How Customer Research Reveals New Product Opportunities
This week, I’m traveling with a client to visit several of their customers. We’re looking for opportunities for new products, so we’ll be spending time observing and learning how their customers do their jobs.
I’ve done a lot of customer research over the years, and one thing I’ve learned is that asking customers what new products they want usually doesn’t get you very far. It’s a hard question to answer.
But ask someone to walk you through how they do their job, and they can talk for a long time.
They can tell you what they’re trying to accomplish, where they run into challenges, what slows them down, and the workarounds they’ve developed along the way. You can ask what success looks like and what gets in the way of achieving it.
That’s usually where I start to see opportunities.
I don’t expect customers to tell me what the next product should be. They know their work and the challenges they experience better than I ever will, but they aren’t necessarily thinking about all the different ways those challenges could be solved.
That’s our job.
We have to listen, ask good questions, and make sense of what we’re learning across multiple customers. Then we have to decide what those insights might mean and where there could be an opportunity to create something better.
So when I’m looking for new product opportunities, I’m usually not asking customers what they want us to make.
I’m trying to understand what it’s like to do their job, and what it takes to do it well.
That’s where I’ve found new opportunities begin.
