Going blind while trying to see, the trap of asking customers the wrong questions for growth
In all my marketing and customer experience travels, “understanding customers” (something that could have such power for uncovering growth clues) has often turned out to mean one of these not so valuable things:
Whatever’s loudest right now in customer support tickets and/or feature requests from existing customers.
Regularly fielded satisfaction surveys of existing customers that mostly tell you what the crowd you already won over thinks of the thing you’ve already built.
Complicated, time-consuming research projects that are often triggered by some urgent thing and then are superseded by events by the time they actually get done.
I say “not so valuable” because efforts like these, which tend to start through the lens of confirmation over curiosity, leave you largely in the dark about what you should do NEXT or DIFFERENTLY.
That’s because people who continue to stay with you (and thus fill out support tickets, feature requests and sat surveys) are by definition going to focus a lot of your attention on today’s offering, and incremental opportunities to improve it.
They’re a whole lot less likely to help you see the opportunities in what you don’t offer, in jobs you don’t help them solve for today.
After all, if those missing things were important enough, these customers would already be gone. And for those still around, getting them to think beyond the contours of what you offer today takes a different kind of digging that can feel off topic or disconnected.
So it’s easy to end up doing lots of customer support listening, feature asks, sat surveys and the like, all while going increasingly blind to important shifts in customer needs happening right under your nose.
Shifts that may well hold HUGE growth clues… about how you could do what you do today dramatically better. Even better… about where else you could help customers make progress in their lives.
Clues that are also masked by the siren song of only managing to the numbers of your existing offering, rather than constantly challenging yourself to think creatively about what the offering could be, what customer progress it should support.
“Why should we change the flux capacitor, it continues to be our most chosen time travel unit, and our last three feedback surveys have shown customers rate it pretty highly?”
Raise your hand if your ideas have ever run into that kind of a blocker from a colleague using numbers from folks you’ve already convinced to defend turf, budget, focus, etc… resources that might be better used to explore reaching people you’re losing or haven’t yet served?
As common as this narrow line of sight can be, the good news is there’s a whole bunch of actionable, customer learning work you can do to open up the field of view. Without breaking the bank or having to bring on lots of complicated systems to make your curiosity engine go.
Work that helps you uncover deeper insights you can use to fashion a meaningfully better experience — from day-to-day improvements to big innovation jumps.
I can testify with confidence to this potential after years of having my hands happily in the learning mud, working directly with customers across all sorts of categories, learning:
Cancel customers should become a religion, and you CAN reach them
Existing customers have lots of valuable stuff to say if you ask them about a lot in addition to your existing product
Live conversations are easier (and more powerful) than ever to schedule and have yourself, with the right tools
Surveys/quant has its place, but don’t sleep on qualitative patterns that emerge from a surprisingly small number of touches
Above all… ask why, why, why, and then why some more. Curiosity beyond your product, toward your customer, will uncover the really good stuff… that all parts of your org can use.
Leaning in on these has turned what I often used to think of as a rabbit hole into a clear path toward customer understanding that’s strewn with opportunities for growth. A path I’ll wager organizations of all shapes and sizes can pursue to powerful effect.
Along this way, I’ve taken inspiration from many clever minds and sources. High up on that list is Competing Against Luck by the late Clayton Christensen. It’s a super engaging read that reframes figuring out growth through a fascinating lens/question… what job do people really hire your product to do and how could you help them do that job better? Sounds simple but the answers — about what you really compete with, where you should focus improvement efforts — are often a whole lot different than you think.
Don’t believe me? Google Clayton Christensen Milkshake. Happy reading.