A thought on Customer Development
Tonight I have been attending an Academy organized by InnoVits, a volounteer-based entrepreneurial accellerator. The topic was “putting yourself in the shoes of your customer”. Hence, Customer Discovery and Customer Development.
Since I started mentoring and coaching on innovation topics, I found more or less twenty different theories, techniques or styles of Customer Development. So, I started questioning myself on which was the best and more accurate theory to follow and, then, to use as a framework while mentoring.
Of course, I don’t have THE answer. However, I give my two cents. The main core is understanding the customer as an unique individual that has a life that goes far beyond the product or the service that we are developing. Customer Personas and the design thinking tools are a great way of crafting a first hypothesis. Analyzing jobs-to-be-done, customer pains and customer gains could be quickly and effectively accomplished with an empathy map. We should then have gathered enough data to start a fair validation of the assumptions related to the problem.
At first, we have a very restricted data-set. We don’t know who our customers are and what they are desiring. So, our task is to fully understand the needs of the people that we have identified with our Customer Personas. Well, there’s only a way to do this: involving customers, making them drive our interview, letting them tell us everything. Also the information we would prefer not to hear. Our focus should primarily be directed on the customer’s needs or JTBD and which solution she may already have implemented. The most we know her needs, the best we can understand if our idea fits and may delight him.
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