By Colin N. Clarke, Ph.D.
Let’s say your company spends months designing and building a product or new service offering. Engineers, specialists, salespeople – everyone at your organization is involved. But when you launch to market it flops. What did you miss?
In situations like this, there is often a common ingredient that’s missing in the product development process: the customer. Let’s look at how engaging the customer can move an organization from reactive to proactive product development with three key steps.
1 – Dig deep into customer needs
Companies often feel as if they know what the customer needs. They have listening programs on message boards, social media and the customer service inbox. They get feedback from their channel partners. And they hear from field sales and service staff who attend field days, tradeshows and customer events.
With all of these feedback sources, how could you miss?
The shortfall of relying on these sources is that they have inherent biases, filtered content and run the risk of echoing stakeholder “wants” instead of actual customer “needs.” The missing link is the customer’s voice.
Use your listening programs and channel input to inform your development team on themes and considerations – then go to the source. Meet with customers in their use environment, find out how they use current products or services, learn about their likes and dislikes, and ask about what makes one product better than another (and why). Then ask them directly, “What would make your use experience even better?” Dig deep into customer needs, find out what’s most important, THEN begin your design to deliver on those unmet needs.
2 – Put the customer in the driver’s seat
As you work your way through concepts, early versions and prototypes, spread out your testing. Many companies rely heavily on their own staff, developers or engineers to do the testing and feel like they’ve addressed everything, only to launch to unmet customer expectations.
To remedy this, hand-pick a heavy-user audience and put the new product in their hands early in the development stages. Have them use it in THEIR environment the way they would any other product. Formalize the feedback from them, then communicate, test, measure, adjust and test it again.
User testing can take on many forms for every kind of product from tractors to software. But in our experience, the best development cycles use a multi-faceted approach to incorporating feedback loops into the design process. Put simply, don’t treat customer feedback as a one-and-done experience.
3 – Build early quality checkpoints into your launch plan
For many, product launch marks the end of the new product development process. After all, the product is in the field now, so what more can be done? The truth is, early post-launch is the perfect time to engage with customers and probe for unmet needs.
Think of this as the “canary in the coal mine” test for your newly launched product. Establish a formal, scheduled checkpoint with a random sample of your customers. Explore their customer experience through the purchase process, ask about their early product use experience, and find out where your product is or is not meeting expectations.
The benefit of this step is you can look for patterns that identify issues before they begin to appear on a larger scale. This gives your team an opportunity to adjust processes and communications, and address quality issues early on to provide your product its best opportunity for success.
Ready to create a greater level of confidence?
Creating a new product or service is an investment. Building a holistic strategy around customer research ensures your organization is bringing to market what the customer truly wants and needs. By employing the steps above, you can begin to move from reactive to proactive product development and build greater confidence in product launch success.
About Colin N. Clarke, Ph.D.
Colin is a Senior Research Strategist and Consultant for Prime46. He has worked on assignments from the Mississippi delta to the western Canadian prairies to the Bering Sea off the coast of Alaska. His projects have covered industries from manufacturing and logistics to energy and food production, along the way working for the likes of 3M, PepsiCo, Bobcat Company, Blue Cross Blue Shield and Royal Dutch Shell.