Skip to main content

5 rules of customer research worth repeating

When I plan a new customer research project I like to remind myself of the most important "rules". Here are those rules in a form of a small crib sheet.



Talk to your perfect customers first

The perfect customer has a problem, recognize a problem and is able to solve it.

Focus on customer problem

Don't talk solution. Don't sell. Don't defend your assumptions. 

Ask about the past and present experience

No future. No predictions. No "would you" questions.

Choose a medium people are comfortable with

Face-to-Face is the most informative. A phone is easy. Online - the fastest. 

Quantify your research results

Do research regularly. Iterate on the process. Look for patterns and commonalities. 

Popular posts from this blog

Powerful technology wasted with a wrong implementation

Travelling as a product manager is always fun. You are trying so many products that any trip becomes a market research exercise. Especially useful is to travel to different continents to see and try local products. That what happened to me when I landed in Tokyo.

Product Vision: an elevator pitch for your product

On this blog, I write a lot about making data-driven decisions . But what if you just starting to think about your product? You have a vague idea and nothing more. No point to go for prototyping or even talking to customers as you don't know yet who to talk to and what to talk about. In such situation - start from creating a product vision.

7 steps of Product Discovery

Before building a product - how do you know what product to build? While building a product - how do you know what features are the most valuable? After you've built a product - how do you know if to tune stuff or add a new one?