How product managers can build customer-centric AI products







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TLDR







Juanjo Duran, Chief Product Officer & Chief Marketing Officer at Exoticca, joins Product Mastery Now to share how to create AI-powered product features customers actually love, not just features that sound impressive. Drawing on 25+ years in diverse leadership roles, Juanjo discusses leveraging customer obsession, data-driven decisions, and practical frameworks to balance innovation with execution. Learn how to embed AI across teams, structure innovation projects, and use the customer journey—from inspiration through to objection handling—as your roadmap for building differentiated products that deliver real value.







Introduction







Picture this: You’re a product leader trying to build AI features that customers actually use, not just technology that sounds impressive in board meetings. You’re scaling your product organization while maintaining innovation momentum. And you’re doing all this in an industry where the stakes for getting it wrong are high. We are discussing building smarter products that integrate AI that customers actually want. We’ll also explore practical frameworks for balancing innovation with execution in rapidly scaling organizations. 







Our guest is Juanjo Duran, Chief Product Officer and Chief Marketing Officer at Exoticca, a leading travel tech platform that provides multi-day travel packages. Juanjo brings a unique perspective—25+ years in consumer goods at P&G and Mars, operations leadership at easyJet, marketing at eDreams, and now product leadership at Exoticca.  







Summary of Concepts Discussed for Product Managers







Key Topics & Takeaways









* From FMCG to Travel Tech: The Leadership Thread



* Juanjo describes his journey from Procter & Gamble and Mars, to travel and product leadership at Exoticca.







* The unifying principle? Putting the customer at the center, leveraging data-driven decisions, and focusing on how brands create value.















* The Travel Customer Journey Redefined



* In travel, the journey starts the moment a customer begins browsing for trips, not just when booking or traveling.







* Product pages are transformed to make users fall in love with destinations, describe the experience simply, and address objections upfront.















* Structuring Innovation: Purpose-Driven Evaluation



* Initiatives at Exoticca are filtered by their fit with company purpose: making dream trips accessible, creating extraordinary experiences, and serving customers end-to-end.







* Innovation efforts are prioritized by value to customers, strategic fit, feasibility, and business impact.















* The AI Journey: From Efficiency to Customer Value



* Early AI efforts focused on automating repetitive tasks for efficiency. The real shift came from asking: “How can AI deliver better value for customers?”







* AI is embedded across every team, used in personalizing customer experiences, managing dynamic trip pricing, addressing customer queries (pre/post booking), and predicting pricing far in advance.















* Innovation Project Structure



* Cross-functional discovery and alignment at the outset saves time later.







* Prototyping, rapid iteration, and A/B testing form the foundation of execution.