Learning What Customers Want
by Harper Maddox
Background
Who Am I?
Harper Maddox
CTO, EdgeTheory
Computer Science & MBA
Product leader at various startups for the past 5 years. Thinks like an engineer, so not a good proxy for customers.
Focus
Are you building the right thing?
Your resources are limited
You might not get a second chance
You could guess ...
Or you could just talk to customers and learn what they want
Why should you talk to customers?
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It’s easy
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We can uncover customer needs and build a product that focuses on solving their most important problems.
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It can potentially save us from going on a wild goose chase and burning through all of our money.
Getting Customer Feedback
3 Ways to learn from customers
1) Customer Interviews
2) Surveys
3) User Studies
Interviews
Open Ended Interviews
Goal: Understand what life is like for your customers
Use Case: a new company, new product, or a product reset
Talk to 5 to 20 users
Before you jump into product development,
do your homework and understand your target customers
Planning for your interviews
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Who is the ideal person to talk to?
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How I can I find them?
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What’s the format of the interview?
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What are my goals?
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What questions should I ask?
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What should I do with the results?
Target Customer
Find a niche that you think will be successful
Segment your customers into the niche:
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B2B: Industry, Job Function (E.g., Sales), and Company Size
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B2C: Demographics, Psychographics
Who to Interview
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Friends in the niche
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Friends of Friends (referrals)
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Other Friends & Family
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Randoms (Cold Interviews)
Warning: People close to you will lie to you and tell you what you want to hear
How to find more people
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Search for local business in your market
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Search online for influencers
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Go to a coffee shop
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Get interview leads from an advertising campaign
You may have to pay these people for doing an interview
Lead Generation
Do the hard work now and talk to 10+ customers before you build.
Once you launch, these will be your first customers.
The Real Interview
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Budget an hour, but feel free to stop it at 30 minutes
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Print out a double-spaced copy of your questions
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Make them comfortable
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Keep it conversational and go off on tangents
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Bring a partner who can take notes
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and ...
LET THE CUSTOMER DO THE TALKING
How do you get them talking?
Be deliberately vague
You want to learn about unexpected things that are important to them
60 Minutes
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Background / Informative Chit-Chat
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Their Specific Workflows
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Feedback on Product
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Lightning Round
Encourage them to go on tangents
Workflows
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How do you do find prospects?
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Do you use a CRM?
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What do you like about it?
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What do you dislike about it?
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How important is it to you?
Plan out your follow ups in depth and have a choose your own adventure set up for the interview
Product Feedback
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Would you be interested in a tool that helps you find leads?
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The tool would help you do X. Here’s how it would work …
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Is this a good fit for you?
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Why or why not?
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How much do you think a tool that does this would cost?
Lightning Round
Ask if users think features are important or not important. Go through 10 or so in a single minute:
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Import from another tool
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Filter the search results
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Cross reference where someone works and find potential coworkers
What to do now
Update interview questions
- Add questions where you want to learn more
- Remove questions that didn't add value
Identify Customer Needs
Validate Your Solutions
Identify Customer Needs
Keep looking for customer needs
Once you find one, ask questions to your users and validate your solution
Each successive interview should bring you closer to identifying a customer need that you can solve
An Example
Surveys
Surveys are great for planning your product roadmap
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Need a large sample size
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Get Feedback on current product
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Feedback on your new ideas
Survey Questions
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Get their contact info
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Be clear and concise
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Don't confuse or bias your users
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Use 5 point Likert scale and checkboxes
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Avoid short answer
Current Product
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What kind of articles would you like us to include? (checkboxes for 5+ categories)
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I like the articles provided in the product. (likert scale)
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I prefer X to Y (likert scale).
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I would like the ability to do X. (likert scale)
New Ideas
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How do you track customers? (5+ checkboxes, Other)
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I regularly send email to existing customers (likert)
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I‘d like a new feature that makes it easier to send email updates to customers (likert)
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How much would you pay for a new email feature (radio buttons: $5, $10, $20+, nothing)
An Example
User Studies
Get Feedback on Your New Design
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Show users your designs
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Watch them interact with the design for 15 mins to 1 hr
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Find usability issues and confusion in the UI
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Fix problems before you launch
What to Show Users
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Finished Product
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Clickable Prototype
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High Fidelity Mockup
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Wireframes
Wireframes
Conducting the Study
Don't bias the user
Don't bias the user
Don't bias the user
Don't bias the user
Don't bias the user
Don't bias the user
Don't bias the user
Don't bias the user
Don't bias the user
Don't bias the user
Don't bias the user
Don't bias the user
Don't bias the user
Don't bias the user
Don't bias the user
Don't bias the user
Don't bias the user
Don't bias the user
Don't bias the user
Don't bias the user
Don't bias the user
Don't bias the user
Don't bias the user
Don't bias the user
Don't bias the user
Don't bias the user
Don't bias the user
Running a Study
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Show them a wireframe and say "What do you think this is"?
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Don't talk and don't help the user
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Once they're done talking, you can then ask them to perform an action like "How would you add a user"?
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Ask clarifying questions: why did you do that, what do you think this does
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Take lots of notes