Experience the Customer. Lions don’t learn to hunt in the Zoo.

Years back, I recall meetings with colleagues from Product Marketing (A), Business Intelligence (B), Managers (C), etc. where discussions went like this: A: “I believe we should offer an option X.” – B: “I believe this is especially attractive in the youth segment.” – C: “I believe especially young men will like this.” etc. None of them knew, they believed. I was one of them, as well.

It’s what we had learned in school: analyze data and combine this with that initial “innovative idea” and quickly start working on a cunning business plan. Somehow we kept forgetting that we could talk to or observe these customers. In order to be successful at launching the offer, what you primarily had to achieve is to win internal support for your project. The customer segment was of course in our focus, but – honestly – we didn’t really “know” what customers needed and or wanted. We weren’t doing so bad, because it seems that most other players were up to about the same game.

(c) demchishina olga|123rf.com

Years and many, many customer visits later I couldn’t be a stronger advocate for deep dives: onsite visits to go look, see, observe and experience the customers. I can recommend an attitude of a “dry sponge”: just absorb, collect – don’t judge. Repeat this with several customers. In my experience a number of 10 to 20 visits is a solid basis for each stage of your idea. Above 20 visits the additional learnings start to flatten out. Also, engage the whole core team to go experience customers.

All it takes is a little briefing and the initial courage to just go an try it out. Example: “Go look a citizen over the shoulder on how they fill out the tax form. Make notes. Take pictures. Ask open questions. Don’t tell them how to do it better or differently. Just accept how they do things. Let them have the major part of the conversation (80%).” (For pitfalls and success factors see the training video below.)

The results have been amazing! You gain impressive insights into real lives. You discover ways of using (your) products you would have never thought existed. Your idea sharpens and so much faster than through the “old” believe meeting marathon. And, what is very powerful is the fact that each one of the team members has had direct customer contact and fully authentic (not perfect!) stories to carry into your project team. Over night their credibility and authenticity will jump to a next level.

My basic psychology understanding is: in order to change your behavior (do deep dives), you’ll have to change your attitude (10 times faster)- and in order to make that happen you’ll have to make another, a new experience (go out and try it). So, go do these deep dives and see what happens.

Here’s the short training video clip we made.
You’ll see Nick in a sleeping bag. He’s a psychologist and has been my professional peer at Swisscom for many years. We aspired to be as close to our customers 24/7… :-). And, we role play through the basic interview techniques that worked well in our practice. (Unfortunately still in Swiss German with French subtitles. Let me know if you know an easy way to get English subtitles.)

In brief the pitfalls to avoid:
– Don’t start too harsh. Get going with an easy ice-breaker, some small talk.
– Avoid double questions (two things in one question), as the client will usually only answer one of them.
– Avoid closed questions (that will be answered by a “yes” or “no”) and use open questions instead.
– Avoid suggestive questions (as you are implying the desired answer) and she will likely want to please you with her answer.
– Leave quantification of a product’s aspects (“On a scale from 1 to 10…”) away as you want to gain qualitative insights.
– Completely forget personal sanctions (i.e. to let her know that she is speaking very well of your idea or product), as she’ll only tell you what you want to hear – and you you don’t want to hear what she believes you want to hear, really.

And then 4 success factors we found:
1) Observe and listen with an open mind/spirit. Be unprejudiced.
2) Ask open questions and then just listen. -> Be that dry sponge!
3) Allow not to get answer to all the questions that you might have.
4) You are the expert (for your idea/solution), not the client. That is your job!

Here’s an example: Billing for B2B customers. When we started on this project, the common believe was that billing was pretty much the process of getting the right records aggregated into one document, without an error, and then it would be sent out to the customer. Done. Then collection came into play to receive the payments or go ask, if it was overdue.

In our deep dives we found out, that a company would receive our bill printed with let’s say 50 mobile numbers and all connection data listed in one document. On site we observed that the secretary would use two blank sheets of paper to cover the connection data from the number above and the one below – and make a copy of it to scan it and then send it via email to the respective employee. We found out that this consultancy had to fulfill an aspect of their expenses regulations by informing each employee about their monthly phone usage. Room for innovation. Not big this time, but of customer value: a page break option for the bill layout.

Now, we risk to belittle these kinds of improvements. Let’s not. Let’s think about doing these in large numbers, improving small things along the way and gaining an intimately good understanding of our customers and the context they operate in. And this again, will give us a valuable basis to disruptively rethink and innovate. And what’s amazing about this approach: you are so much faster and better at what you do!

I found resonance with Kevin Roberts, CEO Saatchi & Saatchi when he referred to such deep dives in his catchy way: “Lions don’t learn to hunt in the Zoo.”

(c) Aleksandr Stepanov|123rf.com

Next up, I will start working on how to make the insights you gain through deep dives available to your team and stakeholders (hint: visualization and storytelling). But for now, let me know what your experience is with your “Lions in the Zoo”!