Problem-Customer-Product — Getting ’em all RIGHT!
Building the RIGHT Product is not about ‘Is your innovative solution solving the problem in the right way?’ but only about ‘Have you identified the right customer willing to pay for this solution?’
For a product innovator, achieving the milestones of Problem-Solution Fit and Value-Price Fit backed with data/metrics that demonstrate strong customer-motivation, customer-commitment, and customer-acceptance is the first and minimum point of safety. Getting there is much more work on problem validation and customer discovery than in the areas of technical specifications, technology selection/application, product concept, design and engineering.
“I am building a product X that solves your problem Y. Can you give us a few minutes to explain to you how?”
“We are building a product X that can do A, B and C things for you. We are here to tell you how it works and take your feedback. Can we have a few minutes of your time?”
Going from ‘Solution Thinking’ to ‘Problem Thinking’!
Any variants of the questions above are being used by product innovators — or startup founders looking to build innovative solutions for unsolved problems, in an attempt to get feedback for their ideas from prospective (target) customers. Well for starters I am very happy there is a growing sense of awareness and intent to get early feedback from customers. This is certainly better than the purely engineering approach of “let’s build the product and they will come!” which surely always leads to building useless stuff. The product innovations become useless because they are always ‘used’ less.
However from what I have observed so far among those innovators that do take early feedback, I find that in most cases the feedback is taken in the context of the ‘product’ or the solution ideated/designed/planned rather than in the context of the ‘problem’. This approach is primarily influenced by the need to get feedback on the features of the product, its functionality, its usability, its performance etc. And this is largely aimed at building the right PRODUCT and building the product RIGHT.
Building the right PRODUCT and building the product RIGHT, matter only after having validated that you are solving the right PROBLEM and solving the PROBLEM right!
Now who can disagree with this! I certainly don’t. But what happens in most cases is that the product validation through customer interviews happens before a rigorous process of problem validation.
A problem well defined is half-solved!
In most cases what I observe is that the ‘problem statement’ is assumed to be RIGHT and the focus of customer interviews is in refining the solution concept. And in almost all of these cases the effect of very limited validation of the problem is the lower adoption, inadequate usage, and much lower purchase of the product than expected.
Only adoption, usage, and purchase of the product and retention/referral of the customer prove that your innovative solution is infact the RIGHT PRODUCT. What separates RIGHT PRODUCTS from WRONG PRODUCTS is not more effective validation of the solution concept but a more effective validation of the ‘problem statement’.
What separates RIGHT PRODUCTS from WRONG PRODUCTS is not effective validation of the solution concept but the effective validation of the ‘problem statement’!
And problem validation cannot be done in the context of the ‘product’ and under the strong influence/bias of the preconceived notions of the features of the product. This colours the perspectives with which the innovator approaches every conversation with the prospective customers. Its almost as if the innovator is now seeing the whole world around through the lens of the product except that the customer is seeing things very differently through the lens of the problem.
The way the customer interprets the problem, describes its, experiences it, sets priorities for solving it, the benefits of solving it, the constraints within which to solve it, his attempts to solve it, the issues faced in doing so, and the behaviours/habits he will be unwilling to change etc. are the details that the innovator has to understand deeply.
Understanding this can come in copious amounts through effective use of the tools and techniques of empathy and ethnography. However what also works is the effective use of questions and an interview process to better understand the problem and build in your mind the 360 degree point of view the customer has about the target problem.
One way to prepare for being more effective in sales is by becoming better at asking the right questions to the customers!
So what are the questions to ask to be more effective in problem validation? Here is a sample script that you can use to frame your dialog with a prospective customer.
Innovator: “I believe that you face this problem X, and you will gain Y by solving it. I would like to solve this problem X. Can you help me understand your problem X?”
Customer: “Alright! Can you describe problem X and how you intend to solve it?”
Innovator: “Surely, let me first describe problem X. <Explain problem X with details on what causes it, and how the customer can benefit from solving it>. Now before I explain to you my solution Z, I have some questions for you. Answers to these questions will help me understand the problem X more accurately and in a manner consistent with your views.
- Did I explain the problem exactly how you experience it? Can you describe the problem in your own words exactly how you experience it?
- What/how will you benefit from solving it? How much is solving this problem worth to you?
- How have you tried to solve this problem before? What did you do?
- Why did you not make that solution permanent? What were the gaps in the solution?
- What are the other constraints/challenges that have to be overcome or accommodated while solving this problem?
- How important to you is solving this problem among other things for you?
Now, if you have read so far then surely what is on your mind is the thought that all of this can be avoided if the right customer is targeted.
And the RIGHT CUSTOMER being the one:
- that faces the problem most severely, and the beneficiary that benefits most from having this problem solved;
- that is not only aware of the problem and the potential gains from solving it but also has made attempts to solve the problem;
- that is not satisfied with the existing solutions and expects a more effective solution;
- that is willing to experiment a different solution with the potential to solve the problem and to deliver the expected benefits by working within the constraints;
RIGHT Customer & RIGHT Problem leads to RIGHT Product!
So basically in cases where identifying and targeting the RIGHT Customer is achieved through strong intuition of the innovator, then the customer interviews focused on and around the problem statement can help rigorously validate the problem statement. In such cases the phase of ‘customer discovery’ is done almost effortlessly.
In other cases though, the profile template of the RIGHT customer can help narrow down customer choices and when coupled with effective customer interviews as described above can help the innovator perform the process of ‘customer discovery’ and ‘problem validation’ effectively.
In summary, taking up customer interviews during the ‘product design’ phase could be too little too late. Customer interviews as early on in the game to do ‘customer discovery’ and ‘problem validation’ is highly recommended.
