Stepping into the CPO Role at Flomni
Joining Flomni as Chief Product Officer was a big challenge. I was tasked with leading product strategy for a platform that mixes omnichannel communication and AI automation, built for medium-to-large B2B companies. Flomni's core idea was strong: bringing together different channels and using AI to handle many interactions automatically. But turning that idea into a product that worked well, could grow, and was reliable meant I first had to really understand the situation on the ground before setting a clear path forward.
What Kind of Product Work Was Needed?
One of the first things I needed to figure out was what kind of job this actually was. Where could product effort have the biggest impact for Flomni and our B2B clients? Looking at different types of product work, and focusing on delivering real business value, I saw it was a mix:
- Feature Development: We handled many channels and AI topics. But I questioned if the features were deep enough. Were there big gaps in important B2B workflows, like tricky support cases, or better CRM connections? It seemed we needed things like better analytics or more control over the AI.
- Growth: Getting new customers is important, but for us, scaling also meant making the product easier to use. How could we make setting up omnichannel flows simpler? Could we improve self-service tools for AI setup to help clients get value faster?
- Product/Market Fit Expansion: Flomni worked with medium-to-large companies, and some needed on-premise setups. I wondered if this stretched our main SaaS system too thin. Was the AI general enough, or did we need to focus more on specific industries?
- Scaling Work: The core promise depended on smooth integrations and reliable AI. This meant tackling underlying tech issues, making the platform stable under heavy use (especially voice), managing AI costs, and meeting the tough security and compliance needs of big companies.
Pretty quickly, I realized that while building new features or expanding was tempting, the biggest impact would likely come from scaling what we already had and growing its use by improving the core experience. My gut told me we needed to make sure the core product was solid before expanding too much.
Strengths and Strains
As I started digging into how Flomni actually worked, I saw a common picture for fast-growing B2B tech companies. It highlighted areas where our ways of working needed attention: