Inside Digs’ Feature Strategy: When (and How) to Say No to Customer Requests

In an industry where feature bloat can kill promising products, Digs has achieved something remarkable: a 41.4% stickiness ratio – nearly triple the “world-class” benchmark of 16%. In a recent episode of Category Visionaries, founder Ryan Fink revealed how they’ve maintained razor-sharp product focus while scaling to over 5,000 homes in their first year.

Defining the Non-Negotiables

For Digs, strategic focus starts with absolute clarity about what they won’t become. “Digs is not a project management software,” Ryan emphasizes. “There’s great companies out there like builder trend who have really captured that part of the market.” Instead of competing in crowded spaces, they maintain strict focus on “the client experience layer for pre-construction design, handoff and warranty.”

This clarity becomes crucial when facing feature requests from potential customers. As Ryan explains, “Well, if you just had this feature or that feature, I would adopt your platform.” The temptation to add features can be overwhelming, especially when it might mean winning a new customer.

The Distillation Process

Rather than making ad-hoc decisions about feature requests, Digs has developed a systematic approach. “It takes a village,” Ryan shares. “It’s our EPD team, our engineering, product and design team, really making sure that we’re ingesting customer feedback and then doing the distillation process, making sure that we’re distilling it against who we are.”

This “distillation process” involves evaluating each request against three core criteria:

1. Company vision alignment
2. Core pain points they’re trying to solve
3. Who they are as a company

If a feature request doesn’t align with all three, they make the hard decision to say no.

Building Customer Trust Through Focus

Counter-intuitively, this disciplined approach to feature requests has helped build customer trust. Rather than trying to be everything to everyone, Digs has positioned itself as a specialist in client experience. This focus has driven remarkable word-of-mouth growth, with Ryan noting that “we’re seeing about 20% of our users are coming into Digs by just word of mouth referrals.”

The strategy extends beyond individual features to shape their entire go-to-market approach. Instead of competing with project management tools, they’ve chosen to partner with them, focusing on complementary functionality that enhances rather than replaces existing workflows.

The Partnership Approach

This focus has enabled strategic partnerships that might otherwise have been impossible. By staying clear of project management features, Digs can partner with companies that might otherwise see them as competitors. As Ryan explains, “We’re going to partner with project management software for the in between the construction process.”

Measuring Success Through Stickiness

The effectiveness of this approach is validated by their remarkable stickiness ratio. At 41.4%, their retention rate suggests they’re solving real problems incredibly well, rather than trying to solve every problem adequately. This focus has also enabled rapid scaling, with adoption across all 50 states and several Canadian provinces in just their first year.

For B2B founders, Digs’ approach to feature requests offers several key lessons:

1. Define clear boundaries about what your product won’t do
2. Create a systematic process for evaluating feature requests
3. Use focus to enable strategic partnerships
4. Measure success through depth (stickiness) rather than breadth (features)
5. Let go of opportunities that would dilute your core value proposition

The pressure to add features will always exist in B2B software. The key is having a systematic way to evaluate these requests that maintains product focus while strengthening customer relationships. By being clear about what they won’t do, Digs has created space to excel at what they will do.

For founders facing their own feature request challenges, the lesson is clear: strategic focus isn’t just about saying no – it’s about having a systematic process for evaluating requests that keeps you true to your core value proposition while building deeper customer relationships.