What is Customer Obsession?

In the previous blog, I talk about a case study with Henry Ford.

If I had asked what they wanted, they would have said faster horses, but their underlying need was, safer and economical means of transport.

Sandeep Chadda [on behalf of Henry Ford]

Just like someone misquoted Henry Ford, I take the creative liberty to misquote him again.

Here, the term “faster horses” is a WANT, while “safer and economical means of transportation” is a NEED.

TL/DR

If you think I got over obsessed with words and ended up writing a lot, then just watch this video.

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What is the difference between a want and a need?

Wants are like the tip of an iceberg. You can touch, feel, and see the wants however, the needs are somewhere deep below.

Most customers state their want while their needs need to be scraped from somewhere deep beneath. Let us unravel this a little bit.

Stated Wants and Unstated Needs

Wants are mostly stated and are clear. Customers would often vocalize their wants.

• Customers of Henry Ford: I want a faster horse.
• Customers of Twitter: I want the ability to talk to someone privately over emails.
• Customers of Starbucks: I want extra sugar with almond milk in my Cappuccino.
• Founders of Yahoo: I want to stop these people who are creating millions of emails and spamming yahoo email account holders.

While wants are stated, needs are often unstated. At times customers may not mention the need but seasoned entrepreneurs and product managers are able to understand the unstated needs.

• Customers of Henry Ford: I want a faster horse. My need is safer and economical means of transport.
• Customers of Twitter: I want the ability to talk to someone privately over emails. My need is privacy.
• Customers of Starbucks: I want extra sugar with almond milk in my Cappuccino. My need is choice.
• Founders of Yahoo: I want to stop these people who are creating millions of emails and spamming yahoo email account holders. My need is security and privacy.

Many entrepreneurs are able to traverse this journey from the stated wants to unstated needs efficiently and build product capabilities around these.

Here are some examples of products or features addressing the unstated needs.

I want a faster horse. My need is safer and economical means of transport. PRODUCT — MODEL T CAR

I want the ability to talk to someone privately over emails. My need is privacy. PRODUCT: Private Messages (DM) in Twitter

I want extra sugar with almond milk in my Cappuccino. My need is choice. PRODUCT: 170,000 ways to customize Starbucks Coffee

I want to stop these people who are creating millions of emails and spamming yahoo email account holders. My need is security. PRODUCT: CAPTCHA

So, what is customer obsession?

Customer obsession is about

1) Ensuring customers are able to state their wants.

2) Bridging the gap between stated wants and unstated needs.

3) Building product capabilities that address both the stated want and the unstated need.

3 main components of customer obsession

There are 3 main components of product building when you think of customer obsession:

1. Medium
2. Product Capabilities
3. User type

1a. Medium for stated wants

As a product manager or an entrepreneur, you need to ensure that you have a medium where customers can share their stated wants.

There are many mechanisms to obtain stated wants. You need to ensure that your users are able to raise their concerns, questions, and feedback. Some of those mediums are:

• Blogs
• Social Media posts
• Rating and Reviews
• Interviews
• Personal conversations
• Emails
• Chats
• Tools that help you capture customer wants

Microsoft products use Customer Feedback to build products

It may be hard to believe, however there are many products that do not have any way to connect with their customers. That is product building 101 gone wrong.

If you are building a product, then it is your responsibility to stay connected with your customers, users, and partners.

Once you have set up a medium for connecting with customers, ensure you are regular on those forums and are able to build products or features based on the customer feedback.

1b. Medium for unstated needs

Now getting connected with your customers goes beyond just listening to them. At times, you can generate insights by just joining the dots on how customers may be using your product.

This joining the dots moment happens when you start understanding the way customers use your product.

Such insights also help to understand the unstated needs of the customer.

You can understand these usage patterns using:

1. Data or Telemetry: Capturing data from customer’s usage patterns of your product.
2. Being a fly on the wall: Being a fly on the wall is an idiomatic expression of just observing your customers use your product.
3. Building hypothesis and validating with your customers: At times, you will have a gut instinct to build products and this gut instinct can be validated with customers based on problem hypothesis building.

You will be surprised to learn that the way you perceive customers should use your product and the way customers actually use your product could be completely different.

This learning can only come after using the above techniques to understand the unstated needs of the customer.

2a. Product capabilities — Table stakes

When you address a customer’s stated wants you build features that are table stakes in the eyes of the customer. Table stakes are mostly capabilities that are the basic elements in a product that your customers expect.

For example, the ability to pay your driver partner is a table stake as far as Uber is concerned. If there were another taxi application that comes up, then you would expect it to have a payment gateway as a table stake, else you not use the product at all.

Source: Uber App Now Lets You Leave a Memo on Your Trip Receipts — iClarified

These table stakes also change with customer expectations.

For example, watching videos on your phone is a table stake now which was not the case until iPhone or YouTube were launched.

When you build what the customer expected, the customer would be happy that you listened.

2b. Product capabilities — Delighters

When you build features addressing customer’s unstated needs, you build differentiators or delighters.

Imagine you order a coffee at a cafe, and you get your favorite cookie along with it. That is how a delighter feels like.

These Microsoft Designer images are really cool.

3a. User Type — User

When you ship stated wants, you build a loyal customer or a user base. You generate customer value and your customers reward it with sticking to your product.

At the end of the day, your users, customers, and partners love your product and you increase your customer satisfaction.

3b. User Type — Fans

When you ship unstated needs, you build evangelists and fans.

These fans will talk about your product even when you are not around.

These evangelists will hold conferences to talk about your product.

The fans will have their photos clicked with your product.

Don’t believe me? See for yourself.

To summarize, in this blog we learnt

1. What is customer obsession?
2. Understanding stated wants and unstated needs.
3. Kind of products that bridge the gap between stated wants and unstated needs.
4. How do you set up mediums to obsess with your customers.
5. Difference between table stakes and delighters.
6. What products build users, customers, fans, and evangelists.

In the next blog, I will talk in detail about common mistakes that entrepreneurs and product managers make while obsessing about their customers.

If you liked what you read, then get obsessed about that clap button and hit it so many times that I can hear the echo in my room. If you feel you would like to graduate from a user to a fan, then follow this blog. Something exciting is coming up soon.