Don't Listen to your Customer...Observe Them Instead!

Don't listen to your customers !

No, I am not at all saying that the organisations should not design keeping the customers in mind. In fact it is impossible to build a sustainable business without being customer-centric and putting them at the forefront of everything else. Apple, Amazon, Zappos, Southwest Airlines... are some of the classic examples of the same.

The argument here is not that we should not focus on designing products that solves for customers but instead that "is asking the customer what their need is, the correct method to design?"

Most of the Companies build products and services based on Customer Surveys or Interviews. The various questionnaires, interviews, Focus Group Discussions and Market research outcomes forms the basis of the product/service design. It is the most important input while evaluating the feasibility of any product design.

But the the key question that needs to be addressed is - Can we trust the voice of the #Customer? This may sound a bit weird when most of the thriving businesses have been build around the values of Customer Focus and Client's First.

Usually most of the Customer Surveys focus on 3 broad aspects:

1. Current State/Habits: How you behave currently or in your past?
2. Desired State/Habits: What change do you want to achieve from the existing situation?
3. The Reasoning: Why do you think the current way should give way to the future way, and what product will help you achieve it.

Shortcomings in this approach:

1. Current Habits: Firstly, most of the times people tend to under-report or report responses which are socially desirable. Hence, it may not always be an accurate assessment of the actual issue. Secondly, a lot of current habits or activities which we perform takes place subconsciously. In such cases, there is a tendency to forget and even if people wish to report honest responses, many times they end up reporting inaccurately. e.g., Do you remember how many times you turned the lights off yesterday when you stepped out of the room? Or how many times you honked the horn while driving down to office today?
2. Desired Habits: Whenever we look at future and desired changes, we believe in two things- Ideal Self & Ideal Environment/Context. But most of us fail to forecast the many other things that impact us in future and how we will respond to those.
3. The Reasoning: Its a human tendency to answer the Why's always rationally. But that's again acting with the conscious. During our conduct of business as usual,we rarely act rationally 100% of the times. Most of us know popping painkillers are harmful in long term , but we still end up popping them for short term relief. Do we act rational all the times in real life?

So how to approach designing anything?

1. Do not Trust What people say, but Trust what they do: Observe behaviors, actions, patterns and map them to diagnose what's happening and why is it happening
2. Identify the various factors that are impacting the decisions- Are some social norms driving those actions? Is there a information asymmetry? Are there some cognition issues at play which are impacting the decision? Is there a risk or loss aversion at play?
3. Get practical data: Implement the changes in controlled environments, observe the changes, resort to methods like A/B testing. Refine the approach based on the data.
4. Repeat Step 1 to 3, until you have addressed all issues that impacts the design

Some Examples:

1. Most pensions schemes around the world are now pushing for auto-enrollment i.e., you are enrolled automatically on taking up employment, unless you opt out of it. This is to drive a behavior of retirement savings, as its not the awareness about the importance about savings but most are either too lazy to enrol or just don't care enough to take the action.
2. Call waiting times of a Call Center: It was an interesting used case which I came across few years ago. The call center of a financial services Company, after observing the various call patterns and the nature of issues/behavior of their customers, designed its wait times in such a way (by asking the primary segmentation questions on IVRS), so as to frustrate the customers reaching out for things that were available on self service, forcing them to drop the call. This may look counter-intuitive, but the Company was very clear that the customers will not ditch them for not able to connect for mundane tasks, as there USP was something very different. Instead, next time they will try to explore self service options, thereby reducing the burden on the Call centers. Obviously, no customer survey would ask them to do so, to push for the desired behavior.

Usual suspects are most of the time not the real culprits... Design often needs creative thinking, deep observations, actionable insights from the data, real life experiments and use of behavioral science to drive design decisions. It's the ability to look beyond the obvious that makes a design more meaningful, practical and purposeful.

Are you still listening to your Customers?

#TheTotalRewardsFellow