E21 - Customer Research - Do It Right.

Bad inputs result in bad outputs. If your customer insights are flawed, they are going to result in flawed product, branding, marketing, messaging, advertising, business strategy and even business model. If you aren’t doing your customer research right. You are signing up for failure. 

Here are the 5 most avoidable and yet common mistakes we have observed and our recommended ways of avoiding them. This is how Customer Research is Done Right. 

#customerresearch #customerinsights #UX #CX #userresearch #customerexperince #userexperience 

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Transcript

Speaker: 1

Hello everyone. Welcome to Refine and Focus with Refine and Focus. And today we are going to talk about customer research and how to do it right. Well it started with the conversation between G and I where I was non-stop complaining to Jiu about how so many people do customer research wrong and it is so easy to get it wrong. And she suggested why not make it into a topic for a life all the complaints that I'm talking about and all the recommendations, suggestions that I was giving to her. She said, let's just have this conversation live and talk about it. So here we are. I'm perma, this is jiu. My colleague Jiu is going to ask me questions about customer research and I am going to give all the answers based on my experiences and my skills of doing this for a long, long time. Thank you Ju, for doing this. Shall we get started? 

Speaker: 2

Yes, definitely. I'm super excited to get started on this and thank you so much for inviting me to do this with you. I guess so to start off, I know we had a great conversation privately about like the do's and don'ts of customer research, but I was wondering for everyone else what are, what would you say are some of the most frequently made mistakes when it comes to customer or user research? 

Speaker: 1

Yeah, I so wanted you to ask that question because it's good to have that one checklist in front of you about the mistakes that you could make. So I, this is, this is what I have seen most frequently made mistakes. One is usually people fail to understand how important it is to have a good, authentic, real customer research. Then many people try to do a DIY version of it because it's a soft skill. Usually soft skills are taken for granted and everybody thinks they can do it and they just do a DIY version of it and I think it's one of the mistakes. Then picking up wrong customer segment is another thing that I have seen very frequently and it's, it's like calling the wrong person. It's like talking to a wrong person for solving a problem. What completely diff co problem of completely different person. 

Speaker: 1

Then empathy, we talk a lot about empathy and it's kind of now become a buzzword and I have seen there's a lot of misunderstanding about what empathy is and how it should be. How that powerful tool is is misused or misunderstood. Then I would say asking bad questions, not intentionally but just we are so sometimes enthusiastic about certain questions that we ask wrong questions to wrong people and wrong questions, deliver wrong answers, not another one very frequently I've seen is using just one single method like either doing only interviews or doing only surveys or like not doing enough number of, not using enough number of methods. And last one is very dear. One personally to me is trying to do too many things at once, which is, which is trying to solve the problem while gaining insights like you hear something just one thing and rushing to taking that as the answer and rushing to solving the problem wherein I believe that it should be one thing at a time. 

Speaker: 1

If you're gathering insight, forget that you are ever going to solve this problem. Listen to it completely take it in. Well I can go on with these things so I'm going to stop here and we are going to treat that as the what highlights of most frequently made mistakes. Gimme one second G. Okay, gimme one second. So if you are joining us now, just say your name in comments, just say hi to us and if you have any questions about customer research or how to do it right, just keep on putting your questions in there. Jiu will ask those questions also and then I will answer those questions. So back to you ju. Sorry about that. 

Speaker: 2

No worries, thank you Prima and definitely about the comments and questions you made so many wonderful points and I would really love to dive deeper into each one that you listed. I know first off you mentioned how a lot of people fail to understand what good customer research is and so I was wondering what exactly do you mean by not understanding the importance of customer research? 

Speaker: 1

I see it as a spectrum. I see it as a spectrum of understanding. I see it as a spectrum of understanding the importance. Some people think that you don't need customer like customer research at all. They think that they know everything that has to be known about their customers. So they don't, they don't need the research at all, which is very, which is kind of becoming rare. It used to be, you know, five, 10 years ago it used to be a lot wherein people thought that they knew their customers well and they had never asked their customers any questions. And on the other side of the spectrum of not understanding the importance of customer research is the other type that I said like doing it yourself thinking that because it's a soft skill thinking that you know, oh it's so easy to do it, we can also do it and just doing it yourself. 

Speaker: 1

And why I, why I think it is so important, why it is why customer, good customer authentic customer research is so important is mainly because it is an input for everything in your business. So whether we are talking about your product, your marketing, your messaging, your advertising, your business model, your business strategy, everything is an output of your customer insight. And if you don't understand your customer will, everything that is going to be the output of that input is going to be wrong and forgive my language and it it is, it is garbage and garbage out. So if you make huge mistakes in your customer insights, you are going to, you are signing up yourselves for failure. So it's a smaller, it's a smaller investment into getting everything right and I, it, it hurts me, it hurts me that so many smart and important people don't take customer research seriously and don't know how well it should be done in so. So that's what I mean when I said that you know, like a lot of people don't understand the importance of authentic customer research. 

Speaker: 2

Yes, absolutely. Thank you so much for clarifying that. And I know you talked a lot about how people think customer research is a soft skill and so they do it themselves, but can you talk more about what's wrong with organizations trying to do research themselves? 

Speaker: 1

Yes. In a second. So we have Zach and Carolina asking us few questions here. Zach is asking, would like to hear more about how empathy is helpful in the process once and Carolina is asking, I would love to hear more about how to come up with the right questions to ask in an interview. Okay. We are going to take both these questions. We are going to go through whatever questions JHU has because JS has set up everything and once we have, once we have covered her questions, we are going to come to your questions, keep those questions coming, just put them in the chat window and we will go on taking them one by one. Thank you so much for listening and back to your question jiu, which was about what's wrong with doing it yourself, right? Yeah, it's for everything we think that it is a cheaper way of doing cheaper and efficient way of doing it yourself. 

Speaker: 1

So I think there are these three things wrong with it. I don't know how I came up with the number but three things are wrong with it. One is lack of objectivity, lack of expertise or skill or practice, therefore, but we'll fit it into one, two, or three. Yeah, so let's, let's start with lack of objectivity. So if you're doing it yourself and it is your company, your product, your problem, then you're too close to it. You are too close to it, you're too much in love with your product, it is very difficult for you to let go that that attachment with the problem and be able to ask, ask or run an objective research. So of very often than not you will land up with the answers that you think are the right answers consciously or subconsciously. Again you'll come back to those. So that's why you know, doing it yourself one is you don't have enough objectivity and which is fair, you're too close to it. 

Speaker: 1

Then talking about expertise, skill level or practice, it's, you know, all those things create so much of efficiency because people like us, you, we do this day in and day out and all we do is understanding the customer at various places. So we have, we have a lot of learning that we have collected and a lot of experience that we have collected doing this. And it actually, when organizations try to do it themselves, they'll land up taking shortcuts or having really huge learning curve either ways. One is if if they take shortcuts then they're not going to get, you know, going back to the same thing which is bad input is going to give bad output. And then if there is a huge learning curve, then that is also a waste of time. And very recently I have seen many organizations because it's, you know, it's, it's time consuming, time consuming and takes a lot of effort and planning effort kind of thing. And at the same time it's just asking questions. So many organizations just give it to for interns to do it. Like just go ask questions and just give them list of questions and just go ask those questions and then it doesn't work out well. I, I think I'm digressing. Let's come back to your questions. I think I answered enough. So three things which is lack of objectivity, lack of expertise, practice and skills. So that's you 

Speaker: 2

Through wonderful points and kind of going more into the problem of lack of objectivity before you mentioned how empathy is kind of becoming a buzzword and a lot of people are trying to be more empathetic but perhaps a lot of times they're not able to truly tap into what true empathy is. And so I was wondering if you could say more about misunder, misunderstanding, empathy and not being objective and how that relates to customer research. 

Speaker: 1

Yeah, so very often Jibo you might have heard everybody tells you like empathy is like walking in someone else's shoes, right? And what happens is that's what everyone thinks that empathy is walking in someone else's shoes but no one considers that if you're walking in someone else's shoes does your su shoe size change for their shoes? Because if you wear someone else's shoes and you are still yourself, you're still thinking like yourself, you might know what their problem is but the solution, you are always going to think from your point of view. You're going to think about, oh so this is what I would do to solve this. And that's exactly like, that's not empathy thinking that how you would react in certain situation, having faced problem that they are facing is not, is not empathy. You have to think from the point of view what is the solution that's going to work for them? 

Speaker: 1

What is the solution? And without directly asking them, be able to ask them that what solution works for them and then figure out the solution. And also very frequently I have seen how I'm, because people forget that when you wear someone else's shoes you actually need to become them. If you want to be empo empathetic, however that's very difficult, that's very difficult to actually be able to think like someone else. It's almost impossible to think like someone else because you are not them. So that's why instead of empathy, think about objectivity, you know, when you think that you don't understand the person in front of you, you listen more, think about curiosity, think, think about humility of listening more and understanding them more and accepting that you don't know what this person is going through because you are not that person and you are not your customer. 

Speaker: 1

So that's why I think objectivity is extremely important or sometimes even more important than than empathy because empathy, real empathy is really, really, really hard. You really can't think like someone else. You can try to understand what they're going through but you cannot be them because you are not them. Like sometimes I have seen very frequently people like similar age, similar background, if people are interviewing each other, they not each other in, if the interviewer is of the same background as the customer I have very frequently seen, they miss out on few things be and mishear a few things, many things sometimes because they think like that person is exactly like them, they're going to think like them. And I have seen it really too often. So that's why I say that empathy fine, yes you need empathy, but it's different way of looking at empathy. And what you need more than empathy is you need objectivity, you need curiosity and you need humility. 

Speaker: 2

That was amazing. Thank you Prma. I loved your analogy about shoe sizes cause I feel like sometimes forcing empathy can kind of hinder empathy, so it has a opposite effect. And I know up until this point we talked a lot about how bad inputs yield or bad inputs you on bad outputs. So I was wondering what exactly makes a question good or bad in your opinion. 

Speaker: 1

Yeah, that is also like I I'm going to bring up one question that's Carolina is asking, she is asking, she wants to hear more about how to come up with right questions to ask in an interview, which is kind of, which kind of starts with knowing what are good questions and what are bad questions. I cannot really combine this answer, but I will first answer yours and if you allow me to, I'll quickly answer Carolinas, which is a much longer answer. I may not be able to give complete answer here, but I'll give part of it. So starting with good and bad, first of all, I think if you ask questions to your friends and family or colleagues, those become bad questions because they don't want to hurt you, they don't want to hurt you. So, and they, that's why they are going to, no matter what questions you ask, usually they will give you answers that because they know you, they're going to give you the answers that you want to hear. 

Speaker: 1

So they're, they're they, they don't have objectivity then of giving answers. And so you have to be really, really careful if you're going to ask those questions to your, you know, your near and dear circle that's like, it's not directly speaking to good bad questions, but who you ask those questions to also matters to very think about it at like very high level. It's asking, I think asking questions about past and present is, are good questions, asking questions about the future because no one knows what's going to happen in the future. So if you, if you ask me that, would you use this, you know, given like, would you use this product that would you use this product? That itself makes it a wrong question because I, I myself don't know and we just, you know, if someone is nicely asking us this question, you're just going to say yes or if you didn't like the person, you'll say no. Like it's not a real answer. 

Speaker: 1

Then asking them about, I usually focus questions on experiences and stories and having them take me through their experience of doing something and picking my answers based on what they're sharing instead of asking direct question, like asking them about, hmm, like I, I'm thinking of an example, thinking of an example for, hmm, I have this pen here. So for example, instead of asking them, have you ever used this pen or, you know, or, or, or, or is it nice to use this pen? Something like that, like leading question, is it nice to use this pen? You would rather ask them, so what do you use for writing and how, how does your usual writing schedule, like writing process looks like? Or do you write in the mornings and how does it go? Or something, something on those lines, something that is more experiential than then asking them direct questions. 

Speaker: 1

And also big no no is I think I mentioned a bit, which is leading questions. I, I I don't even think of those questions as questions to ask. That's why I forget, which is like, like do you like this product or do you like this solution? Or what do you think about this? And actually showing them what you, what you have and forcing, kind of forcing them to say yes and or even pricing question, like giving a range and telling them, well would you pay this again? Would you pay, this is not, they're not actually paying. So instead of giving them, would you pay this? Just maybe creating something as a test and asking them to pay for it. So that becomes a present and if they actually pay for it then they will pay for it. And just asking the the, the dream and future questions won't really, I went in many directions but I hope I answered your question and I would like to think about this question. Like I, I, in my opinion, I think I know what are good questions and bad questions. It's so difficult to, maybe we can have one session in the future 

Speaker: 1

Session in the future, which is only about good and bad questions and we just go through questions and go on talking about what makes this a bad question. What makes this a good question, who you can ask this question to who you can that would work well. Carolina, can we do that so that, you know, I can answer your answer about what are the right questions to ask in an interview. Yeah, I know you're saying yes. So Andrew here is asking a question Jiu, I'm going to just put it on the screen. Huh. So Andrew's asking I, because it's an easy answer, I'm just going to say it right now, which is Andrew's asking if many, 

Speaker: 1

Do you suggest asking more narrow questions or more open questions? It's a good question Andrew. And what we think as sometimes we think as narrow questions technically are actually not narrow questions in conversation. I'll give you an example. When you tell someone usually I you, you identify yes and no questions, that's narrow questions and questions like, you know what, how, when was the last time? Or you know, the longer questions as open-ended questions. So narrow question may sound something like this, is there anything else that you wanted to talk about? And people usually will not answer as yes or no. They will actually go in and tell you what they wanted to talk about. So that's one thing about narrow questions. You have to think about how think or test that question with people on how somebody actually answers that question. And also as a, if you don't have those skills then asking open questions is always better. More questions. Tell me more questions which are talking about their experiences with something which is like, tell me about the time when you went and got coffee at Starbucks. How was it? It sounds like a narrow question. Somebody might say, how was it? Coffee was delicious, but it's not a narrow question. People are going to tell you how was their experience of getting that coffee. So I hope that answers your question Andrew, and thank you for asking. Yeah, sorry Jibo to hijack your session. No 

Speaker: 2

Worries at all. That was a wonderful question and a wonderful answer. So I guess looping back, I remember at the beginning of this, this question you mentioned how you need to be careful about who you ask certain questions to because it might not lead to being objective. And before you mentioned how it's bad to only use one method in customer research. And so kind of diving more into like the methodology and structure of good research, I was wondering would you say that there's an ideal number of research meth methods that you should use? 

Speaker: 1

Yes, good question to you. Again, I say three based on my experience, I think it's three and usually in it should be interviews usually highlighted word. Usually it should be interviews, surveys plus something else depending on what you're trying to, conversations are really, really important person to person conversation, whether on online or in-person, extremely important. But even though you go into depth of something, there is a biggest flaw in it, which is it takes time to have those conversations, set up conversations and do all those things so you don't end up doing lots of them. So it's very good idea to create a hypothesis based on interviews and then test that hypothesis on a larger scale in interview and also, sorry in survey, sorry about that, test that hypothesis in surveys. And also what happens is interviews give you not just hypothesis, but give you a vocabulary of the customer so then you can actually ask them the questions the way they want to be asked, the, the language that they understand and the questions that they understand. 

Speaker: 1

So more than I would say, more than narrower broad questions Andrew, it's very important that you actually think about the vocabulary of the people who you asking these questions to if you're going to ask them in surveys. And surveys is all about narrow questions. You can't really ask too many broad questions. It become, because you're asking it to a lot of people, it becomes l a lot of work to be able to analyze long questions. You can ask them few. So both methods, although powerful, they have their drawbacks and that's why when you overlap them, they are, when you use them in like interview survey, if wanted another round of interview, another round of survey, they work really well and there has to be some third method like co-creation or AB testing or something that actually gives you even higher level of testing. Like remember we talked about actually make people buy it instead of just asking them question that would you buy it? Just create something that they have to, whatever money that is you act, they actually have to pay it. Something on those lines, depending on what your project is, what you're trying to find out. So I would say three is a beautiful number, three methods at least more the better, more methods you have better results. If everything else is right, more better results you'll get. But three at least. 

Speaker: 2

That's awesome. Thank you so much for clarifying that. I feel like I learned so much both like about the customer research process holistically and within each stage. And just to recap, I guess I wanted to ask you if, what would you say are the top three things that PE people should start doing today in order to start having good customer research? 

Speaker: 1

Hmm hmm. I first, first of all invest, first of all invest in good customer research. So I'm talking about people across the spectrum of understanding importance that we talked about. So I would say invest because if you invest in customer research, it's, it's going to save you so much money in later stages you are going to get your messaging right, branding, right product, right? Your marketing, your advertising, your business model, your business strategy. So many things you are going to get right if you have a good customer research. So do not save your money on customer research spend, not crazily because it doesn't need that kind of money. So invest. Second, I would say leave it to the experts. I don't frequently say that, but this specifically being a soft skill, soft science, it's very difficult to learn it really quickly. It's not like, you know, you studied the formula to, to this, this, this. 

Speaker: 1

That's, you are certainly, you can do customer research well, it doesn't happen like that. It takes a lot of practice, a lot of expertise, a lot of things from life understanding. And so please, please, please have an expert do it. That's the second thing. And third thing, fine, if you decided, if you decided to do it on your own, you know, if you did not listen to first and second thing that I talked about, if you decided to do it on your own, then make sure that you understand that you are not your customer. Even if you are the same age, same race, same socioeconomic profile, same geography, same whatever, same still you are not your customer. So that one thing, just if you ever decide to do it yourself every before doing anything, before writing each question or before asking each question or before doing anything, keep reminding yourself that you are not your customer and so everything else will fall. 

Speaker: 1

So yes, so I think I said you said three things. I gave you three things and to just mention those again, one is invest, well spend money on research. Two is hire an expert because these two are very important because if you don't invest and don't have an expert, it will be a flawed, the chances of it being a flawed research are really high. And like we said, bad input will give you bad output. And finally, if you decided to do it on your own for whatever reasons you decided to do it on your own, you are not your customer. That's it. 

Speaker: 2

That was wonderful. Thank you so much. Per, I feel like I learned so much in this short time period. I guess going back to the chat, do you wanna answer Zach's question of yes, how empathy is helpful in this process? 

Speaker: 1

Yes. Yeah. So how hear more about how empathy is helpful in this process. Yeah, I talked about how empathy is bad in this process because I thought there has been so much, so much, so much, so much has been talked about empathy being the powerful tool that I thought everybody knows about empathy. So let me talk about how it can be a problem. So good points about empathy is if you understand it correctly, the empathy, it's a really good thing. So I would say understanding the empathy in a real way would be understanding or try to understand as much as you can what someone else is going through and how difficult it must be for them to go through whatever they're going through, have the respect of the empathetic respect of what, like some problems could be really small problems for you, but understand that it could be a bigger problem for them. And when you gauge that at that time, give that empathetic respect to them and try to understand their problem from their point of view. And that is how you can use empathy. Well, if you are putting yourself in someone else's shoe, you can feel the pain of the stone in that shoe. Even if you have smaller feet and you don't really feel the stone, you have to make them their size and be able to feel the pain that they're feeling. I think it makes sense. That's how empathy works. Yeah. 

Speaker: 1

Did we take care of all other questions you? Yes, we did. I believe so. Yeah. Yeah. So if you have any other question, anyone of you have any other questions, please, you know, you don't have to ask them right now, you can put them in the comments later on. You can email those to us, you can ask them anywhere else that you can ask and we would be really happy to answer those questions. Thank you so very much for listening and thank you jiu for the idea of this live and thank you for asking such wonderful questions and listening to me. 

Speaker: 2

Of course. Thank you for making this happen. This was such a fun experience and I learned so much from you. So thank you all around. 

Speaker: 1

Oh, okay. One second's here saying something. 

Speaker: 1

How do you work and practice towards becoming an expert yourself? Huh? Yes. So one is it, Ooh, it's a very big and deep question. Janin. First of all, you have to start with curiosity. Start with curiosity and willingness to understand every person that you come across and the objectivity and understanding and of you are not them. So they may not be feeling the same way that you are feeling asking in general good questions to people with genuine curiosity and understanding them. That's the beginning. That's the beginning. And that is the basic nature that is required to understanding customers or any people, any people in general. And then you can start actually shaping it up into a proper training. There are lots of books that I can recommend, lots of online trainings that I can recommend, lots of methodologies that you need to understand, that I can recommend, which go into what you are looking for, like design thinking, lean, startup, strategizer, and lot of other innovation methods which use the insights that are produced into using. 

Speaker: 1

That would be your level three or level four and practice, practice, practice, having conversations with people, practice asking questions and testing yourself on how, how objective curious you were while asking that those questions. And did you ask useful questions or not? And all these things go back into what are you at like level four or five. They go into what is it that you're trying to achieve by asking these questions. We never talked about that because we went in all different directions, but we didn't talk about how do you decide your research objective. And so without going into details with highlights, that's my answer an Anthony, and that's really good live topic to just talk about how someone can become an expert into customer research. I think I, I, I will, I will take care of that as a different life. If you want, you can ask me questions like you asked me these questions, she was curious about these things. She asked me these question, you are curious about this janin, you can ask me these questions and we'll have fun. And I'm pretty sure a lot of people will be benefited by that conversation. Thank you for asking it. 

Speaker: 1

I think with that, we are ready to end this live and hope to see all of you sometime soon. Thank you. Bye you. Bye everyone. Bye. 

Speaker: 4

Thank you Purnima. Thank you everyone.