Stop Asking Asking Customers What They They Want, Instead Ask What They Do
Ask them what they do, when they do what they do, what challenges are they running to, and how are they solving those challenges today.
One of the biggest challenges that business owners or product managers (PM) face is figuring out what their customers want. Too often, we ask customers what they want, instead of asking what they do.
Instead of asking customers what they want, ask them what they do. This gives you a better understanding of their needs and desires, and will help you provide them with products and services they’ll actually buy and use.
Asking “what do you want?” is putting the pressure of describing a solution to the problem that they are needing to be fixed. They may not be able to explain this imaginary solution because they have not experienced it yet.
A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.” — Steve Jobs
If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” — Henry Ford
Focus on the problems your customer currently has. Ask them about what they already know and understand. Don’t ask them to give a solution they don’t have. More importantly, when the customer had a problem, they may have come up with a solution on their own, then asked for that solution.
In many cases it wasn’t the best solution or the right solution to their problem. Would they use it after 1 week? 2 weeks? 1 month? The same customer after using the solution they asked for may not even like what they asked for. Your customer is not the solution designer. You are the solution designer for the problem your customer has.
Focus on what they do
Whenever I talk to my customers, I navigate away from conversations about what they want or even what they need. I try to focus on what they do and why they do it and what problems they are facing when they do those tasks. You are trying to understand the pain points or friction they go through in a typical day that they want to be solved.
These customers essentially want those pain points / friction to go away. Your goal is to understand the paint points and solve the problem for them so they will use the solution you build.
Understand their pain-points
Most times what customers want is to
- Take less time to do something
- Spend less money to achieve something
- Make more money by doing something
- In the case of B2C could gain more knowledge or be rewarded.
The pain-point they have typically translates to one of those things mentioned above. Your goal is not to solve all of them. Great products can be built even by solving a couple of those problems.
The focus is on the customer to understand what they do. If a product manager can really understand what they do and the pain points in doing those items, then the PM can work towards reducing the number of steps or eliminating the steps or figure out a new way or automate the steps. Fundamentally we are trying to make it easy for the end user to do the tasks they do everyday. These customers are looking for ways to eliminate the painful things they do every day to achieve their goals.
Listen To What Your Customers Mean irrespective of what they say
Would you find this feature useful?
This is another question that is not useful to ask as every feature someone finds a use for it. The question is, if this feature is really solving a known pain point for the customer. Is the investment to build this feature worth it? How many other customers would benefit from this?
What do you think of this design?
This is another question that is not revealing any useful information. Most people don’t know the difference between good or bad design. You are the product manager / designer and have a trained eye to figure out what is a good design.
Instead recall with them how they solved a problem in the past and you can pick hints on how the current design relates to the pain they have. Every individual customer is an expert in their own desires, and these desires can range greatly based on background, personality and experiences.
Let’s take a customer example
Say a customer has to read a number of documents and capture a few items from the document. Its currently taking a long time for the customer to do that task. If you ask the customer what they want, they may say I need a UI where I can quickly search and find the information I am looking for. They may also ask for a button when clicked quickly copies the text I was looking for. Say you as a product manager implements this solution, would they like it? Would they use it everyday?
Instead focus on the problem, and what they do and don’t want to do.
- What do they do everyday? They manually read the documents, look for specific content and need to capture it and it is a laborious process.
- What do they do not want to do? They do not want to do it manually. They love to eliminate the manual steps.
Can we eliminate the manual steps? Automatically read the text and extract what they need? See how much its different than asking them for a solution as opposed to understanding what they do and solve it for them.
Invest in in-app feedback instrumentation
Say you have built a Saas product. Great products have instrumentation built in to understand what features get used and which gets ignored. An awesome feature you built in may have never been used by a customer even though you did ask the customer what they want.
It’s important for the product manager to have the courage to admit this problem and take corrective actions. It’s important to stop investing on features no-one uses and divert that investment for enhancing the features that actually get used. Have a constant flow of data, doing experimentation to understand what is getting traction in solving customers’ problems.
Questions like the below are important to constantly be aligned with what problems we are solving.
- Which features do customers actively use everyday?
- Which features customers are not using on a daily basis?
- Are they using these features incorrectly?
- Are they creating workarounds?
This will help you better understand how the product is actually solving customers problems. This will result in a very loyal customer base.
Summary
Your customers are not solution designers. Asking them what they want, they will not be able to translate the problem into a solution. Ask them what they do? When they do what they do, what challenges are they running to? How does this impact their daily work? How are they solving those challenges?
And whatever solution you design to solve the pain point, don’t automatically assume it will work. Continue to investigate if they are using it everyday? Add instrumentation to get in-app feedback to get this feedback constantly to optimise your solution to truly solve the pain a customer has. Remember your goal is to make things people buy and use. So you should truly understand what they do everyday and the pain points to truly design something that they would use everyday.
