3 Steps to Remember When Customer Goals Don’t Fit Your Product

I was meeting with a customer whose onboarding had been stuck, mostly because it hadn’t been a priority, and I was eager to generate some excitement. Unfortunately, when I asked about their top goals , they described something our product simply isn’t built to do.

I froze, thinking about how I could I set clear expectations without risking losing further momentum? The worst things I could say was “Sorry, our product can’t do this” or “Yes of course our product can do this”. The first statement would have diminished our product’s value, and left the customer feeling like they made a mistake buying our software. The second statement would have led us down a path of over promising & under delivering, a cardinal sin in CS.

Enter the Align–Reframe–Redirect framework. It’s an easy acronym to remember, and it’s well suited for situations where customers have unrealistic ideas about how they’ll use your product.

1. ACKNOWLEDGE (the intent behind their goal)

You want to validate the why without validating the wrong use case.

Example script

• “It sounds like your priority is [insert customer’s underlying goal] so you can [insert desired outcome or benefit] — that makes complete sense.”

Why this works:
Customers don’t actually want the feature—they want the outcome. Start there.

2. REFRAME (Translate their desired outcome into something your product can deliver)

This is where you steer the conversation toward achievable outcomes without saying “we don’t do that.”

Reframing prompt you can use

• “The way our platform supports that outcome is through [capability 1], [capability 2], and [capability 3]. While we don’t do [customer’s requested workflow] directly, what we can do is [supported capability], which helps you achieve the underlying objective of [desired outcome].”

Key:
Anchor on value they can get now, not the feature you can’t provide.

3. REDIRECT (Co-create realistic, product-aligned goals)

The goal is to walk out with goals that are:

• Product-aligned

• Measurable

• Valuable

• Low chance of later disappointment

Goal-setting script

• “To make sure you get real ROI in the first 90 days, here are the outcomes our customers typically achieve. Which of these align with your priorities?”

• Offer a short menu of real achievable outcomes.

If needed, you can explicitly reset expectations:

• “To make sure you’re investing time in the best approache, I want to be transparent that our platform isn’t designed for [requested approach]. But we can absolutely help with [supported capability] and [supported capability], which directly support your broader objective of [desired outcome].”

Acknowledge, Reframe, Redirect is one of those frameworks that becomes second nature with practice. The more you use it, the easier it gets to apply it in real time—especially when customers share unexpected or unrealistic goals. And if you can’t immediately connect the dots on the spot, that’s fine. You can use ARR live during a call or asynchronously afterward to go deeper and map their goals to the right product capabilities.