Know Your Customers

1. KNOW
YOUR
CUSTOMERS
Howard Tiersky
CEO

2. It’s often said that to succeed at
innovation, you must have deep insight
into your customers needs.

3. Although, there
is an alternative
approach some
companies take.
We call it the
UNNI HASKELL
Method.

4.
Who is Unni Haskell?
Unni Haskell,
is a 62-year-old
woman from
Stamford, CT,
famous for hitting a
hole-in-one on the
first swing of the first
hole of the very first
game of golf she ever
played.

5. The odds of that
are 25,000 to 1.
But she did it!

6. So you do have a choice. You can use
the Unni Haskell method, get crazy lucky,
and your customers will “just happen” to
love the innovations you create.

7. Or, you can use
the strategy of
successful
innovation that
comes from deep
insights into your
customers needs
and points of pain.

8. Early in my career,
I got a cool chance
to lead a product
development team
to create a new
kind of internal
communication
platform for large
accounting firms.

9. Our target users
were auditors and
tax consultants.
We had some past
experience with
people in these
“types” of roles, and
we felt we knew
what they needed.

10. So we checked
that box:
of course we knew
our customers!

11. And we came up with a concept for the
product that we loved. It was
innovative, creative, exciting!

12. We worked hard on
that idea! Eighteen
hours a day for
months. We were
inspired and
committed to the
idea, the product,
fulfilling its potential.

13. What happened
when the product
launched?

14. We had
overlooked some
of the users’
critical needs.

15. The features we
thought were so
FANTASTIC
were of marginal
importance to
our customers.

16. On top of that, we had
some major usability
problems because we
had failed to
understand some of
the circumstances
under which the
product would be used.

17. It was a disaster.

18. Our sponsors
pulled the
plug.
The team
disbanded.

19. We couldn’t
believe it!
We cared
so much!
We tried
so hard!

20. But honestly? It was totally predicable.

21. We fell in love with our idea, instead of
falling in love with our users

22. We wanted our PRODUCT to fulfill its
potential, instead of thinking about how to
help our CUSTOMERS fulfill their potential.

23. But these
mistakes are not
uncommon.
According to
Nielsen, 85% of
new products fail.
85%

24. That’s probably for
a variety of
reasons, but let’s
imagine for a
moment:

25. Your next product has
a set of features that
solves a huge problem
for customers. It is
communicated in a
way they find easy to
understand, and it is
available at a price
they are willing to pay.

26. Do you think that
product would
have an 85%
chance of failure?

27. How well do YOU know your customer?
What does it even mean to “know your
customer”, anyway?

28. Lack of sufficient
customer insight
is a major
reason why large
organizations fail
to innovate and
transform.

29. So here are a few quick tactics for
incorporating the customer voice into your
product development process.

30. The first tactic is humility.

31. Have you ever
bought something
expensive that you
totally intended to
use, but once you
bought it, you used it
once and then barely
ever used it again?

32. Or have you ever bought a gym
membership, and then not gone to the
gym after the first week?

33. So the reality is,
we don’t even
really know
ourselves that
well!

34. Acknowledge that
it’s no small feat
to understand
someone else
well enough to
predict their
future behavior!

35. The second tactic is specificity.

36. What do you need to
know about your potential
customers or users? Why
they do business with
you, or why don’t they do
business with you? What
are their unmet needs?
How is their world
changing, and who else is
courting them? What do
they like least about your
product or service?

37. And, what is the one thing that, if you could
do it, they would happily pay double?

38. The third tactic is involvement.

39. Don’t leave
customer insight
to the market
research team.

40. Have everyone on
the product
design team
spend at least a
couple days
trailing customers,
watching them in
their native habit,
to help them
understand their
current reality.

41. Team members
come back from
this type of
experience full of
ideas!

42. The fourth tactic
is iteration.

43. The world is changing
fast. Keep studying
your customers. Learn
how their needs are
changing, and, as
your product moves
from an idea to a
prototype to beta, take
every opportunity you
possibly can to study
how users react.

44. The fifth tactic is 4D Listening.

45. Try to see past the surface of what your
customers are telling you they need to
what they actually need.

46.
“If I had asked my
customers what they
wanted, they would
have said faster
horses.”
Henry Ford
famously quipped:

47. Which is exactly it. Your customers may not be able
to envision the kind of solutions your product team
can conceive. Listen past their stated requests to
understand their underlying concerns and needs.

48. Ford’s customers
wanted to go
faster. And he
found a way!

49. FROM helps clients win the digital customer by developing
and optimizing properties, creating new digital products
and transforming teams, unifying the digital experience
online, in stores and everywhere you need to touch the
next generation of digital consumers.
More at FROM.DIGITAL