Customer Discovery: How to Get Valuable Insights from Your Customers

What is Customer Discovery?

Customer discovery is a crucial part of the product development lifecycle that involves understanding the needs, wants, and pain points of your target customers.

As a Product Manager, one of your main goals is to create products that customers love and that meet their needs. But how do you know what those needs are? The answer is simple: you need to talk to your customers. 

How Do I Talk to My Customers?

Just get in front of customers

The first step in customer discovery is to get in front of your customers. This means actually talking to them and asking them questions about their needs and preferences. It’s not enough to rely on assumptions or guesswork when it comes to developing products. Instead, you need to get out of the office and into the field to talk to your customers. Don't allow the fear of being perfect at it stop you from getting out there to talk to customers to ensure you are building the best product for them. And my top tip for this - if they want to yell about something that you know isn't a great experience, let them! Agreeing with them and letting them know this is why you want to talk to them will be a key differentiator in building a relationship with them. 

Iterate on your learnings

Once you start talking to customers, you’ll quickly realize that you need to iterate on your questions and approach. The more customers you talk to, the more insights you’ll gain, and the more you’ll need to adjust your approach. It’s important to iterate on your questions and approach as you go along to ensure that you’re getting the most accurate and valuable insights possible. See - told you it doesn't have to be perfect to get started! 

Always have 2-3 people in the interview

When conducting customer discovery interviews, it’s important to have a team of 2-3 people present. This allows for one person to ask questions, one person to take notes, and one person to observe. Having multiple people in the interview helps to remove bias and ensures that you’re getting accurate and comprehensive data. Noting that it is not recommended you have more than 3 people in your interviews. You don't want your customer feeling bombarded or overwhelmed by too many members from the product team present. 

Never ask if a customer would buy or use a product

One common mistake that Product Managers make in customer discovery is asking customers if they would buy or use a product. This is problematic because it plays into the human psyche of people wanting to be positive about future possibilities. Oftentimes, people will say yes to these questions even if they wouldn’t actually buy or use the product. And this does not help us get out of building products based on assumptions. Instead, focus on asking open-ended questions about their needs and pain points, and observe how they currently solve the problem you’re trying to solve with your product.

Ask open-ended questions

The key to effective customer discovery is asking open-ended questions. Open-ended questions allow customers to provide detailed and thoughtful responses that can help you understand their needs and preferences. Nothing is worse then being a hungry PM craving research and data to make the appropriate decisions for your product and the only insights you have are Yes/No. That is leaving so much of the true insight behind. The more you can get your customer talking - confirming the problem, showing you how the have a workaround today, drawing out what they are envisioning; the more you are able to build a solution that gives them exactly what they never knew they needed. Avoid asking leading questions that suggest a particular answer or outcome. Again - we don't assumed answers, they don't give us all the detail we need. 

Use the Kano Model

The Kano Model is a popular framework for customer discovery that helps Product Managers understand the different types of customer needs and preferences. The model identifies five types of features:

• Required
• Desired
• Delighter
• Neutral
• Dissatisfaction

Once you have the features assigned a type, you plot those out on a graph to help you prioritize features and understand which features will provide the most value to your customers.

Make sure to follow up

After conducting customer discovery interviews, it’s important to follow up with customers to thank them for their time and provide any updates on the product development process. Following up shows that you value their input and helps to build a relationship with them. It also allows you to gather additional feedback and insights as the product development process continues.

Conclusion

Customer discovery is a critical part of the product development process that helps you ensure you are solving the right problems, with the right solution, to win your customers over. Customers that are advocates for your product will be the best ROI on any marketing dollar you spend!