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Amazon has a famous obsession: âStart with the customer and work backwards.â But how does this actually work?
It starts with answering three questions:
- What is the customer problem?
- How do we know that this is a problem?
- How will we know if we have succeeded?
1. What is the customer problem?
Write a few sentences describing the customer problem. Keep two things in mind as you do:
First, product adoption is not a customer problem. Customers donât care if âmetrics are decliningâ or âpeople arenât using the product.â Frame the problem from the customer perspective.
Second, writing down the problem doesnât mean that youâre done. You need to do the work to understand if this is a real problem that many people share. You canât actually answer this question without working on question two.
2. How do we know that this is a problem?
You must do the hard work to validate your customer problem. If youâre wondering what that means, ask yourself these questions:
- Have you talked to at least five customers about the problem?
- Have you dived into existing metrics and research about the problem?
- Have you discussed the problem with experts in your organization (e.g. user research, support)?
- Have you run a simple A/B test to validate if the problem exists?
During this process, you may find that what youâre investigating isnât a customer problem at all. Or you may find that customers have a bigger pain point that you should solve. This is great, because your goal is not just to work on any problem, itâs to solve your customerâs most important problem. Usually, this is a problem that many people share, but that doesnât mean that itâll be easy to identify. If you work on a mobile app for example, you might get complaints from power users about receiving too many push notifications. But is this the right problem to prioritize or do the majority of your users get no notifications at all?
Too many people just write down what they think is a customer problem and jump directly to finding a solution.
Donât make that mistake. Take the time to validate the problem across multiple channels.
3. How will we know if we have succeeded?
Teams typically measure success by picking a metric that they want to improve. But keep in mind that metrics have a tendency to bias your decisions. Facebook, for example, recently announced that they want to measure âtime well spentâ instead of âtime spentâ because the latter was leading to a feed full of viral articles and videos instead of bringing the world closer together. Remember:
Being metrics obsessed is not the same as being customer obsessed.
Getting a metric to grow is great, but you should also talk to your customers regularly to make sure that youâre building something worthwhile.
Ask yourself these three questions not just at the beginning of a project, but constantly as you uncover new information. You need to be obsessed with the problem if you want to build something that your customers truly love.
Obsess over the customer problem was originally published in Hacker Noon on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
Disclaimer
The views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not reflect the views of Bitcoin Insider. Every investment and trading move involves risk - this is especially true for cryptocurrencies given their volatility. We strongly advise our readers to conduct their own research when making a decision.