Four Ways to Understand Your Customers Deeply

In a government institution where there was too much emphasis on creation of complex policy issues, a successful product implementation receives support to further enhance functionality. A critical success factor that enabled digital transition inside government was attributed to sharp focus in understanding customer needs.  

I recently attended a case study analysis session for Digital Government class. The case study focused on a team effort to champion a “digital culture” for the UK Government agency known as the Government Digital Service (GDS). The preliminary win was the successful creation of a Minimum Viable Product (MVP). GDS received buy-in / support from other government ministries and received requests to expand the product usage to other counties. Case details also provided good references on how team utilized agile, efforts on creating MVP, and lean methods used to keep the work progressing by spending lots of effort in understanding customer requirements. 

Key lessons learned from the case in the following priority order were:

• Customer Needs
• Policy Needs
• Operational Needs
• Technology Needs

Although, the intent of the case analysis at a deeper level was to highlight how GDS increased their power / influence over others within Government to ensure progress, I wanted to revisit how do we go about understanding our customer deeply.

In software development, initial goal is to understand customer requirements as much as possible. “What does customer want?”, “Do they know what they want?” “Why do they want that?” “What are their pain points?” Using concepts provided by The Value Proposition Design (Osterwalder, Pigneur, Bernarda, Smith), it is critical that we understand customer perspectives when designing value propositions. Techniques that we can use are:

Access Existing Information, and Research

• Learn what is popular with potential customers. How? Use Google Analytics, Trends, Keyword Planner, any Research Reports.
• Perform social media analytics. For example, most people think about Facebook and Twitter when it comes to engaging with customers online. However, Instagram has one of the most active and engaged customer base. Forrester Research claims Instagram generates 120 times more engagement per follower than Twitter (Pinkham, blogs.constantcontrol.com).
• Use your CRM to obtain any previous relationship data from customers in similar industry. Salesforce has over 4 million subscribers; there are also other organizations maintaining CRM data on unsupported licensed products. There is so much data in the CRM applications that is not used to gain any insights!

Interview Your Customers

• Create customer profile. Enter details into CRM application.
• Create an outline for your intervew. What do you need to learn from your customers?
• Conduct interview. Understand their business; focus on their pain points and their successes
• Look at their business model. What stands out?
• Search for patterns between this customer, and others in similar industry.
• Gather data, but come up with your own insights.
• Categorize pains as anything that prevents the customers from getting job done. Such as undesired outcomes, obstacles, risks. Describe the pains as concretely as possible.
• In contrast, gains describe the outcomes and benefits your customers want. These could be enhanced functionality for efficiency or it could be cost savings type functions, for example.
• Understand that you are not there to sell; it should only be about learning (i.e. get facts, ask why, listen).
• Ask why (several times!). Do not just settle for superficial understanding.
• Keep in mind that new value propositions do not always have to start with the customer. But it should end with addressing pains that customers talk about.

Jump Into Their World

What customers do on daily basis often differ from what they believe they do. “No matter how many intermediaries lie between a company and its customers, at the end of the day, customers are breathing, thinking, buying individuals. Their behavior is measurable and changeable.” (The Lean Startup, Eric Ries). Therefore, key question here is how do you immerse yourself in your customer’s life?

1. Go stay at your customer’s home and live with the family. Learn about what drives him / her.
2. Observe shopping behavior
3. Shadow your customer for a day

All 3 points (especially #1) may seem awkward, and may not be applicable to your situation. However, there have been numerous cases in which "jumping into your customer’s world" has produced very valuable inputs. One case that immediately comes to mind is a Code for America fellow quitting his job, and going on welfare to be able to receive food stamps so that he can fully understand the user’s perspective of those applying for food stamps. He would then go on to utilize this user perspective to transform this Food Stamp initiative into digital platform. (CalFresh Food Assistance Program; Danielson, Bandy).

Find Customer Zero

Find a customer willing to take a risk on your new product or service, which we will call Customer Zero. Then use this Customer to shape your product or service through experimentation and learning.

Given above points, how will you continue to improve the above steps? Will you relentlessly take a customer perspective and listen to them?

Customer Needs + Value Proposition = Fit

Customer Needs = Do you fully understand what your customer wants?

Value Proposition = How will you create value for what customer wants?

Customers will be merciless if you do not find a fit! Figure out what really matters to your customers in order to prioritize value propositions that are likely to survive rigorous testing.