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In my experience it's better to pay attention to what your customers do, rather than what they say. Often peoples true goals aren't directly stated, or even kno

In my experience it's better to pay attention to what your customers do, rather than what they say. Often peoples true goals aren't directly stated, or even known to themselves. If you asked people what type of store they want to shop in, very few would describe a walmart, and yet walmart seems to gain plenty of customers. This sort of behavior is compounded when you throw in things such as distributed decision making. You will get piles of disjointed feedback, and almost none of it is informative about what actually drives adoption of your product.

nate 8y ago
Oh for sure. It's tough in the services business here though where a lot of us find ourselves in when we're building products on the side. We have to build on what our customers say a lot. One thing that helps over here at Rockstar is we simply encourage and orchestrate things like bringing in actual users to play with mockups and such. And some things are really hard to just observe without asking. In the interviews I mentioned, we really wanted to get into the psychological state and emotions people felt while they were shopping to understand what our brand even meant in the marketplace. It's impossible to observe that well unless we get into paying attention to what these folks say in interviews. And then we find ourselves having to interrogate those responses like I mentioned. What are your favorite ways of observing customers? I've been a fan of Heap Analytics. Any others out there catch your eye?
sp332 8y ago
It depends what you're optimizing for. Sometimes when Walmart's customer satisfaction goes up, their revenues go down. https://web.archive.org/web/20130524132122/http://dailyartifacts.com/walmarts-185-billon-dollar-mistake https://web.archive.org/web/20130524132122/http://dailyartif...
tacon 8y ago
My favorite book on customer development is "The Mom Test"[0], by a YCombinator alum. The name is terrible, but the content of that book is golden. He tells the terrifying story of talking to customers constantly as they wasted a million dollars building something the customers were not going to buy. There are various ways the customer pays you before the product is ready, and if they aren't paying you, they aren't really interested. Payment can be in the form of time (they meet with you), personal reputation (they recommend you to friends), company reputation (they arrange a meeting with their boss, or coworkers), etc. [0] https://www.amazon.com/Mom-Test-customers-business-everyone-ebook/dp/B01H4G2J1U/ https://www.amazon.com/Mom-Test-customers-business-everyone-...
- iovrthoughtthis 8y ago
  This is probably the book I recommend the most of any book, ever.
- robfitz 8y ago
  Memorable though ;)
amalcon 8y ago
>If you asked people what type of store they want to shop in, very few would describe a walmart, and yet walmart seems to gain plenty of customers. I think a lot of people would say "a store that has what I want for a low price". It's the other characteristics of walmart that put people off, not the core value proposition.
- kemitche 8y ago
  You're right, they'd say that. They wouldn't mention "within 10 minutes drive of my house" or "has plenty of parking" or anything about the return policy most likely. And yet those almost certainly factor into where they shop.
gilbetron 8y ago
and even less are going to describe Amazon.
maxxxxx 8y ago
That's number one. Also never, ever believe your salespeople when they tell you what customers want. Take it all in but make sure you talk to some customers directly. I have had it so many times that we implemented some convoluted only because the customer and salespeople misinterpreted some technology or didn't know about other ways to do what they need.

nate 8y ago

Oh for sure. It's tough in the services business here though where a lot of us find ourselves in when we're building products on the side. We have to build on what our customers say a lot. One thing that helps over here at Rockstar is we simply encourage and orchestrate things like bringing in actual users to play with mockups and such. And some things are really hard to just observe without asking. In the interviews I mentioned, we really wanted to get into the psychological state and emotions people felt while they were shopping to understand what our brand even meant in the marketplace. It's impossible to observe that well unless we get into paying attention to what these folks say in interviews. And then we find ourselves having to interrogate those responses like I mentioned. What are your favorite ways of observing customers? I've been a fan of Heap Analytics. Any others out there catch your eye?

sp332 8y ago

It depends what you're optimizing for. Sometimes when Walmart's customer satisfaction goes up, their revenues go down. https://web.archive.org/web/20130524132122/http://dailyartifacts.com/walmarts-185-billon-dollar-mistake https://web.archive.org/web/20130524132122/http://dailyartif...

tacon 8y ago

My favorite book on customer development is "The Mom Test"[0], by a YCombinator alum. The name is terrible, but the content of that book is golden. He tells the terrifying story of talking to customers constantly as they wasted a million dollars building something the customers were not going to buy. There are various ways the customer pays you before the product is ready, and if they aren't paying you, they aren't really interested. Payment can be in the form of time (they meet with you), personal reputation (they recommend you to friends), company reputation (they arrange a meeting with their boss, or coworkers), etc. [0] https://www.amazon.com/Mom-Test-customers-business-everyone-ebook/dp/B01H4G2J1U/ https://www.amazon.com/Mom-Test-customers-business-everyone-...

iovrthoughtthis 8y ago
This is probably the book I recommend the most of any book, ever.
robfitz 8y ago
Memorable though ;)

amalcon 8y ago

>If you asked people what type of store they want to shop in, very few would describe a walmart, and yet walmart seems to gain plenty of customers. I think a lot of people would say "a store that has what I want for a low price". It's the other characteristics of walmart that put people off, not the core value proposition.

kemitche 8y ago
You're right, they'd say that. They wouldn't mention "within 10 minutes drive of my house" or "has plenty of parking" or anything about the return policy most likely. And yet those almost certainly factor into where they shop.

gilbetron 8y ago

and even less are going to describe Amazon.

maxxxxx 8y ago

That's number one. Also never, ever believe your salespeople when they tell you what customers want. Take it all in but make sure you talk to some customers directly. I have had it so many times that we implemented some convoluted only because the customer and salespeople misinterpreted some technology or didn't know about other ways to do what they need.