Why product managers can’t afford to ignore product research

Hey there! 👋

Sharekh here! Welcome back to The Research Mag—where we break down fresh ideas, market research insights, and the innovations shaping the future of decision-making.

Before we jump into today’s discussion, let’s take a quick look at what we covered last time.

Quick recap

In our last edition, we explored why so many B2B innovations fail. It's rarely because the ideas are bad. More often, it’s because teams skip the foundational step, understanding the real problem. This week, I want to talk about product managers, and why they can’t afford to treat product research as someone else’s job.

The decisions that shape products are often made too early, and without clarity

I’ve worked with and learned from some amazing PMs over the last few years. The best ones are not just good at execution. They’re deeply curious. They take the time to understand why users behave the way they do.

But that’s not always the case. In many teams, the roadmap decisions are often made based on speculative thinking instead of validated insights. Sometimes it’s pressure from leadership. Sometimes it’s a loud customer. Sometimes it’s a feeling that “this is what our competitors are doing.”

And that’s how products slowly drift away from what users actually need.

You start building things that sound right in meetings, but fall flat in the real world. You release new features, but users don’t understand how to use them. You fix the UI, but not the core problem. You push for growth, but retention stays stuck.

When that happens, it’s not always a strategy issue. It’s often a research issue.

Product research isn’t a phase. It’s a habit.

There’s a misconception that research is something you do at the beginning of a project. You do some interviews, write up a report, and move on. But the best product managers I’ve seen treat research like a constant thread.

They’re not waiting for a quarterly study. They’re listening all the time, whether it’s through direct user calls, usability sessions, or even the things people are saying to the support team.

They know that product research isn’t about confirming ideas. It’s about learning what you didn’t know you needed to ask.

Why understanding the user journey matters

One of the most overlooked parts of product research is mapping and understanding the full user journey, not just the feature you’re working on right now. When PMs look only at isolated screens or micro-interactions, they miss the bigger story.

User journeys show you where real friction builds up. They show you where expectations are set but not met, and where users drop off silently. These journeys are not just diagrams. They are narratives filled with emotion, intent, and decision-making moments.

When you spend time tracing how users go from awareness to activation, from trial to habit, you start to see what truly needs fixing. Sometimes it's not the button that needs to change; it's the entire flow.

User journey research gives you that visibility. It connects the dots that isolated feedback can’t. And when product managers understand those patterns, they make better decisions, faster.

How we're improving research at CleverX

I'm a big believer in practicing what I preach. That's why we've been rethinking how research works within our own platform.

We recently launched both moderated and unmoderated usability testing capabilities on CleverX. Not just because it's a feature customers asked for, but because we've experienced firsthand how critical these insights are to building products people actually use.

Those pain points guided our approach. We wanted to create something that removes the administrative headaches while preserving the quality of insights. Something that makes research feel less like a special project and more like a natural part of the product development process.

It's still early, but we're already seeing how this helps teams catch usability issues earlier and build with more confidence. It's one small way we're trying to make research more accessible for everyone involved in product decisions.

You don’t have to be the researcher. But you can’t be disconnected from the research.

Let me pause here for a moment. There's something product teams don't admit enough: it's easy to treat research like an item on a checklist. You check the box, write the report, and move on. But when that happens, you miss the deeper insight, the part that challenges your thinking instead of validating it.

It's not that PMs don't value research. It's that they're often afraid of what it might reveal. Real research surfaces uncomfortable truths, things like "this feature isn't useful," or "our assumptions about users were wrong."

But avoiding that discomfort has consequences. If you're not willing to sit with those hard truths, you're not building value. You're just managing delivery. The best product teams I've seen don't use research to validate, they use it to get uncomfortable early, so they don't waste time later.

When you're making product decisions, you need to be close to the people you're building for. That means asking to join a few calls, going through research notes, or watching recordings; even if it's just a few minutes a week.

You need to know what users are struggling with; not just in theory, but in practice. Otherwise, you end up building from guesses. And in this blind calls are expensive.

Speed is good. But building the wrong thing quickly doesn’t help anyone.

There’s always pressure to move fast. And I get it. You want to ship. You want to show momentum. But if your product is growing in complexity without improving in value, something’s wrong.

If you don’t know why your users behave the way they do, or if you’re solving for things that weren’t problems in the first place, it catches up with you. Maybe not in the first release. But eventually, it shows; in churn, in confusion, in support tickets that keep repeating the same issues.

Product research is what gives you context. It gives you confidence. It gives you the ability to say, “We’re not shooting in the dark. We know.”

That’s a wrap for this issue of The Research Mag!

What’s your take?

Have you ever changed course because of something unexpected you learned from users? Or have you pushed forward with a feature despite warning signs from research? I'd love to hear your stories—both the wins and the lessons. Do reach out to me here.

Until next time,

Sharekh,
The Research Mag
Founder @CleverX
Connect with me on X and LinkedIn