So You Talk to Customers? Great, Let’s Talk About How to Make it Matter
In the world of technology, where the products we work on have to deal with the tensions of a rapidly changing marketplace, customer research is critical to keep pace. Doing it often, well, is a way to keep your company ahead of the competition.
But most research doesn’t make it past the first mention. Researchers often talk about not getting a seat at the table and not getting enough respect to get traction.
Let me know if this sounds familiar to you: You’re working hard talking to customers, and you come up with a bunch of data. Oddly enough, none of it ends up in the final project. The project ships, and as you would expect, it falls flat. No one listened. Nothing changed. Everyone lost.
Good research involves more than just talking to customers. Good research is focused, packaged and sold no differently than any of your favorite products.
Why?
There is what we see in the laboratory, including conferences and other classrooms, and the reality on the ground. In the lab, our research is seen as a way to get closer to the mental models of our customers. Since we are so close to the work, we see, with every iteration, how much subtext exists in conversation and observation. We see our research strengthen or weaken our position, and we are able to move forward.
Outside the lab, people are busy. They have their own priorities. Every discipline has other things to worry about. Curiosity takes a back seat to the bottom line. It’s what happens when you bring data into a complex world.
Before we move forward, we have to acknowledge that, and once again deal with the real problem: Our research isn’t respected.
Let’s talk about how to fix that, using the lenses of discipline, visibility and negotiation to ensure your research gets to the table.
Discipline
Research is full of subtext. In fact, I think that is one of the reasons many of us become researchers in the first place — the customer is a mystery we are trying to solve.
It’s fun to talk to customers and try to understand them. That’s why discipline is important. While customers have a million things to say, we have a limited amount of time to engage. If we aren’t careful, a lack of discipline can float into our analysis and our output.
Therefore, it is critical that what the rest of the world sees is your focus through your artifacts (a good study guide and thoughtful questions). You’ll need to be rigorous in the inputs you put into the research, how you conduct the research and how the outputs look to those involved.
Here are some questions to ask yourself:
- How are you putting together your research study guides? Are they rigorous, with open-ended, thoughtful questions and a clear objective?
- Is your hypothesis falsifiable? Can the customer refute it and lead you to a better path?
- How clear are you being with your recommendations after your analysis (three max!)?
Keeping things sharp requires discipline. To build trust, give your team just what they need to keep them focused on the goal, then store it in a way that allows them to easily reference.
Visibility
One of the things that makes Waffle House, a restaurant chain based in the southern United States, different than many 24/7 diners is that you can see the kitchen right in front of you. When you’ve had too many drinks, this even functions as entertainment. We love to see how the sausage is made. It’s a reason Waffle House is one of the biggest restaurant chains we have.
Your research is no different. As Cyd Harrell notes above, communicating your research to the world is just as important as doing it. Invite other people to the lab. This is the highest leverage move you can make for the visibility of your research. Asking your engineering team or salespeople to help with research gives them an appreciation of the work that goes into finding conclusions.
Want to get them there? My bet is those folks are curious about what people say. Play on that curiosity. A few anecdotes that come from the research will raise some eyebrows. Give them a recording of a session. Bring them on board during the analysis stage for things that concern them. Little nudges will get them in the room, and once they are there, I have rarely seen someone not want to come back.
Here are some questions to ponder when thinking about the visibility of the work:
- When was the last time people got a chance to see your research while it was being made?
- Who is involved in the creation of the research? How aware are people of the problem?
- How often have you shared your unfinished research? Is there a cadence to the rest of the company/team?
The first step to having people care is having them be aware. There is a ton of value in just having people know about the process, and even more when people can engage and be a part of it.
Sales
In advertising, there is something called the “Rule of 7”: It states that someone has to see or hear something seven times before they will buy a product or service. Less than that, and someone will more than likely forget the name. Whenever you watch a commercial or listen to a podcast ad, notice how often the company and service get brought up. My guess is you’ll hear it seven times.
Let’s think about our own research in the context of that podcast and the “Rule of 7.” When you are selling your research to your stakeholders, you’ll need to think about two things: repetition and tailoring the story.
In the podcast example, you are hearing the product repeated seven times. How often are you talking about research, in general? If I were to look at your product development process, how often does research come up? Just as importantly, how tailored is the pitch? You’ve spent time getting disciplined and visible, but at the end of the day, folks are busy. They need to have the data presented in a way they care about. This is where stakeholder management comes into play. Even a simple question, such as, “How would you like to get information from me in the future?” can help you build the right artifact at the right time.
How is this different from visibility? Visibility is about making people aware on your terms; selling is about action on theirs.
Here are a few questions to ponder when evaluating how you sell:
- Who is buying your research, and what are their priorities? Is this being reflected in your artifacts to them?
- How does research, as a whole, get resources for the company? Is it helping people solve problems? How can you highlight that?
- If the research is good, how often are you getting it in front of people who make decisions?
Research needs to be sold and sold again and again. People need to get the why behind the why. Without selling, this work can seem like it’s just someone talking to customers all day without action. You’ll need to make that happen.
At the beginning of this article, I talked about how research matters. It isn’t enough to just talk to customers and show people you’ve talked to them. None of it matters if you can’t get the research in the product. The first step of that is understanding that your research exists in a system, and it won’t sell itself.
A team that maintains discipline with their research practice, while making it visible and sellable, is the team that gets its conclusions in the product. Those conclusions are the difference between a product that stays on the pulse of the customer and wins the marketplace, and the others that become also-rans, doomed to play follow-the-leader and, eventually, die as the marketplace evolves.
