Customers are buying proximity to an outcome.
It's more than the jobs to be done.
Two things keep showing up in our customer conversations that have changed how I think about what we’re building.
First: they want us to have an opinion.
A strong one. Like “Tell me what matters, why it matters, and what I should do about it.”
That gets me excited because it means nobody’s asking us to be vanilla. Nobody wants the neutral tool that lays the data out and shrugs. They want clear signals, clear guidance, a point of view on what matters and why.
Second: they have to trust it’s true.
I’m pumped to say that Accoil is proving it’s trustworthy. Customers tell us. Really, that’s a baseline requirement for all products with any staying power.
When people trust a product, they start to rely on it. And when trust lands, users start asking new questions. It stops being “is this right?” and becomes “okay, I believe you. Now give me more. Take it a step further. What else can you tell me? Give me more of your point of view.”
Establishing trust starts a bigger conversation.
Our customers, like most companies, have big fat tech stacks — an analytics tool, a CDP, comms tools, and now Claude or Codex or whatever model you like. They’re not short on data. Some say they’re drowning in it.
Our whole category is busy selling them more of it. Analytics sells visibility. Customer success platforms compete to hoover up the most data and show you everything.
But seeing everything is a problem, too. What’s more, most of our users didn’t set out to be data analysts. What a lot of tools do is ask a Customer Success Manager to also be an analyst.
Should a CSM be good with data? Yeah. But they’re measured on keeping customers longer and growing revenue, on managing the strategic accounts, and on spending their time well. And it’s hard to spend your time well when most of it goes to figuring out where to spend it (the analyst bit).
So I think it is worth asking of every product: what are we asking our customers to be that maybe they don’t want to be?
I’ve watched the same pattern play out across team after team: someone gets excited about a shiny new dashboard — bought or built, doesn’t matter — then gets overwhelmed by it, then quietly tunes it out. It just becomes noise.
The cognitive load of working out what all the data and dashboard numbers mean, and then what to actually do about it, is just too high. So people drift.
So if data isn’t the scarce thing anymore — and it isn’t — what’s missing for a founder doing CS work at 11pm on a Friday? A clear signal with a clear so what. Do I need to pay attention to this, yes or no? Do I need to act on it, yes or no? And what am I going to do about it? That’s not a chart. That’s a point of view.
Which brings me to the thing I can’t stop thinking about:
People don’t buy tools. They buy proximity to an outcome.
Buy a project management tool and you’re really buying “how close can you get me to done, with the least headache.” Buy a social media scheduler and you’re buying proximity to a bigger audience. The question is only sometimes “what features do you have.” The bigger question is more often “how much closer can you get me to where I’m trying to go?”
I was reading about Buffer crossing $25M ARR after years bouncing around the $20M mark. Their founder said they’re trying to build a simple tool. That stuck with me. Our customers aren’t asking for more complex, more sophisticated, more dynamic. They’re asking us to make their lives simpler.
It starts with trust. Once that’s there, the question becomes: how much more can you give me? And the most valuable thing a customer will ever tell you isn’t a feature request. It’s “I believe you. Your point of view is valid. Now give me more. Get me closer.”
That’s the whole game.
Peter