Embedding customer feedback into your product delivery program is by no means a new concept. From The lean startup, to build, test, learn methodologies and more, it's been extensively written about.

However, it will all come undone if we're not asking the right questions to get the insights we need. We can't just ask them what they want-Customers often don't know what they want.

This quote from Steve Jobs expands on this concept:
'Some people say, "Give the customers what they want." But that's not my approach. Our job is to figure out what they're going to want before they do'.

So how can we take customer insights, and use them to build stuff your customers will actually want and use?

Many teams today use feedback to realise, prioritise and deliver new features for their customers. However, the common pitfall product teams may find themselves falling into is using this feedback from customer demands, which is ultimately met with sub-par results when released.


The classic product development story typically goes something like this:  

  • A number of customers ask for a particular feature
  • The product team work relentlessly to prioritise, understand the requirements,
  • The new feature is released. Celebration!
  • The product team send an update to all the customers who requested the feature.
  • The feature receives negligible uptake, and the product team are left wondering why.



A phrase that I like to use is as follows:
Focus on not on what your customers are saying, but why they are saying it.


Let me explain this one a little further with an example.

A customer was asking for a google sign-up option when exploring a new SaaS product.

Asking them 'why' may lead them to explain that they use google regularly and would want to use it to sign-up for this product too.

Sure, the team could go away any build that. But let's take a moment to understand the fundamental reasons they're saying this.

Upon further research with more customers, and better questioning, it was not the google login but the current sign-up process that was cumbersome. Instead, the sign-up process was realised as a sticking point, and streamlining this would serve a far greater number of customers.

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Another Steve Jobs quote sums this up well:
"You can't just ask customers what they want, then try and give it to them. By the time you get it built they'll want something new.
Don't ask customers what solutions they want. Ask them how they measure success when getting a job done.'

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With this example, the users really just wanted to get into the app quickly. Probing questions around why they wanted this feature would have uncovered the core issue- speed to start using the product.
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Using probing questioning (getting to the core of the 'why') helps to get a better understanding of the problems the users are facing, and what they're trying to achieve. It's then up to the product team to come up with a problem statement that leads to ideas that achieve 'success' for the users.


Ask better questions to get better answers.

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