“We struggle in finding out what our customers really want.”
Over the coming weeks, my weekly posts will focus on various problems that my clients have faced, and that we’ve coached them to overcome. I call this series “Innovation Opportunities” (InnOps).
INN OP: One client was building a process that would help guide internal designers to create the next specialty chemical. It was a new idea, and the complaint was “The marketing people can’t tell us what they want, because the customer keeps changing their minds!”
PROBLEM: We keep starting ideas, then stopping, switching this way then that way. And learning almost nothing! Can’t someone just “hand us the folder” giving all the requirements?
ROOT CAUSE: The customer doesn’t yet KNOW what they want. But they’ll be able to assess it when they see it.
IMPACT: All the wasted time-effort-money along the way. And since we keep “starting over”, we learn almost nothing that we can use next time.
COACHING TIP: As simply and quickly as you can, COMPLETE a full prototype that your customer can “test drive”. Don’t wait until you think the prototype is perfect, because your version of “perfect” is what you’re actually trying to improve! You’ll LEARN from the interaction of customers with your prototype, and have a base to build on for try two.
STRUGGLES BEFORE: Before we started, this client went around for more than two years, putting pieces in place, but never quite completing a full offering. The ideas didn’t quite gel together.
VICTORY AFTER: Our first job was to get a finished prototype. The first one had a LOT of “bugs”, but we rapidly learned what was more important and less important to the customer, and were able to negotiate several key short-term workarounds that enabled them to start using the prototype process. Then the learning accelerated even faster, until now the process is working well and increasing market share. The head engineer on the project made a big splash in the company with this victory.
