Interesting, I am wondering whether Apple listened to its customers or not when they firstly built iPod, iPhone and iPad...
Listen to Your Customers, They’ll Tell You What to Build
31–40 of 85 posts
Re: Listen to Your Customers, They’ll Tell You What to Build
#32If Apple did that than they would been out of business 25 years ago.. Steve Jobs did not ask Apple customers what to build but predicted what in the future apple should build to get more customers. This is not to say that customer feedback is not important but to clarify that it pertains to very short-term marketing in that it only refers to somewhat minor-point increments in fine-tuning the current product.
I have to whole-heartedly disagree with this. Customer development and feedback don't just apply to short-term marketing and minor-point improvements. That couldn't be further from the truth.
The "They'll tell you what to build" isn't meant to be taken literally. If you listen and try to truly understand people's problems, they'll guide you towards the most useful solutions. Coming up with those solutions is still up to you in most cases, though.
Re: Apple - they understood the real problems that their potential customers had. No, customers didn't come and tell them to go and build a device like the iPhone. However, from understanding the market and the pain points that people had with mobile phones, Apple was able to identify an opportunity to enter a new market and disrupt it.
Re: Listen to Your Customers, They’ll Tell You What to Build
#33Working as a designer, I've come to appreciate a lot of the ideas in Non Violent Communication. This is more or less the central idea of NVC: needs are very low level and highly likely to be shared by many people, whereas the strategies used to fulfil those needs are much more specialized and particular to a person or a small number of people. People will communicate and confront you with their strategies for fulfill…
That's a fantastic analogy!
Re: Listen to Your Customers, They’ll Tell You What to Build
#34I agree that doing more listening than speaking when talking to customers is important. It's also important to remember that customers will tell you they want features they they won't actually use or pay for. So it's necessary to develop an understanding of what your customers do and what problems they're trying to solve. This often helps more than just listening to features they say they want. If your customers aren…
I agree with most of your points.
I would add that when you put a person in a position that you have asked them for input, they will feel pressured to give SOME kind of input, whether or not it is actually warranted. You're kind of setting them up to give input in the same way you might set someone up to tell a joke, they feel pressured to fill that space with SOMETHING.
Most of the time when I have built features that came from customers, it ends up being the least used feature of a particular update cycle. Sometimes to the point that we have to reverse or highly modify it later. The reason your customer isn't in the business of making the thing you're making, is because they have no idea how to make that thing.
If you ask a person what they want out of a new Ford car, they are not going to say "Brake pads with a higher durability for longer use," they are going to say "More cupholders wouldn't hurt, and maybe you could offer it in magenta?"
See also "The Bike Shed Problem": http://bikeshed.org/
Re: Listen to Your Customers, They’ll Tell You What to Build
#35I agree that doing more listening than speaking when talking to customers is important. It's also important to remember that customers will tell you they want features they they won't actually use or pay for. So it's necessary to develop an understanding of what your customers do and what problems they're trying to solve. This often helps more than just listening to features they say they want. If your customers aren…
Things may have changed since I got out of website building but my customers were usualy focussed on what they wanted their customers to see.
They very rarely had any idea about what they wanted to see behind the curtains.
Re: Listen to Your Customers, They’ll Tell You What to Build
#36I think there needs to be a certain separation between the artist and the customer, in the sense that the customer says what they want, but how you get there is part of the artistry.
For example, Michelangelo was told to paint certain things, but it's how he did it that made him legend.
The real beauty, the real success of a thing, lies in the how, not necessarily the what.
Re: Listen to Your Customers, They’ll Tell You What to Build
#37There can be counterexamples to that advice. Maybe since Tailwind is in the B2B space, this affects their bias of the recommendation. If you're in the Enterprise/SaaS/B2B space, it seems more common to closely track what your (paying) customers want. However, if you're in B2C or mass market, there are successful examples of being bold with providing something your customers didn't ask for . An example is the Facebook…
> It's the modern variation of Ford's apocryphal "if I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses."
This x100 times. After building several B2B products I've found that the most successful features are the ones the customers weren't expecting and didn't ask for...
It's ok to do customer development in order to track what your users want and at least cover their expectations, but you'll never create amazing products with this mentality...
Relevant: "Obvious to you. Amazing to others."
Re: Listen to Your Customers, They’ll Tell You What to Build
#38And you'll get faster horses all around.
This the difference of listening to what your customers literally say and being able to deduce what it is what they need.
"I want faster (or better) horses". Needs a follow up question or ability to understand the deeper core meaning. From the above quote. These are some off top of head self distilled thoughts on what that means
I want to get from point a to b faster. (faster vehicle or teleportation.)
I want less time traveling.
I want less prep time for traveling(E. G. Saddling horse).
I don't want to take care of my means f transportation (offer a stable service or offer non animal vehicle)
I want my destination closer.(urban)
I don't want to go to the store to buy X. (delivery service. Ala amazon?)
I want faster Internet vs I want to reach my final destination faster are similar but different outcomes.
Would you rather have Google load pages 100x faster or have above 99% chance to guess the site you really wanted/needed.
Re: Listen to Your Customers, They’ll Tell You What to Build
#39The thin font is super unreadable on my Galaxy S4.
Re: Listen to Your Customers, They’ll Tell You What to Build
#40I agree that doing more listening than speaking when talking to customers is important. It's also important to remember that customers will tell you they want features they they won't actually use or pay for. So it's necessary to develop an understanding of what your customers do and what problems they're trying to solve. This often helps more than just listening to features they say they want. If your customers aren…
I agree with most of your points. I would add that when you put a person in a position that you have asked them for input, they will feel pressured to give SOME kind of input, whether or not it is actually warranted. You're kind of setting them up to give input in the same way you might set someone up to tell a joke, they feel pressured to fill that space with SOMETHING. Most of the time when I have built features th…
