewing their designs to help them with usability and accessibility – to help make sure that when a new product is launched, it can be used easily, by everyone.
I also work with engineers to assist with developer handoff – making sure that the transition from design to development is as smooth and efficient as possible.
I like that I get to be involved in such a variety of areas; some days I’ll be designing a simple form, and others I’ll be working on an intricate data visualisation or complex user journey. Having such a variety of work on my plate really lets me stretch my legs.
Working in Product is fast and dynamic as well as challenging and collaborative, and for that reason, rewarding! A big thanks to our product team for taking the time to tell us about who they are and what they do.
And keep an eye on our vacancies for openings in our Product team too!