Is that really how it went down though? Maybe the features were just bad ideas from the start, customer chats or not. Sometimes you can talk to people and still totally miss what they actually need. Sounds like the real problem was bad execution, not just skipping a step. Your buddy might have wasted that time anyway, lol.
Honestly reminds me of my old team lead who insisted on weekly customer calls. We'd all nod along, then go build whatever we wanted anyway. The calls just became a box to check, not a real guide. So yeah, talking to people doesn't fix a broken process.