user research says one thing — your biggest customer says another

the challenge

you ran 12 discovery interviews. 10 of 12 users said the biggest friction in their workflow is the reporting step — it takes too long, they always need to re-export. you built the roadmap around fixing reporting. you presented it at the last customer advisory board and it landed well. this week, nova corp — your largest customer at $420k ARR, 30% of revenue — sent a detailed product brief asking for an automated approval workflow. no one in your research cohort mentioned it. your account executive says nova will churn within six months if it isn't prioritized.

nova corp is technically one customer, but their segment (enterprise compliance teams) is the market you're trying to grow into. your current users are mostly individual contributors; nova's use case is management-level. you have four engineers and two sprints of capacity before Q3 planning.