Description: Learning to listen to the customer’s voice in new product development
Keywords: Voice, Customer, Research, Ethnography, Market, Consumer, Interview, Fuzzy, Scary, Fear, Direct, Insights, Process, Culture, Learning, Lessons, End-User, Team, Opportunity, VOC
Author: William A. Robson
“To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom” —Bertrand Russell
Russell got it right, and could have been alluding to conducting Voice of the Customer research in the Fuzzy Front End of the NPD process. The systematic tracking of the wants, needs and problems of current and potential customers in this early stage is difficult, scary work. It’s difficult work because we’re not quite sure what to ask customers at this point in the New Product Development process, and scary because, well, fuzzy is scary!
Further downstream in the NPD process, it is easier to identify the questions that will verify that we’re on the right track or those that will result in improvements to concepts that are already defined. The “how do you like it” and “how would you make it better” questions easily roll off the researchers tongue and we are quite comfortable with how to deal with the resulting answers.
We are essentially looking for pats on the back, confirmations that we’re headed in the right direction, and for course corrections.
The Fuzzy Front End tends to be much more ambiguous and messy. Here we are often searching for good problems to solve. We are searching for new hunting grounds, new areas of business opportunity. The questions here are not “How do you like it?”, but more “Will you tell me about yourself?” and, “May I spend a day simply watching what you do?”
The first step is to summon the resolve to enter this messy, difficult and scary arena in the first place, and to discover those good problems to solve. We’re asked to become nomads, to quit our familiar hunting grounds, because we see that the herds are thinning out. That’s scary enough in itself. But as NPD professionals, we have the responsibility of convincing an entire organization, which may not have noticed that it’s now existing on skinny rabbits, to uproot and follow.
Bob Beck, Director of R&D for Masco Corporation observes: “Generally, executives shy away from the front end of the (NPD) process because of its uncertainty and high risk. They are more comfortable acting during the prototype/launch stages. So, nobody is asking what the customer is thinking in the early stages.”
The fact that this research is difficult and scary provides two understandable reasons for avoidance behavior. This avoidance, though, comes at the point in the NPD process where customer input has the highest possible leverage: it comes at a time when you are trying to identify the problems worth solving. Fail here, and the best design and engineering can’t make up for the opportunities lost due to working on an unimaginative problem.
We will take a look at the most familiar excuses that we’ve heard to justify the avoidance of customer input early in the NPD process. We will then try to offer some less difficult and scary research options that might result in getting valuable Voice of the Customer data into the Fuzzy Front End.
Your Organization Might Be Customerphobic If You Hear:
#1: “We already know the answers.”
How do you know? Could it be that you are asking the same questions in the same way, almost guaranteeing that you’ll hear the same answers? Are you analyzing the data objectively, or are you reading what you want to hear into the results?
Possible Rx’s:
Start by assuming that everything you “know” is dead wrong. Then change your questions and the way you ask them. If you traditionally use focus groups, try “day-in-the-life” research, surveys, or phone interviews. Ask broader, more open-ended questions that probe for opportunities beyond product fixes and line extensions.
Try for a completely new perspective: The NPD group at Black & Decker’s Appliance Division, when looking for new business opportunities, spent time in Amish communities around Lancaster, Pennsylvania. They wanted to see first-hand how the Amish have dealt ingeniously with their ban on electricity. This research resulted in very different thinking, even about the division’s current plug-in products.
Jim Birkel, Product/Program Research Manager for Pella Corporation, singles out diversity of input as one of the most important predictors of success. He also encourages the observing of lead users of your offerings. “These users are adapting your products to fill needs that you may not have discovered,: says Birkel.
If you believe you already know the answers, you may not be casting your research net far enough out to catch the leading edge of trends that can result in discovering fundamentally new business opportunities. In the Fuzzy Front End you need to have a sense of discomfort. That’s when and where you’re apt to find higher risk/higher reward problems to solve.
#2: “We get end user input from our sales people, distributors, and retailers.”
Great, but you shouldn’t rely on others for all of the input needed to provide new products, services and businesses that your company needs for its survival and growth.
Possible Rx’s:
All of these are all excellent sources of information when used as part of a systematic tracking effort. However, it can be dangerous to delegate this important Fuzzy Front End research to others. Watch out for knee-jerk reactions to anecdotal input. Look rather for themes and patterns emerging from the totality of your data.
You are less likely to discover genuinely new platforms and business opportunities when you delegate first-hand end-user research to others. These sources may not feel your discomfort with the current hunting grounds, and therefore act as filters – deciding what’s important to pass on to you. Step back and squint at the whole collection of input and draw your own conclusions.
#3: “We just don’t have the time.”
We hear you! The demands on each of us after years of increasing workload and fewer available resources have made this a very familiar mantra. Rich input at the Fuzzy Front End can, however, save months or years in getting a new direction “right”. Make the best use of the time that you do have. Then try and find some more.
Possible Rx’s:
Conduct research in parallel with product development. Use informed intuition, followed by validating research. These can save you time while still, at the minimum, serving as “disaster checks”.
Take greater advantage of a resource that you do have – your employees. Have every employee, regardless of their functions, adopt a customer or consumer. Have them talk once a week, month, or quarter with their adoptees and record their observations and implications. Create a database of this information and use automated searches to uncover patterns, trends, and good problems to solve.
Try internet-based research for both qualitative and quantitative data gathering. The internet represents a fastgrowing source of research, and can cut large chunks of research time out of the process. Use these tools wisely. When it’s time to sit and quietly observe a consumer over the course of a day, the internet is not a likely alternative.
#4: “We don’t have that kind of a budget.”
As it turns out, nobody has “that kind of budget.” There are an infinite number of questions one can ask at this point in the process. There are also an infinite number of ways of interpreting the results when you are casting your net this widely.
Possible Rx’s:
Try forming a temporary alliance with a number of non-competing companies that are interested in the same market. If you are a bank, for example, and the market you are interested in is the upscale consumer, you might share existing and co-commissioned research with an alliance formed with a mutual fund provider, a credit card lender, a stock broker, and insurance provider and an accounting firm. You won’t get all of your questions asked exactly as you would working on your own, but the result will be far less costly. You also will gain from insights that the other alliance partners cull from the data. You will also likely end up working with one or more of these partners after the alliance is disbanded because so many of your NPD process challenges will be similar.
Get everyone in the company or department involved in systematically talking to consumers/customers. Develop a system to collect and analyze data from anyone that has contact with your customers/potential customers. For example, do you use your 800 number customer service input in NPD?
Jerry Klos, in his role as Kodak’s Director of Outbound Marketing for Retail Digital Lab Systems, convenes a customer (dealer) panel twice a year to solicit input on future products/needs, new business models and marketing approaches. Each of the panel’s dealers is represented by both the owner and someone directly involved in day-to-day consumer interaction. “This is a powerful tool for us; it expands our vision and helps keep us honest. The panel members really lean into the work, particularly when they see their input manifested in the marketplace in the form of new offerings,” says Klos.
#5: “Our customers/consumers can't see the forest for the tree. They don’t know what they will want in the future.”
Maybe, but the answers, early in the process, are quite often in the trees, in the branches, in the leaves, or hidden in the roots.
Possible Rx’s:
Discovering good new problems to solve requires a lot of observing, climbing and digging. Christopher W. Miller, Founder of Innovation Focus Inc., suggests that in the early stages, one should “stand at the base of your research tree and look up. If you’ve done your job well, you should see a full, rich canopy of branches and leaves.” The implication here is that if there aren’t enough branches (patterns and themes) or leaves (implications and needs) you’re apt to get all wet when bad weather comes along.
Once the canopy is full, it’s time to dig down to the roots and find the primary causes of these opportunities (being careful not to kill the tree). Again, we can’t be afraid of a little mess.
While customers often can’t foresee their future needs, you can observe the ways in which they deal with whatever activity you are interested in. Spend time with them in their surroundings. What work-arounds and compensatory behaviors are you seeing? What do these observations portend in light of new and future trends and technologies that you are projecting?
#6: “The boss’ mind is already made up or she/he doesn’t believe in VOC.”
This syndrome is also sometimes known as “we don’t dare learn that we’re working on the wrong problem”
Possible Rx’s:
When working in known space, “informed intuition” is a powerful management tool. In an earlier Growth Forum article on intuition, Joann Davis Brayman, VP of Customer Information for Armstrong, points out that 20 years of experience entitles one to make a few guesses. In fact, to be effective you must make those informed guesses. In fact, to be effective you must make those informed guesses. The difficulty lies in knowing when you are stepping over the line from comfortable to unsafe territory.
In the arena of due diligence, (working with current customers and current technology), constant tracking is important. But this is familiar territory. As you move out and away from due diligence, the need to focus on gathering raw insight becomes more important because less of your knowledge will transfer. The great boss who makes a guess about how current customers will react to current offerings or extensions will probably be very close. That same boss will make bad decisions if either the market or the technology have shifted to a significant degree.
The key is awareness. You don’t want to spend your precious resources rediscovering what is known. You must know, however, when things are changing.
Conclusions
Customer research in the Fuzzy Front End is used to set the course of your NPD strategy. The VOC data collected later on is used for more tactical purposes such as making sure that you stay on course. There’s really no way around it: Developing strategy is more difficult and scary (sound familiar?) than developing the subsequent tactical executions of that strategy. But the fact that it’s difficult and scary doesn’t let you off the hook. If all the world is changing and you find yourself with the same customer need set time after time, perhaps it is your perception that needs a shift.
Make your customer a part of your team. Creating real synergy between your team and the customer can obviate some of the more traditional market research. Get to know your customer with frequent informal chats. Get to know your customer so well that, in a pinch, you can speak for him or her. Loop back later on, though, to be sure that you represented your customer honestly.
We’ve spent time here exploring the data gathering aspects of VOC in the front end. Another fear that we hear is “How do I deal with all this data once it’s collected?” We sometimes sit back and look at the mountain of input that we’ve collected and think; “There’s nothing here, and way too much of it!” That feeling is probably fodder for another discussion but, as a rule of thumb, if the choice is between less data and more data, the latter wins every time.
If your organization has one or more of the above symptoms, run do not walk to your nearest customer, and then:
1. Apologize for your past indifference;
2. Promise to be more attentive;
3. Ask a bunch of the right questions (even wrong questions are better than no questions): and
4. Get ready to deal with a bunch of opportunity-laden surprises.