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Innovation Tip: Listen Carefully to Your Customer

What do your customers really think? What do they really need?

To answer this, many organizations often rely on packaged research reports and focus groups to gain customer insights. However, the former limits you to customer reactions on something you've already created; the latter can often be too broad for your specific market. While such data can be valuable, they also keep you at a distance when it comes to truly understanding your customers' latent needs.

Make a point of regularly interacting with your customers firsthand. You can do this by instituting ethnographic studies, in which you "shadow" your customers in specific situations to observe how they behave. By doing this, you may discover new uses for your product or uncover new solutions.
 
You can also hold “Voice of the Customer” sessions or individual customer interviews. Both are useful ways to learn about your customers and help you define what you can do to better serve them. The key is to avoid structuring your interactions too much. You don’t want to “lead the witness” and drive the conversation to particular conclusions—you want to hear your customers talk freely, openly, and honestly about certain situations so that you can apply your expertise to make that situation better.

Work with your team to identify the existing barriers between you and your customers, and then make a point of scheduling at least a few opportunities each year to break down these barriers and really listen to your customers for the sake of innovation.

By Jennifer Wang on March 8, 2011 at 6:18pm |

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