Customer Interviews Flashcards
Shift Your Perspective
Organization-centric business model design
* What can we sell customers?
* How can we reach customers most efficiently?
* What relationships do we need to establish with customers?
* How can we make money from our customers?
Shift Your Perspective! (II)
Customer-centric business model design
* What job(s) do(es) our customers need to get done and
how can we help?
* What are our customer‘s aspirations and
how can we help him/her live up to them?
* How do our customers prefer to be addressed?
* How do we, as an enterprise, best fit into their routines?
* What relationship do our customers expect us
to establish with them?
* For what value(s) are customers truly willing to pay?
Six Techniques to Gain Customer Insights
Data
Detective
Description:
Build on existing work
with (desk) research.
Secondary 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, opposides,
or adjacencies.
Difficulty
Level:
Very easy
Stength:
Great foundation research
Weakness:
Static data from diffenet context
Six Techniques to Gain Customer Insights
Journalist
Description:
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 different in
the real world.
Difficulty
Level:
Easy
Strength:
Quick and cheap
to get started with
first learnings and
insights
Weakness:
Customers don‘t
always know what
they want and
actual behavior
differs from
interview answers
Six Techniques to Gain Customer Insights
Anthropologist
Description:
Observe (potential)
customers in the real
world to get good insights
into how they really
behave. Study which jobs
they focus on and how
they get them done. Nore
which pains upset them
and which gains they ain
to achieve
Difficulty
Level:
Medium
Strength:
Data provide
unbiased view
and allow
discovering realworld behavior
Weakness:
Difficult to gain
customer insights
related to new
ideas
Six Techniques to Gain Customer Insights
Impersonator
Description:
„Be your customer“ and
actively use products and
services. Spend a day or
more in your customer‘s
shoes. Draw your
experience as an
(unsatisfied) customer
Difficulty
Level:
Easy
Strength:
Firsthand
experience of
jobs, pains, and
gains
Weakness:
Not always
represantative of
your real
customer or
possible to apply
Six Techniques to Gain Customer Insights
Cocreator
Description:
Integrate customers into
the process of value
creation to learn with
them. Work with
customers to explore and
develop new ideas.
Difficulty
Level:
Very difficult
Strength:
The proximity
with customers
can help you gain
deep insight
Weakness:
May not be
generalized to all
customers and
segments
Six Techniques to Gain Customer Insights
Scientist
Description:
Get customers to
participate (knowingly or
unknowingsly) in an
experiment. Learn from
the outcome.
Difficulty
Level:
Difficult
Strength:
Provides factbased insights on
real-world
behavior and
works particular
well for new ideas
Weakness:
Can be hard to
apply in existing
organizations
because of strict
(customer)
policies and
guidelines
Turning Customer Input into Innovation
Listening to Customers
- Customers can identify their problem, not their solution
- They rarely know much about the innovation process
- They cannot tell you how to change your product
➡️ but they can tell what they wish your product did for them
Listening to Customers
- Customers cannot identify needs or wants for products that do not
exist, or usage they did not conceive of or experience. - Understand the difference between what they want to say and
what they can say
What’s next?
* iPad/Tablet?
* Car?
* App?
* Search?
* Glasses?
However… Talking to Consumers is not in Vain
- Given a product consumers might tell you
what they ‘wish’ they could do with it - If they have some specific needs,
they can describe what they expect the product to do - People are much better at indicating their wishes and desired
outcomes than features. This is also a function of the customer’s
background - For example, given a landline, the ability to be mobile might be a
wish – your Outcome
how do you get the inputs and convert them into innovation?
Five basic tenets
1. Plan Outcome based Interviews
2. Capture Desired Outcomes
3. Organize the Outcomes
4. Use Outcomes to Jumpstart Innovation
Five basic tenets
- Planning an Outcomes based Interview
- Deconstruct step by step the underlying process or activity
- For existing solution
- For your innovation
- Select customers carefully
- Breadth of customers to sample broad and minimize risk
- Depth of customer segments to validate findings
- Example of Cordis
- Diverse set of customers in the panel. Why?
- Multiple stakeholders use the product
- How does each one use it?
Prepare: Ground Rules for Interviewing
- Adopt a beginner‘s mind
- Listen more than you talk
- Get facts, not opinions
- Ask why to get real motivations
- The goal of customer insight interviews is not selling
(even if a sale is involved) – it‘s about learning - Don‘t mention solutions too early
- Follow up
- Always open doors at the end
Five basic tenets
- Capture Desired Outcomes
- Role of a moderator
- Distinguish between solutions and outcomes
- Why does the customer want the solution this way?
- Weed out vague statements
- Get panelists to be clearer about their statements
- Break down step by step any ambiguity in the process you are
trying to improve upon - Structure the unstructured statements. How?
- Construct objective measures around subjective insights, e.g. time
saving (minutes), type of improvement (size, speed etc.). Reconfirm
these measures by speaking to the panelist
Five basic tenets
- Organize the Outcomes
- Here’s where the making a list comes in handy
- Seeing all the outcomes (needs, wants, desires)
in one place helps organize your thoughts - Tells you how far or close you are
to the desired outcome
Checklist
- Cannot emphasize enough
- Checklist of desired outcomes inspires further research and ideas
- Checklists also collect ideas in one place, present them in a succinct
manner, and organize them in a way that is easy to evaluate - They help at every stage of the CPD process
- Also help minimize errors and repetition
Five basic tenets
- Use outcomes to start innovation
- Based on the previous step identify opportunity areas
- Does your product satisfy these needs? Especially those deemed
very important - If yes, the proceed to the next phase
- If no, go back to the drawing board.
- Engineering creates new prototypes to help deliver the desired
outcomes!
Summary
Steps:
Plan outcome-based
customer interviews
Tips:
* Deconstruct the process associated with existing
products
* Select groups that directly use the product. Include
diverse individuals within each group
Examples:
coedis defined four angioplasty steps: insert
artery catheter, place balloon at blockage, inflate
balloon, remove catheter.
Cordis interviewed cardiologists of varying
experience, age, and location, nurses, and
hospital administrators.
Steps:
Capture desired outcomes
Tips:
* Translate interviewees‘ solution statements into
outcomes – by asking why customers want the stated
solution
* Have interviewees discuss each step in using the product
– difficulties encountered, ideal scenarios, etc.
Examples:
Cardiologists said they wanted a “smooth
balloon“ (a solution) because existing ones
risked dissecting blood vessels. Cordis defined
this desired outcome as: “Minimize risk of
dissecting a vessel.“
Steps:
Organize the outcomes
Tips:
* Group desired outcomes under each process step
Examples:
Cordis categorized its outcomes into four
angioplasty steps.
Steps:
Rate outcomes‘ importance
and satisfaction
Tips:
* Validate interview results
* Quantitative survey respondents rate each outcome‘s
importance and satisfaction level 1 to 10
Examples:
customers rated one outcome – minimize
restenosis (recurrence of arterial blockage) – as
9.5 in importance and 3.2 in satisfaction.
Steps:
Use outcomes to jump-start
innovation
Tips:
* Using ratings, identify new product ideas, segment
markets, and define your competitive position
Examples:
Cordis aimed to reduce restenosis by 20% -
ultimately devising its successful stent. It also introduced new catheters, satisfying other desired outcomes. Its U.S. market share ballooned tenfold.
Customer Centered Innovation Map
- Extension of the outcome-based approach
- Here we map the actual job
- How does the customer use the product?
- Map the job step-by-step
- Break down a job the customer wants done into its discrete components
- Checklists help
- Why does this help?
- All jobs have universal structure
- Jobs are different from solutions
Customer Centered Innovation Map (II)
Define
S25 F08
Steps:
Define
Customers:
Determine their
goals and plan
resources
Companies can innovate by:
Simplify planning
Example:
Weight Watchers streamlines diet planning by
offering a system that doesn‘t require calorie
counting
Define
Customer: Determine the goals and plan resources
Firm Simplify the planning
Goal Lose weight. How does Weight Watchers do it?
Key target Learning
