The Science & Storytelling of Knowing Your Customer for PMs

1 Day

·

Cohort-based Course

Stories activate change. Unlock your inner anthropologist with this framework for witnessing, documenting, and amplifying what matters most.

Previously at AWS

Amazon Web Services
New Relic
Anaplan
UNC

Course overview

Harness the power of your customers' lived experience

If you've ever wanted:


...to persuade your company, investors, and stakeholders by giving them a bird's-eye view into what your customers experience


...to go beyond fielding customer complaints and requests to actually witness them use your product or service, like a social scientist


...to braid a handful of customer insights into a single, powerful narrative


The Science: Building a Framework for Customer & Market Insights 


It’s hard to know how to place insights we get from our customers: praise from the ones who love us, negative feedback from the ones who are frustrated. How do we act on them without knowing whether they represent the full needs of our market?


By boiling down the technical tools of social science to a simple, three-step approach, we can make feedback work for us. Beyond pull quotes form customer conversations, we’ll build a framework for aligning our teams around clear signals.


The Storytelling: Hearing Narratives, Tracking Them, and Telling the Story of Your Product or Service 


Now that we’re bringing together our customer/market insights, we use a simple journey map to synthesize a crystal clear customer story, and tell it to our orgs, stakeholder, and market. This is what customer-centricity is all about.


I'll teach you how to take the guesswork out of business decisions with a deliverable everyone can understand, because it’s based on the oldest scientific method known to human kind - storytelling.


Quick tips, frameworks, worksheets


With the tools from this Master Class, you'll be able to ask the right questions to:

* deep dive on any story you hear,

*tell an end-to-end story that rocks the audience, and

*know how innovations on your product t or service will affect users, customers, and the market

Who is this course for

01

You are a business leader who needs to translate a constellation of feedback, anecdotes, and insights into a clear, powerful narrative.

02

You are a product innovator (PM, design, sales, solutions, etc.) who wants to rally stakeholders around what your customers are telling you.

03

You shape messaging, marketing, and/or education for your org and need to distill your strategy down to what matters most: human experience.

What you’ll get out of this course

Get to the heart of your customer's biggest battle - and how you can fix it

Identify the main battle, job, or conflict and what it feels like for your customers to experience it...in real life



I show you how to translate your value proposition to a key point in the the end-to-end journey your customers take to satisfy a need or solve a problem

Map your storytelling framework

Craft a timeline that brings what really matters to light


Identify your customer's core dilemma - the heart of the action - and learn how to map the steps leading up to the event and its aftermath.

Witness your customers's experience through directed storytelling

Placing cusotmer insights - from anecdotes to analytics - in your framework 


Turn snapshots of customer experience - from frustrated emails to smiling faces - into key segments of your story using the framework you’ve synthesized. 


Up your storytelling skills

Now *you* are the storyteller



Braid multiple stories together in a clear narrative that cuts through ambiguity. A quick guide to telling a great story anywhere, anytime is included. Motivate your teams & market. This is the fun part!

This course includes

Interactive live sessions

Lifetime access to course materials

In-depth lessons

Direct access to instructor

Projects to apply learnings

Guided feedback & reflection

Private community of peers

Course certificate upon completion

Maven Satisfaction Guarantee

This course is backed by Maven’s guarantee. You can receive a full refund within 14 days after the course ends, provided you meet the completion criteria in our refund policy.

Course syllabus

Expand all modules
  • Week 1

    Mar 27

    Week dates are set to instructor's time zone

    Modules

    • Introduction: What do the social sciences bring to industry?

    • Identifying the key conflict for your market or customers

    • Placing that conflict along a timeline

    • Break & Focus work

    • Bring a constellation of customer knowledge together in a story map

    • Synthesizing & socializing your insights

    • Bringing it all back home

What people are saying

        I was blown away by the quality of MaaxaLabs’ work and uncomfortable (in a good way) about some of the areas where our product wasn’t working for customers. If you want to build products that customers love, you need to deeply understand your customers. Ali is a pro at this. She is smart, experienced and able to bond and connect with people.
Astou Willis

Astou Willis

Director | Regional Government Org
        If you need to understand your users. If you really want to uncover unmet needs and build empathy for better product solutions, hire MaaxaLabs. I had the great pleasure of learning from Ali. She brings super concrete steps to unpacking the complexity of the human experience. AND, your teams will be able to base big decisions on her stories.
John Linton

John Linton

CEO | SaaS Product

Meet your instructor

Ali Maaxa, Ph.D.

Ali Maaxa, Ph.D.

Ali Maaxa, Ph.D is a media anthropologist who has traveled the world to understand how humans make and use technologies since 2005. See her work at MaaxaLabs

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Course schedule

3-hour session with minimal prep
  • February 28th, 2024

    3 hours: 10 am PST/1 pm EST

    Introduction: What do the social sciences bring to industry?


    Identifying the key conflict for your market or customers


    Placing that conflict along a journey map


    Bring a constellation of customer knowledge together to fill out your journey map


    Bringing it back home: your story

Free resource

Science & Storytelling Course E-Book

Grab your copy of our course guide! Learn the process & art of collecting & telling customer stories.

Get your free e-book

Learning is better with cohorts

Learning is better with cohorts

Active hands-on learning

This course builds on live workshops and hands-on projects

Interactive and project-based

You’ll be interacting with other learners through breakout rooms and project teams

Learn with a cohort of peers

Join a community of like-minded people who want to learn and grow alongside you

Frequently Asked Questions

What happens if I can’t make a live session?
I work full-time, what is the expected time commitment?
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The Science & Storytelling of Knowing Your Customer for PMs

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