by Robyn Bolton | Apr 27, 2024 | Customer Centricity, Leadership, Stories & Examples
It’s easy to get caught up in the hunt for unique insights that will transform your business, conquer your competition, and put you on an ever-accelerating path to growth. But sometimes, the most valuable insights can come from listening to customers in their natural environment. That’s precisely what happened when I eavesdropped on a conversation at a local pizza joint. What I learned could be worth millions to your business.
A guy walked into a pizza place.
Last Wednesday, I met a friend for lunch. As usual, I was unreasonably early to the local wood-fired pizza joint, so I settled into my chair, content to spend time engaged in one of my favorite activities – watching people and eavesdropping on their conversations.
Although the restaurant is on the main street of one of the wealthier Boston suburbs, it draws an eclectic crowd, so I was surprised when a rather burly man in a paint-stained hoodie flung open the front door. As he stomped to the take-out order window, dust fell from his shoes, and you could hear the clanging of tools in his tool belt. He placed his order and thumped down at the table next to me.
A Multi-Million Dollar Chat
He pulled out his cell phone and made a call. “Hey, yeah, I’m at the pizza place, and they need your help. Yeah, they hate their current system, but they don’t have the time to figure out a new one or how to convert. Yeah, ok, I’ll get his number. Ok if I give him yours. Great. Thanks.”
A few minutes later, his order was ready, and the manager walked over with his pizza.
Hoodie-guy: “Hey, do you have a card?”
Manager: “No, I don’t. Something I can help you with?”
H: “I just called a friend of mine. He runs an IT shop, and I told him you’re using the RST restaurant management system, and you hate it…”
M: “I hate it so much…”
H: “So my buddy’s business can help you change it. He’s helped other restaurants convert away from RST, and he’d love to talk to you or the owner.”
M: “I’m one of the co-owners, and I’d love to stop using RST, but we use it for everything – our website, online ordering, managing our books, everything. I can’t risk changing.”
H: “That’s the thing, my friend does it all for you. He’ll help you pick the new system, set it up, migrate you from the other system, and ensure everything runs smoothly. You have nothing to worry about.”
M: “That would be amazing. Here’s my direct line. Have him give me a call. And if he’s good, I can guarantee you that every other restaurant on this street will change, too. We all use RST, and we all hate it. We even talked about working together to find something better, but no one had time to figure everything out.”
They exchanged numbers, and the hoodie guy walked out with his pizza. The manager/owner walked back to the open kitchen, told his staff about the conversation, and they cheered. Cheered!
Are You Listening?
In just a few minutes of eavesdropping, I uncovered a potential goldmine for a B2B business – 15 frustrated customers, all desperate to switch from a system they hate but unable to do so due to time and resource constraints. The implications are staggering – an entire local market worth tens of millions of dollars ripe for the taking simply by being willing to listen and offer a solution.
As a B2B leader, the question is: are you truly tapping into the insights right in front of you? When was the last time you left your desk, observed your customers in their natural habitat, and listened to their unvarnished feedback? If you’re not doing that, you’re missing out on opportunities that could transform your business.
The choice is yours. Will you stay in your office and rely on well-worn tools, or venture into the wild and listen to your customers? Your answer could be worth millions.
by Robyn Bolton | Mar 5, 2024 | Customer Centricity, Tips, Tricks, & Tools
AI is NOT a substitute for person-to-person discovery conversations or Jobs to be Done interviews.
But it is a freakin’ fantastic place to start…if you do the work before you start.
Get smart about what’s possible
When ChatGPT debuted, I had a lot of fun playing with it, but never once worried that it would replace qualitative research. Deep insights, social and emotional Jobs to be Done, and game-changing surprises only ever emerge through personal conversation. No matter how good the Large Language Model (LLM) is, it can’t tell you how feelings, aspirations, and motivations drive their decisions.
Then I watched JTBD Untangled’s video with Evan Shore, WalMart’s Senior Director of Product for Health & Wellness, sharing the tests, prompts, and results his team used to compare insights from AI and traditional research approaches.
In a few hours, he generated 80% of the insights that took nine months to gather using traditional methods.
Get clear about what you want and need.
Before getting sucked into the latest shiny AI tools, get clear about what you expect the tool to do for you. For example:
- Provide a starting point for research: I used the free version of ChatGPT to build JTBD Canvas 2.0 for four distinct consumer personas. The results weren’t great, but they provided a helpful starting point. I also like Perplexity because even the free version links to sources.
- Conduct qualitative research for me: I haven’t used it yet, but a trusted colleague recommended Outset.ai, a service that promises to get to the Why behind the What because of its ability to “conduct and synthesize video, audio, and text conversations.”
- Synthesize my research and identify insights: An AI platform built explicitly for Jobs to be Done Research? Yes, please! That’s precisely what JobLens claims to be, and while I haven’t used it in a live research project, I’ve been impressed by the results of my experiments. For non-JTBD research, Otter.ai is the original and still my favorite tool for recording, live transcription, and AI-generated summaries and key takeaways.
- Visualize insights: Mural, Miro, and FigJam are the most widely known and used collaborative whiteboards, all offering hundreds of pre-formatted templates for personas, journey maps, and other consumer research templates. Another colleague recently sang the praises of theydo, an AI tool designed specifically for customer journey mapping.
Practice your prompts
“Garbage in. Garbage out.” Has never been truer than with AI. Your prompts determine the accuracy and richness of the insights you’ll get, so don’t wait until you’ve started researching to hone them. If you want to start from scratch, you can learn how to write super-effective prompts here and here. If you’d rather build on someone else’s work, Brian at JobsLens has great prompt resources.
Spend time testing and refining your prompts by using a previous project as a starting point. Because you know what the output should be (or at least the output you got), you can keep refining until you get a prompt that returns what you expect. It can take hours, days, or even weeks to craft effective prompts, but once you have them, you can re-use them for future projects.
Defend your budget
Using AI for customer research will save you time and money, but it is not free. It’s also not just the cost of the subscription or license for your chosen tool(s).
Remember the 80% of insights that AI surfaced in the JTBD Untangled video? The other 20% of insights came solely from in-person conversations but comprised almost 100% of the insights that inspired innovative products and services.
AI can only tell you what everyone already knows. You need to discover what no one knows, but everyone feels. That still takes time, money, and the ability to connect with humans.
Run small experiments before making big promises
People react to change differently. Some will love the idea of using AI for customer research, while others will resist with. Everyone, however, will pounce on any evidence that they’re right. So be prepared. Take advantage of free trials to play with tools. Test tools on friends, family, and colleagues. Then underpromise and overdeliver.
AI is a starting point. It is not the ending point.
I’m curious, have you tried using AI for customer research? What tools have you tried? Which ones do you recommend?
by Robyn Bolton | Feb 27, 2024 | Customer Centricity, Tips, Tricks, & Tools
Unintended consequences often catch us off guard despite their predictability. The moment they occur, we gasp in shock, shake our heads, and look at each other in wide-eyed horror at this thing that just happened that we could never ever ever have anticipated.
Yet, when (if) we do an After-Action Review, we often realize that these consequences were not entirely unforeseeable. In fact, had we anticipated them, we might have made different decisions.
The Unintended Consequences of Spreadsheets
In 1800 BCE, ancient Babylonians started recording data by scratching grids and columns onto clay tablets, and the spreadsheet was born. Over the millennia, we went from clay tablets to papyrus to parchment and then paper.
Fast forward to 1963 when R. Brian Walsh of Marquette University ported the Business Computer Language (BCL) program to an IBM 7040, and electronic spreadsheets became a reality. The introduction of VisiCalc by Apple in 1979 revolutionized spreadsheet capabilities, followed by Lotus 123 and Microsoft Excel. Today, spreadsheets are ubiquitous in education, business operations, financial markets, budgeting, and even personal inventories.
Unintended yet predictable consequences
While spreadsheets have undoubtedly enhanced efficiency and accuracy compared to traditional methods like clay tablets or hand-drawn tables on parchment, their ease of use has inadvertently led to complacency.
We stopped engaging in a multi-millennial habit of discussing, debating, and deciding before making a spreadsheet. We started flippantly asking people to create spreadsheets and providing little, if any, guidance because “it’s easy to make changes and run scenarios.”
This shift resulted in a reliance on automated models and a lack of shared assumptions or analytical rigor in decision-making processes.
Of course, these behaviors were never intended. They were, however, very predictable.
Research spanning disciplines as varied as network scientists, anthropology, neuropsychology, and paleontology shines a light on how truly predictable we are.
Here are some examples:
Emotions before Reason: Ask someone if they make decisions based on their motivations, aspirations, and fears and use data to justify the decisions, and they’ll tell you no. Ask them the last time someone else made a decision that “made no sense,” and you’ll listen to a long list of examples.
Small gains now are better than big gains later: Thoughtfully planning before using solutions like spreadsheets, word processing, email, and instant messaging could save us time at work and help us get home 30 minutes earlier or work a few hours less on the weekend. But saving a few seconds now by brain-dumping into Word, setting up a “flexible” spreadsheet, and firing off a text feels much better.
Confidence > Realism: We’ve all been in meetings where the loudest voice or the most senior person’s opinion carried the day. As we follow their lead, we ignore signs that we’re wrong and explain away unexpected and foreboding outcomes until we either wake up to our mistakes or adjust to our new circumstances.
Predict the 93%. Create for the 7%
Acknowledging the predictability of human behavior is not an endorsement of stereotypes but a recognition of our innate cognitive processes. By incorporating this understanding into design, innovation, and decision-making processes, we better anticipate potential outcomes and mitigate unintended consequences.
While 93% of human behavior may follow predictable patterns rooted in evolutionary instincts, focusing on the remaining 7% allows for the exploration of unique behaviors and novel solutions. By embracing both aspects of human nature, we can navigate challenges more effectively and anticipate a broader range of outcomes in our endeavors, leading to informed decision-making and value creation.
Now, if I could only get Excel to stop auto-converting numbers into date/time format.
by Robyn Bolton | Jan 31, 2024 | Customer Centricity, Innovation, Tips, Tricks, & Tools
Most customer research efforts waste time and money because they don’t produce insights that fuel innovation. Well-meaning businesspeople say they want to “learn what customers want,” yet they ask questions better suited to confirming their own ideas or settling internal debates. Meanwhile, eager consumers dutifully provide answers despite the nagging belief that they’re being asked the wrong questions.
It doesn’t have to be this way. In fact, you can get profound revelations into consumers’ psyche, motivations, and behaviors if you do one thing – channel your inner Elmo.
First, a confession
I find Elmo deeply annoying. I grew up watching Sesame Street, and I still get an astounding amount of joy watching Big Bird, Mr. Snuffleupagus, Cookie Monster, Bert and Ernie, Grover, and Oscar the Grouch (especially when Oscar channels his inner Taylor Swift).
Elmo moved to Sesame Street in 1985, and it hasn’t been the same since. He’s designed to reflect the mental, emotional, and intellectual capabilities of a 3.5-year-old, and, in that aspect, his creators were wildly successful. I fully acknowledge that Elmo plays a vital role in the mission of Sesame Street and that people of all ages love Elmo. But Elmo makes my ears bleed, and I will never be ok with the fact that Elmo refers to himself in the third person.
This is why my recommendation to channel your inner Elmo is shocking and extremely serious.
Next, an explanation
On Monday, Elmo posted on X (yes, the minimum age limit is 13, but his mom and dad help him run the account, so it’s apparently okay), “Elmo is just checking in! How is everybody doing?”
180 million views, 120,000 likes, and 13,000 comments later, it was clear that no one was okay.
And lest you think this was Gen Z trauma dumping on their ol’ pal Elmo, Dionne Warwick, T-Pain, and Today Show anchor Craig Melvin responded with their struggles. Comments ranged from, “Mondays are hard” to “Elmo I’m gonna be real I am at my f—ing limit,’ to “Elmo each day the abyss we stare into grows a unique horror. one that was previously unfathomable in nature. our inevitable doom which once accelerated in years, or months, now accelerates in hours, even minutes. however I did have a good grapefruit earlier, thank you for asking.”
Wow. Thank goodness for that grapefruit.
There are a lot of theories about why Elmo’s post touched a nerve – it’s January and we’re tired, it’s easier to share our struggles online than in person, or we still enjoy “that wholesome and sincere bond from childhood that makes us want to share.”
I’m sure all those are true, and I think it’s something more, something we can all learn and do.
Now, the secret
Elmo may be a red, hairy, 3.5-year-old muppet. Still, he nailed the behaviors required to get people to open up and share their inner worlds – the very thoughts, beliefs, and motivations that enable others to create and offer impactful and innovative solutions.
Here’s what Elmo did (and you should, too):
- Show that you’re genuinely curious: Elmo didn’t open with the standard “How are you?” that if answered with anything other than the socially acceptable “Fine,” results in awkward silence and inner panic. Elmo opened by declaring his intent – checking in – and then asked a question. Because of that, we understood his motivation was genuine, and he wanted an honest answer.
- Ask open-ended questions: Elmo didn’t ask a closed question that can be answered with yes or no. He asked a question that allowed people to share as much or as little as they wanted and that could act as a springboard to a deeper conversation.
- Listen silently and without judgment: Elmo didn’t follow up his original tweet with options like “Are you doing ok, or not ok, or are you happy, or sad, or mad, or…” Elmo asked a question and then listened (read the responses) without jumping back into the conversation or firing off follow-up questions.
- Acknowledge and thank the person sharing: On Tuesday, Elmo responded but not by skipping off to the next scheduled post. He acknowledged the response by opening with, “Wow! Elmo is glad he asked!” He didn’t share his opinion or immediately ask another question. Instead, he thanked people for sharing, acknowledged that he heard their responses, and was grateful.
- Do something with what was shared: Even if you do #4, it’s tempting to move on to the next question. Don’t. Elmo didn’t. Instead, he wrote that he “learned that it is important to ask a friend how they are doing.” He also wrote that he “will check in again soon, friends! Elmo loves you.” You don’t have to profess your love but do respond with what you learned and what it makes you wonder.
People can’t tell you what to create because they don’t know what you know. But they can tell you the problems they have. If you’re willing to listen (just don’t talk about yourself in the third person, you’re not a muppet).
by Robyn Bolton | Oct 11, 2023 | Customer Centricity, Innovation, Leadership
You know that customer insights are important.
You spend time and money to collect customer insights.
But are you using them?
And by “using,” I don’t mean summarizing, synthesizing, discussing, PowerPointing, and presenting the insights. I mean making decisions, changing strategies, and rethinking plans based on them.
I posed this question to a few dozen executives. The awkward silence spoke volumes.
Why do we talk to customers but not listen to them?
In a world of ever more constrained resources, why do we spend our limited time and money collecting insights that we don’t use meaningfully?
It seems wild to have an answer or an insight and not use it, especially if you spent valuable resources getting it. Can you imagine your high school self paying $50 for the answer key to the final in your most challenging class, then crumpling it up, throwing it away, and deciding to just wing the exam?
But this isn’t an exam. This is our job, profession, reputation, and maybe even identity. We have experience and expertise. We are problem solvers.
We have the answers (or believe that we do).
After all, customers can’t tell us what they want. We’re supposed to lead customers to where they should be. Waiting for insights or changing decisions based on what customers think slows us down, and isn’t innovation all about “failing fast,” minimal viable products, and agility?
So, we talk to customers because we know we should.
We use the answers and insights to ensure we have brilliant things to tell the bosses when they ask.
We also miss the opportunity to create something that changes the game.
But it doesn’t have to be this way.
What do you NEED to learn?
It’s easy to rattle off a long list of things you want to learn from customers. You probably also know the things you should learn from customers. But what do you need to learn?
What do you need to know by the end of a conversation so that you can make a decision?
What is the missing piece in the puzzle that, without it, you can’t make progress?
What insight do you need so badly that you won’t end the conversation until you have it?
If the answer is “nothing,” why are you having the conversation?
Will you listen?
Hearing is the “process, function, or power of perceiving a sound,” while listening is “hearing things with thoughtful attention” and a critical first step in making a connection. It’s the difference between talking to Charlie Brown’s teacher and talking to someone you care about deeply. One is noise, the other is meaning.
You may hear everything in a conversation, but if you only listen to what you expect or want to hear, you’ll miss precious insights into situations, motivations, and social dynamics.
If you’re only going to listen to what you want to hear, why are you having the conversation?
Are you willing to be surprised?
We enter conversations to connect with others, and the best way to connect is to agree. Finding common ground is exciting, comforting, and reassuring. It’s great to meet someone from your hometown, who cheers for the same sports team, shares the same hobby, or loves the same restaurant.
When we find ourselves conversing with people who don’t share our beliefs, preferences, or experiences, our survival instincts kick in, and we fight, take flight, or (like my client) freeze.
But here’s the thing – you’re not being attacked by a different opinion. You’re being surprised by it. So, assuming you’re not under actual physical threat, are you willing to lean into the surprise, get curious, ask follow-up questions, and seek to understand it?
If you’re not, why are you having the conversation?
Just because you should doesn’t mean you must.
You know that customer insights are important.
You spend time and money to collect customer insights.
But are you using them to speed the path to product-market fit, establish competitive advantage, and create value?
If you’re not, why are you having the conversation?
by Robyn Bolton | Sep 18, 2023 | Customer Centricity, Innovation
“If you can’t explain something simply, you don’t understand it well enough.”
Albert Einstein (supposedly)
This is one of my favorite quotes because it’s an absolute gut punch. You think you know something, probably because you’ve been saying and doing it for years. Then someone comes along and asks you to explain it, and suddenly, you’re just standing there, mouth agape, gesturing, hoping that this wacky game of charades produces an answer.
This happened to me last Monday.
While preparing to teach a course titled “Design Innovation Lab,” I thought it would be a good idea to define “design” and “innovation.” I already had a slide with the definition of “innovation” – something new that creates value – but when I had to make one for “design,” my stomach sank.
My first definition was “pretty pictures,” which is both wrong and slightly demeaning because designers do that and so much more. My second definition, I know it when I see it, was worse.
So, I Googled the definition.
Then I asked ChatGPT.
Then I asked some designer friends.
No one had a simple definition of Design.
As the clock ticked closer to 6:00 pm, I defaulted to a definition from the International Council of Design:
“Design is a discipline of study and practice focused on the interaction between a person – a “user” – and the man-made environment, taking into account aesthetic, functional, contextual, cultural, and societal considerations. As a formalized discipline, design is a modern construct.”
Before unveiling this definition to a classroom full of degreed designers pursuing their Master’s in Design, I asked them to define “design.”
It went as well as all my previous attempts. Lots of thoughts and ideas. Lots of “it’s this but not that.” Lots of debate about whether it needs to have a purpose for it to be distinct from art.
Absolutely no simple explanations or punchy definitions.
So, when I unveiled the definition from the very official-sounding International Council of Design, we all just stared at it.
“Yes, but it’s not quite right.”
“It is all those things, but it’s more than just those things.”
“I guess it is a ‘modern construct’ when you think of it as a job, but we’ve done it forever.”
As we squinted and puzzled, what was missing slowly dawned on us.
There was nothing human in this definition. There was no mention of feelings or empathy, life or nature, connection or community, aspirations or dreams.
In this definition, designers consider multiple aspects of an unnatural environment in creating something to be used. Designers are simply the step before mass production begins.
Who wants to do that?
Who wants to be a stop, however necessary, on a conveyor belt of sameness?
Yet that’s what we become when we strip the humanness out of our work.
Humans are messy, emotional, unpredictable, irrational, challenging, and infuriating.
We’re also interesting, creative, imaginative, hopeful, kind, curious, hard-working, and resilient.
When we try to strip away human messiness to create MECE (mutually exclusive, collectively exhaustive) target markets and customer personas, we strip away the human we’re creating for.
When we ignore unpredictable and irrational feedback on our ideas, we ignore the creative and imaginative answers that could improve our ideas.
When we give up on a challenge because it’s more difficult than expected and doesn’t produce immediate results, we give up hope, resiliency, and the opportunity to improve things.
I still don’t have a simple definition of design, but I know that one that doesn’t acknowledge all the aspects of a human beyond just being a “user” isn’t correct.
Even if you explain something simply, you may not understand it well enough.
