Read and Write

2.3 Understanding Customers

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TION

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Six Techniques to Gain Customer Insights Understanding the customer’s perspective is crucial to

designing great value propositions. Here are six techniques

that will get you started. Make sure you use a good mix of

these techniques to understand your customers deeply.

The Data Detective Build on existing work with (desk) research. Sec-

ondary research reports and customer data you

might already have provide a great foundation

for getting started. Look also at data outside

your industry and study analogs, opposites, or

adjacencies.

Diffi culty level: ★

Strength: great foundation for further research

Weakness: static data from a diff erent context

→ p. 108 for more

The Anthropologist Observe (potential) customers in the real world

to get good insights into how they really be-

have. Study which jobs they focus on and how

they get them done. Note which pains upset

them and which gains they aim to achieve.

Diffi culty level: ★★★

Strength: data provide unbiased view and allow

discovering real-world behavior

Weakness: diffi cult to gain customer insights

related to new ideas

→ p. 114 for more

The Journalist Talk to (potential) customers as an easy way to

gain customer insights. It’s a well-established

practice. However, customers might tell you one

thing in an interview but behave diff erently in the

real world.

Diffi culty level: ★★

Strength: quick and cheap to get started with fi rst

learnings and insights

Weakness: customers don’t always know what

they want and actual behavior diff ers from inter-

view answers

→ p. 110 for more

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The Impersonator “Be your customer” and actively use products and

services. Spend a day or more in your customer’s

shoes. Draw from your experience as an (unsatis-

fi ed) customer.

Diffi culty level: ★★

Strength: fi rsthand experience of jobs, pains, and

gains

Weakness: not always representative of your real

customer or possible to apply

The Cocreator Integrate customers into the process of value

creation to learn with them. Work with customers

to explore and develop new ideas.

Diffi culty level: ★★★★★

Strength: the proximity with customers can help

you gain deep insights

Weakness: may not be generalized to all custom-

ers and segments

The Scientist Get customers to participate (knowingly or

unknowingly) in an experiment. Learn from the

outcome.

Diffi culty level: ★★★★

Strength: provides fact-based insights on

real-world behavior; works particularly well for

new ideas

Weakness: can be hard to apply in existing

organizations because of strict (customer) poli-

cies and guidelines

→ p. 216 for more

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Never before have creators had more access to readily

available information and data inside and outside their

companies before even getting started with designing value.

Use available data sources as a launching pad to getting

started with customer insights.

Google Keyword Planner Learn what’s popular with potential

customers by fi nding the top fi ve

search terms related to your idea.

How often are they searched for?

Google Trends Compare three search terms repre-

senting three diff erent trends related

to your idea.

Third-Party Research Reports Identify three readily available

research reports that can serve you

as a starting point to prepare your

own customer and value proposition

research.

Government Census Data, World Bank, IMF, and more Identify the (government) data that

are relevant to your idea and at your

fi ngertips via the web.

The Data Detective: Get Started with Existing Information

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Social Media Analytics Existing companies and brands should:

Identify the shakers and movers

related to their brand on social

media?

Spot the 10 most frequently

mentioned positive and negative

things said about them on social

media.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

List the top three questions,

complaints, and requests that you

are getting from your daily interac-

tions with customers (e.g., support).

Tracking Customers on Your Website List the top three ways customers reach

your site (e.g., search, referrals).

Find the 10 most and least popular

destinations on your website.

Data Mining Existing company should mine their

data to:

Identify three patterns that could be

useful to their new idea.

Source: Siegel & Davenport, Predictive Analytics: The Power to Predict Who Will Click, Buy, Lie, or Die, 2013.

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Create a

customer profi le.

Sketch out the jobs,

pains, and gains you

believe characterize

the customer you are

targeting. Rank jobs,

pains, and gains in

order of importance.

Create an

interview outline.

Ask yourself what

you want to learn.

Derive the interview

questions from your

customer profi le.

Ask about the most

important jobs, pains,

and gains.

10 1

2

Review the interview.

Assess if you need to

review the interview

questions based on

what you learned.

5

OBJECTIVE

Gain a better customer

understanding

OUTCOME

First lightly validated customer

profi le(s)

Talk to customers to gain insights relevant to your context.

Use the Value Proposition Canvas to prepare interviews and

organize the chaotic mass of information that will be coming

at you during the interview process.

The Journalist: Interview Your Customers EX

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Conduct the interview.

Conduct the inter-

view by following the

interview ground rules

outlined on the next

page.

Tip

Capture your biggest

insights from all the

interviews.

Capture.

Map out the jobs,

pains, and gains you

learned about in the

interview on an empty

customer profi le.

Make sure you also

capture business

model learnings.

Write down your most

important insights.

Search for patterns.

Can you discover

similar jobs, pains,

and gains? What

stands out? What is

similar or diff erent

among interviewees?

Why are they similar

or diff erent? Can

you detect specifi c

(recurring) contexts

that infl uence jobs,

pains, and gains?

3

4

Synthesize.

Make a separate

synthesized customer

profi le for every

customer segment

that emerges from

all your interviews.

Write down your most

important insights on

sticky notes.

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Rule 1 Adopt a beginner’s mind. Listen with a “fresh pair of ears” and avoid inter-

pretation. Explore unexpected jobs, pains, and

gains in particular.

Rule 2 Listen more than you talk. Your goal is to listen and learn, not to inform,

impress, or convince your customer of anything.

Avoid wasting time talking about your own beliefs,

because it’s at the expense of learning about your

customer.

Rule 3 Get facts, not opinions. Don’t ask, “Would you…?”

Ask, “When is the last time you have…?”

Rule 4 Ask “why” to get real motivations. Ask, “Why do you need to do…?”

Ask, “Why is ___ important to you?”

Ask, “Why is ___ such a pain?”

Ground Rules for Interviewing

It is an art to conduct good interviews

that provide relevant insights for value

proposition design. Make sure you

focus on unearthing what matters to

(potential) customers rather than try-

ing to pitch them solutions. Follow the

rules on this spread to conduct great

interviews.

Get “Ground Rules for Interviewing” poster

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Rule 5 The goal of customer insight interviews is not selling (even if a sale is involved); it’s about learning. Don’t ask, “Would you buy our solution?” Ask

“what are your decision criteria when you make a

purchase of…?”

Rule 6 Don’t mention solutions (i.e., your prototype value proposition) too early.

Don’t explain, “Our solution does…”

Ask, “What are the most important things you are

struggling with?”

Rule 7 Follow up. Get permission to keep your interviewee’s contact

information to come back for more questions and

answers or testing prototypes.

Rule 8 Always open doors at the end. Ask, “Who else should I talk to?”

Fitzpatrick, The Mom Test, 2013.

Tips Interviews are an excellent starting point to

learn from customers, but typically they don’t

provide enough or suffi ciently reliable insights

for making critical decisions. Complement your

interviews with other research, just like a good

journalist does further research to fi nd the real

story behind what people tell. Add real-world

observations of customers and experiments

that produce hard data to your research mix.

Conduct interviews in teams of two people.

Decide in advance who will lead the interview

and who will take notes. Use a recording device

(photo, video, or other) if possible, but be aware

that interviewees might not answer the same

way with a recording device on the table.

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The Anthropologist: Dive into Your Customer’s World

Dive deep into your (potential) customers’ worlds to gain

insights about their jobs, pains, and gains. What customers

do on a daily basis in their real settings often diff ers from

what they believe they do or what they will tell you in an

interview, survey, or focus group.

B2C: Stay with the family. Stay at one of your potential customers’ home for

several days and live with the family. Participate in

daily routines. Learn about what drives that person.

B2B: Work alongside/consult. Spend time working with or alongside a (poten-

tial) customer (e.g., in a consulting engagement).

Observe. What keeps the person up at night?

B2C: Observe shopping behavior. Go to a store where your (potential) customers

shop and observe people for 10 hours. Watch.

Can you detect any patterns?

B2C: Shadow your customer for a day. Be your (potential) customer’s shadow and follow him

or her for a day. Write down all the jobs, pains, and

gains you observe. Time stamp them. Synthesize.

Learn.

B2B/B2C? How could you immerse yourself in your (potential)

customer’s life? Be creative! Go beyond the usual

boundaries.

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Tips Observe and take notes. Hold

back with interpretation based

on your own experience. Stay

nonjudgmental! Work like an

anthropologist and watch with

“fresh” eyes and an open

mind-set.

Pay attention to both what you

see and what you don't see.

Capture not only what you can

observe but also what is not

talked about such as feelings or

emotions.

Develop customer empathy as

a critical mind-set to perform

this type of contextual inquiry

effectively.

A Day in the Life Worksheet

Time Activity (what I see) Notes (what I think)

7 pm brush kid's teeth before bed parents annoyed by water splashing everywhere

Capture the most important

jobs, pains, and gains of the

customer you shadowed.

OBJECTIVE

Understand your customer’s world

in more detail

OUTCOME

Map of your customer's day

Download “A Day in the Life” worksheet

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OBJECTIVE

Crystallize your customer

OUTCOME

Synthesized Customer Profi le(s)

Identify Patterns in Customer Research

Display. Display all the customer

profi les from your

research on a large wall.

Group and segment. Group similar customer

profi les in to one or more

separate segments if you

can identify patterns in

the jobs, pains, and gains.

Synthesize. Synthesize the profi les

from each segment

into a single master

profi le. Identify the most

common jobs, pains, and

gains and use separate

labels to describe them

in the master profi le.

Design. Get started with proto-

typing value propositions

after fi nishing your fi rst

attempt at customer

segmentation. Design

one or more value prop-

osition prototypes with

confi dence, based on the

newly identifi ed patterns

in the master profi le.

1 2

3

4

Analyze your data and try to detect patterns once you

have a good amount of customer research gathered.

Search for customers with similar jobs, pains, or gains or

customers that care about the same jobs, pains, or gains

and make separate customer profi les.

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Synthesis Example: Master profile of a business professional / book reader

To establish a master profile of book readers, we looked at the jobs, pains, and

gains of the different customer profiles from our interviews. We synthesized the

most frequent ones into the master profile by using representative labels.

open source online icon

library

grow business

create new business line

renovate our business

increase our product

portfolio

grow by 5 percent annually

lack of time because

of job

limited amount of time

no time takes a lot

of time to learn

Mentioned several times

Tips Pay special attention to outlier

profiles. They might be irrelevant,

but they could represent a special

learning opportunity. Sometimes the

best discoveries lie at the edges.

Ask yourself if an outlier might be

a bellwether and a sign of things to

come that you should pay attention

to. Or maybe an outlier is different

by positive deviance. It may simply

be a better solution to jobs, pains,

and gains than peers offer. lack of time

improve or build

a business

Outlier not retained

in master profile

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Pay attention to earlyvangelists when

researching potential customers and

looking for patterns. The term was

coined by Steve Blank* to describe

customers who are willing and able to

take a risk on a new product or service.

Use earlyvangelists to build a foothold

market and shape your value proposi-

tions via experimentation and learning.

1 Has a problem or need. In other words, there is a job

to be done.

5 Has or can acquire a budget. The customer has committed or

can quickly acquire a budget to

purchase a solution.

2 Is aware of having a problem. The customer understands that

there is a problem or job.

3 Is actively looking for a solution. The customer is searching for a solu-

tion and has a timetable for fi nding it.

4 Has put together solution out of piece parts. The job is so important that the

customer has cobbled together

an interim solution.

HELP!

HELP!

Find Your Earlyvangelist

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