Over the years, FullStory has undergone tremendous growth in both the number and size of our customers seeking the perfect digital experience. Powering that growth has been an equally impressive addition of talented team members from a wide diversity of backgrounds. The addition of these new teammates to FullStory has made us stronger on all fronts.
New perspectives. New experiences. New ideas. New energy.
With growth, though, we must always beware the trap of the Innovator’s Dilemma. How do you preserve the “magic” of that early culture, while also embracing the new ideas that are essential to propel you further?
In late 2022, the FullStory Product team underwent a journey of self-reflection to identify the core values that not only make our product great today, but are also essential to elevating our customers to the next level. After several productive discussions spanning dozens of subject matter experts across PM, UX, Engineering, and Marketing, we synthesized the findings into four concise product principles.
These product principles are intertwined in our DNA. They serve as reminders and guideposts in our decisions, and, as we’ll show below, are essential for us to succeed in helping our customers achieve the perfect digital experience.
FullStory’s four product principles
Think big, start small, learn fast
Our mission—helping our customers achieve the perfect digital experience—is both sweeping and ambitious. FullStory is able to provide a unique combination of qualitative and quantitative analysis because of our approach to data capture, structure, and indexing.
Not only is the approach unique, but the use cases that we can apply the data to are endless. Every day, we think of new ways to help customers surface this trove of meaningful, valuable data. But with this trove of information, we must temper our ambition. Privacy always comes first, always. And if we try to do too many things at once, we will inevitably do none of them well. Prudence and care must always balance ambition and scope.
For every big swing, there must be a first step. To serve our customers with joy-inducing value with deadline-crushing responsiveness, we must be laser-focused on the use cases that matter. We must constantly create momentum through rapid feedback and continual iteration. Execution eats vision for breakfast.
Workflows over features
Our customers do not buy FullStory for “heatmaps,” “journeys,” or “funnels.” They buy FullStory to improve their digital experience. This happens through intuitively surfaced and logically applied key insights.
Product “features” are only a means to an end. A checkbox on a sheet matters, but outcomes are what really matter.
We must always seek to understand the reason that brings someone to FullStory, and the expected outcome they are looking to achieve. FullStory must provide our customers with indispensable value to achieve their desired outcomes. Seeking this understanding dominates our thinking and informs our every decision.
Loveable, not just viable
Our customers use FullStory regularly in their daily jobs, but our product can’t just be a “tool” to get their work done. We strive for something more: to be delightful, to be indispensable, to be… loveable. FullStory must continually delight our users, and be a true productivity force multiplier.
How can you help others create the perfect digital experience if you do not seek the same in yourself? We fastidiously use FullStory to improve FullStory, and this virtuous cycle continually improves our own product as it in turn is used to help you improve your own.
We seek to build experiences that delight and motivate our customers. We sacrifice scope to capture the right slice of delight in everything we release. Knowing the problems our customers face is essential to level up experiences where they count.
An approachable point of view
Time is universally the most precious resource. Our customers rely on our product to do their jobs effectively and efficiently. A perfect digital experience must be accessible and easily understood.
As FullStory helps our customers to achieve this perfection, we also strive to demonstrate this with our own platform. We build experiences that guide our customers to reaching expected outcomes throughout their entire journey: intuitive, opinionated, helpful, and empowering.
In closing
These principles are a core part of our DNA and will serve as a constant motivator to help our customers succeed. We will always hold ourselves to these high standards, and invite our customers and partners to hold ourselves accountable as well. FullStory will continually strive to surprise and delight.
