5 things customers will never tell you...

When I started in Silicon Valley in the 1990's, my first job was using my psychology background to help product and marketing teams better understand customers.

Since then I've helped dozens of startups apply the lessons learned at some of the world's most successful companies to create raving fans.

A few lessons learned along the way:

1. Customers are VERY lazy. Customers won't read instructional text in your UI. They don't care how much effort you've put into designing things. They'll sooner fumble their way through your product and quit if it's frustrating. I know you've thought through every aspect of training but your customers genuinely don't care. Unless your product is a robot for brain surgery or a fighter jet, only overachievers will read your instructions and that's a tiny segment of the population. Takeaway: Focus on the 20% of features that matter the most and make it so easy to use that a confused person with a blindfold will figure it out.
2. They ALL care about value. I can hear it already. Comments from consultants and academicians about the correlation between pricing and purchases for high end fashion. Fine. If you're selling $10,000 handbags to 500 consumers, this doesn't apply. But for the 99.99999% of the rest of us mortals, value matters. Takeaway: Think about the different points in your customers' journeys where value can play a role. Standard pricing? Freemiums? Bulk discounts? Loyalty and evangelism rewards? Also, how do you incorporate value-oriented messaging in your brand storytelling?
3. Customers don't behave rationally. Your ideas about what "makes the most sense" or "what's reasonable" or even what consumers say they'll do via qualitative research, matter little. The only thing that matters is observing what they actually do, because much of the time it doesn't conform to what you'd predict via research. Your job is to recognize patterns of behavior -- everything from how consumers make purchase decisions to how they actually use your product and other products -- and apply those learning to improve awareness, purchase decisions, adoption and evangelism. Takeaway: Encourage your team to avoid groupthink. Encourage radical candor. Every sizable organization has truth-tellers, people that just get it and don't suffer fools gladly. Hand those people a microphone.
4. They need you to be culturally relevant: When it comes to brands and product experiences, consumers desperately want their choice of your brand to make them more popular, better looking, and cooler. They'll choose your product over a better, more affordable alternative, if it's considered cooler than competitors' offerings. Cooler means your brand has tapped into some deeper cultural significance via borrowed equity, neat features, or things like attributes of your team, corporate culture or design. The dividends for consumers of you being culturally relevant are manifold. They get to feel part of the in-crowd for buying your stuff and they get to brag to others that they're part of your club. Takeaway: Understand popular culture and what customers already love. If you or your teams live under rocks, encourage them to get out more; try your competitors' products; live a little. Then ask yourself, "If our product disappeared tomorrow, would anyone even care?"
5. They have very little time for you. You're waiting at the Starbucks counter to order your double-shot oatmilk vanilla latte and the cashier has their back turned to you for a couple minutes, how long do you wait? Or you're on the phone with United for 10 minutes and they transfer you to a third person who can't help. How quickly do you complain on Twitter? One of the positives of all the tech in our lives is that we expect things to happen much faster than they used to. Don't want to drive around town looking for whole-wheat ramen noodles? Just order it via Amazon in 3 minutes. If your product designers, onboarding, training and support teams aren't thinking like marketers, you're in deep trouble. Nobody has time to read user guides. They don't read FAQ's. They won't attend trainings. Takeaway: Your consumers have the patience of a 5 year old that just ate two bags of Sour Patch Kids. Your job is to grab their attention with a toasted mashmallow and hand them a cute puppy.