How To Capture Deep Customer Insights and Build Exceptional Products
By: Tanguy Leborgne
Tags: Product Marketing, Leadership, Product Management, Customer Success

It’s never been easier to collect data from customers and analyze their journey’s different steps. Companies that master this skill definitely have a competitive advantage, as research shows. Yet, too many Product and Marketing teams mostly rely on quantitative data and analytics. These are critical, but not enough. They give insights into “what” happened and can help model “what” will happen. But they don’t indicate “why” things happened, “why” customers (or prospects) think a certain way.

In the early 2000s, I experienced first-hand that the best way to get to the “why” was to engage in richer conversations and discover our customers’ inner motivations along with their most significant problems. The road to successful interactions was paved with notable execution challenges, and I understand why so many product and marketing teams hesitate to include them in their routine. In most cases, they believe they don’t have enough expertise or even time to get unbiased insights.

Understanding what’s on your customer’s mind is challenging! Many well-intentioned product teams gave up because they couldn’t get the value they sought, despite significant efforts. Yet, just like any muscle, if you flex it properly and regularly, you’ll soon see great results.

So, here are five rules I’ve learned through the years. Apply them consistently, and you’ll unveil a gold mine from what’s on your customers’ minds:

Rules #1-2: Keep it informal and listen!

I used to seek one-hour interviews with customers, looking for feedback and jumping right into explaining my product ideas. It was a disaster! At best, they gave me polite lies and wished they would have never accepted that meeting. Insightful interactions are different.

Rich customer interactions aren’t “interviews.” They are two-way conversations between human beings and rely on empathy, observation, and immersion.

Be as informal as you can. Leverage any serendipity moment that life is providing you to interact with your customers. I appreciate it’s hard to meet on the fly by the side of a booth at a tradeshow these pandemic days. So, if you have to schedule and be more virtual, keep positioning these as “chats,” conversations, not meetings or interviews.

Let your customers speak their mind. It is not about you or your product. It’s about them and the problems they face.

You should give minimal information upfront and avoid hypothetical questions about generalities and future behaviors along these lines. The future is unknown, so don’t let your customers guess it. Generalizations won’t lead you anywhere. Instead, ask about specific challenges or situations they have faced in the past or present. Talk less and listen to what they have to say.

If they compliment you about your product, politely acknowledge, but get back quickly to the matter at hand: the problems they face. You’re not here to gather compliments; you’re here to collect facts and data!

Rule #3: Ask questions you can act on

Asking great questions is tough, but you can learn. As already highlighted, good questions are the ones that focus on a specific problem or situation the customer is facing. Along these lines, you should always focus on open-ended questions that invite the customer to elaborate. The best questions start with “what” or “how.”

But, how do you know you are at the right altitude, not too general, not too narrow? It starts with your preparation for the conversation. Although I advise against a rigid script, you should prepare at least 3–4 questions and take it from there. For example, in my experience with videographers using our editing software, I would have the following questions in my back pocket:

1 — “Tell me more about your activity as a videographer and what it consists of… “-> Ice-breaker, specific enough to get your area of interest.

2 — “What are your big goals and areas of focus right now with your video project now?” -> Understanding what they’re trying to achieve.

3 — “With these goals in mind, what are the top obstacles you currently face that prevent you from hitting those goals?” -> narrowing down to specific problems.

I trust you get the idea: in just three questions, you are already in the heart of the matter, unveiling some of the most significant problems for your customer, all of it in your area of interest. After you anchor to a “juicy” problem, keep digging and let them elaborate by asking related questions on what happened.

Once you are far enough into the conversation, you can start to validate some of your assumptions and ask for reactions to some of your ideas. Just beware of “Wow” reactions.

Remember, your customer is not committing to anything by giving you positive feedback.

Most customers want to please you. Unfortunately, this can be quite misleading. I prefer lukewarm reactions, as they’re a strong indicator that the idea might not be a good one, provided I presented it correctly.

Rules #4-5: Close decisively and build into your routine

Even before you start your conversation, you should be clear on your desired outcome and the best next steps. What are you trying to understand better? What do you want the customer to do after the interaction? As you build a rapport, don’t be afraid to ask for some commitment. It can either be adding them to a beta program or even more boldly getting them to commit to purchasing your next release.

If a customer is genuinely interested in the ideas you’re sharing, have them engaged and give them actionable next steps.

Now you might wonder how many of these rich conversations are needed before you can form an opinion. There’s no magic number, but you should keep having such interactions on a particular topic with a specific customer segment until you stop hearing new things. On the other end of the spectrum, if you still do not see a clear pattern on problems or solutions after a dozen interactions, you should reconsider your customer segment. It might be too broad and general, so narrow down your topics and be more specific.

Such interactions should happen on an on-going basis. The worst I’ve seen was when teams focused on customer research only when defining the next release. There’s no season for gaining deep customer insights. They should be on-going all-year-long and be informal.

In Closing

Rich one-to-one customer interactions are both art and science. Be methodical, know what your goals are, and keep practicing! You will soon unveil golden nuggets that help you build more robust products and retain happy, profitable customers for a lifetime.

Much was written about empathy and deep customer insights. Yet, if you’re looking for an ultra-practical way to get started or improve, start with these five rules I just gave you:

#1 — Keep your interactions informal

#2 — Focus on active listening and less talk

#3 — Ask non-leading open-ended questions

#4 — Give your customers actionable next steps

#5 — Build rich interactions into your routine

And if you need further help to get started or a more tailored approach to your specific situation, drop me a note. I’ll be delighted to be your guide.