The Art of Listening to Customers

When the topic of listening to customers comes up, most product people bring up the famous Henry Ford quote.

“If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.”

What they misunderstand is that you shouldn't ask what they want. You should ask what their problems are. In this case, they wanted to reach the destination quickly.

Now, the customers aren't always equipped to answer how that should be done. It could be a faster horse, a car, or something else.

Listen for problems, not for solutions

Asking for a faster horse is nothing but a feature request.

Customers love requesting features. For example, if a customer asks for an analytics dashboard with export functionality as a feature request, first ask questions.

What would X feature allow you to do?
Why do you want this feature?
What is the motivation behind the request?
What are they doing to solve this problem right now?

What these questions will allow you to see is how big a problem is right now for them.