How your customer is more than one person

I tend to follow Gordon Ramsay on shows, and all of us know what he is really famous for. I know what you are thinking, but what I meant to say is that he is known for his perfectionism. Having over 16 Michelin stars (currently 7) and starring in over ten television series he is pretty known for giving hell to participants over ingredients, presentation and even knife cuts. One afternoon I was watching a show of his namely — Gordon Ramsay’s Home Cooking — where he cooks in his home kitchen along with his children. He was making roasted tomato soup — the soup being an absolute favorite of mine — I was keen to know how his version was made. As he went through the whole recipe, it was simply fascinating — until he opened a can of tomato puree to use in his soup. It was an utter shock to me. Gordon Ramsay — the known behold master of F: I meant food — was using canned tomatoes in his kitchen. When he used that he said, “Hey I am cooking at home so I can use tomatoes from a can”. What I realized after I saw this show is that Gordon Ramsay is not only a world-renowned chef and TV personality who owns restaurants, but is also a dad of four who loves cooking at home.

Did this sort of behavioral change apply only for Gordon Ramsay or did it happen with people like you and me? That is when I started to realize that people around me were making similar choices — well different choices in different places. My conclusion: We are in a way more than one person.

I saw myself using mobile in my bed, laptop at the office, and the iPad or desktop in the evening to access my mailbox. When shopping online from home, I used a desktop browser to shop as it was faster and feature-rich, and I was using the mobile app or lighter version on the mobile browser when I was in transit or researching the online store standing in the brick and mortar store. I guess this is something all of you go through as customers too.

What was influencing this change in behavior? People tended to behave differently based on the context and the change in context has mostly to do with the environment we are in.

Context = User + Environment

What I found interesting was that the same person was using different products to get the same job done based on where they were and who they were with. For instance, when I want to keep track of time and finish a task I keep a timer on laptop or mobile at the office, set a Pomodoro clock when in the kitchen or ask my mom to keep my time for me when I am studying for an exam. On the other hand, the same product was getting different jobs done for the same or different user based on different contexts. For instance, my mobile phone was serving as my entertainment partner when I played games or watched Netflix, or a collaboration tool when taking office calls on Skype or sometimes evens a paperweight when I couldn’t find anything to hold my doodling papers down.

My key takeaways…

Customers are more than one person: He or she dawns the hat of different people and will find different ways to accomplish a task based on people they are with and place they are in — and the restriction, rules, behaviors and social norms the context dictates.

Your product fulfills much more than it is made for: Sometimes a product is created for a certain purpose but gets used for different purposes. In a way, your customers start defining new ways to use the product. Facebook for business is a fine example of how a product is evolved after people started using the pages feature for their brands or businesses.

Your product can have many avatars: Your product or service can fulfill different needs for different people without even have to change its core features. The same tub of ice cream can be used to celebrate a special occasion or to heal a heartbreak or soothe a toothache after getting one’s tooth extracted.

How can you design products for contexts in people’s lives rather than for people themselves? How can you break the stereotype of how a particular customer segment should behave?

Let me know your experiences and thoughts on this topic…