CustomerThink<\/a>. It was clearly my one-way journey and I haven\u2019t looked back since. It has been a rather lonely\u00a0journey.<\/p>\nI wanted to focus on what customers needed<\/h4>\n I\u2019ve studied and iterated through many approaches to uncovering customers\u2019 needs.<\/strong> The realization that they didn\u2019t need CRM software took awhile to seep into my thinking. So, I was like everyone else, framing up needs bounded by the solutions we had to work\u00a0with.<\/p>\nI enjoyed designing ways to make the user experience better; based on what I learned in interviews and observation. But there was still something extremely dissatisfying about it. Probably much like the dissatisfaction felt by whomever came up with Material Design. I mean come on! <\/em>How did that make my life\u00a0better?<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\nIt didn\u2019t, and that shouldn\u2019t be the objective, either<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Here are some baseline observations that you\u2019ll have to embrace if you\u2019re going to continue with my journey. It\u2019s about to be like that first time you swallowed a non-candy-coated aspirin as a\u00a0kid.<\/em><\/p>\n\nRequirements are not customer needs<\/strong>. Neither are specifications, wants, desires, pains, delighters, benefits, etc. Any of this mish-mash of inputs must trace back to real customer needs; or they are just ideas, guesses, or contained within the boundaries of current solutions (product-centric).<\/li>\nCustomer needs are not variables<\/strong>. They don\u2019t change over time. It is the unmet needs of today<\/strong> that will determine the successful solutions<\/strong> of tomorrow<\/strong>. If you don\u2019t know them, you\u2019re guessing and (statistics show) you\u2019re failing. Unmet needs are a subset of all<\/strong> customer needs, as are over-served needs and table stakes needs. This population rarely changes (unless context changes). This is no different in product development than it is in the implementation of CRM software; or so-called customer experience strategies.<\/li>\nAll customer needs can be known<\/strong>. Customer needs are stable over time. They are directly related to a goal or objective of a customer; which is also stable over time. This objective is known as the customer\u2019s Job-to-be-Done<\/strong>.<\/li>\nTo reliably create winning concepts in the market,<\/strong> you must understand the customer\u2019s Job-to-be-Done, the steps they take to accomplish it, and the metrics they use to measure\u00a0success.<\/li>\nCustomer needs are in reality forward-looking customer success metrics<\/strong>. When developed and used properly (it only takes once) they provide a roadmap to predictable success over\u00a0time.<\/li>\nAll aspects of customer success can be measured this way.<\/strong> This includes winning product and service concepts, winning concept designs, winning demand generation (messaging) and winning in the consumption chain jobs (what we typically label as customer experience<\/strong>).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nSo one day I found myself in this group of CRM\u00a0experts<\/h4>\n I thought social media was a complete waste, but in the early days, I did <\/em>have some time on my hands and took a dive. While it has continued to be a broader waste of time, it did help me network within the CRM community in ways that went beyond my current partner channel <\/em>(that\u2019s systems integrator talk!).<\/p>\nI was fortunate enough to be following my least favorite subject, Social CRM. I won\u2019t go into it. But, I did meet a great group of friends that mostly disagreed with me\u00a0:). I think we all agreed that CRM was not about software and that the vendors had hijacked the term. But, frankly, we were not all in agreement<\/strong> that the easy path was the worst path. I mean, we had careers to think\u00a0about!<\/p>\nI was searching for real answers (I told\u00a0myself)!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
We all bantered about a lot and got to know each other, and then this other guy <\/em>got invited into the group. He (and they) know who he is. He completely corrupted me, and it took me awhile to see that he had been on a similar journey (different starting points). Once I realized this, I took the red pill<\/strong> he offered and stayed in Wonderland to see how deep the rabbit hole\u00a0goes<\/strong>.<\/p>\n <\/figure>\nAnd the Deep Dive\u00a0Began<\/h4>\n What I learned was that I had been focusing on the wrong thing my entire career\u2026and so had nearly everyone else. Product and service concepts came from some mysterious land that I had never been to and knew nothing about. What I did know is that companies invested a lot of money in their attempts to find gullible buyers for what they did<\/em>\u00a0offer<\/strong>.<\/p>\nAnd with this desperate desire to sell their wares, they become victims of the vultures circling above: software vendors (who have something to sell), consultants (who have new phrases to say), and executives who wrap it all up into shiny resumes that turn into short-lived \u201cair biscuits.\u201d<\/p>\n
There are so many moving parts to our world that it\u2019s extremely difficult to see what\u2019s really changing. <\/strong>What had to happen (for me) was a simplification to a point where I had a stable platform from which I could detect the change\u2026reliably.<\/p>\nCustomer Jobs Are Stable Over\u00a0Time<\/h4>\n I learned that customers have jobs they are trying to get done, and when doing so, they hire solutions. This is not a new concept, but in the rush to be relevant, people seemingly choose to change their language; perhaps in a reaction to the constant change going on in their peer\u00a0groups.<\/p>\n
What they need is a means to determine when to lead, when to follow, and when to wave goodbye. After all, we are all trying to make the best choice, not simply the most popular\u00a0choice<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
To make these choices requires a stable platform and stable inputs into the equation of innovation<\/strong>. And lest you think innovation only happens in the \u201cInnovation Dept.\u201d, think again. We are all innovators. However, in the context of a business that is serving customers, everyone in the business needs to speak the same language of innovation. Otherwise our current world\u00a0happens!<\/p>\nImprovement Happens When We Help Customers Get More Steps Done on a Single\u00a0Platform<\/h4>\n Think of a job as a process. If we (the job executor) are hanging a painting<\/strong>, there are things we need to do prior to hanging the painting, and there are things we need to do after we hang the painting. While there are many ways to go about hanging a painting, the job (as a process) does not change because it does not prescribe how to hang the painting<\/strong>. The job is a stable platform.<\/p>\n <\/figure>\nConsultants map-and-gap all day long<\/strong>. While they are generally fixated on the constraints of a business process (how we do it) and technology (how we want to enable it), mapping is powerful because it provides boundaries. The boundaries make sure we don\u2019t wander; but just as importantly they help us ensure that there no holes in our logic. It\u2019s very easy to spot a step that has not been adequately addressed.<\/p>\nSo, improvement lesson number one focuses our attention on the job<\/strong>, not the solution. <\/strong>As a result, we will almost always find that different solutions<\/strong> are hired to get different steps<\/strong> done. Which leads us\u00a0to\u2026<\/p>\nIf your solution helps a customer get more steps done <\/strong>than another solution, they will value your solution over the competitor\u2019s solution<\/p><\/blockquote>\nCRM Note: If customers hire your CRM software or services, which steps are they trying to get done in the job \u201cAchieve Profitable Growth?\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Improvement Happens When We Help Customers Get More Jobs Done on a Single\u00a0Platform<\/h4>\n While the ultimate job for a CRM customer is highly likely to be Achieve Profitable Growth,<\/strong> that\u2019s a pretty broad scope. Too broad to be of use (but don\u2019t forget it). So, if we were to chunk this down we would look at jobs that are generally considered drivers for growth; such\u00a0as:<\/p>\n\nAcquire new customers\u200a<\/strong>\u2014\u200ahow do we target a market of interest, understand needs, identify winning concepts, design winning concepts, price it profitably, go to market successfully, etc?<\/li>\nGrow existing customers<\/strong>\u200a\u2014\u200ahow can we help customers get more steps done in their core job, or how can we help them get more, related jobs\u00a0done?<\/li>\nRetain existing customers\u200a<\/strong>\u2014\u200ahow do we ensure that we are continually the best solution, and how do we design and measure experiences that take place during the \u201cconsumption\u201d of our solution; e.g. purchasing, learning, using, maintaining, troubleshooting, etc.<\/li>\nLeverage existing customers\u200a<\/strong>\u2014\u200ahow do we encourage customers to talk about us and suggest our solutions to their friends and colleagues? How do we locate brand ambassadors?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nNow, these would only be some of the steps in Achieve Profitable Growth<\/strong>. There are far more boring steps that we must evaluate just like we did in Hang a Painting<\/em>. <\/em><\/strong>The point of it all is that there is a hierarchy of jobs, and such a hierarchy allows us to see two simple\u00a0facts:<\/p>\n