Building what you can sell

and selling what you can build…

Customer Driven Design

By: Reme A. Pullicar Startup TV 04/20/2014

Fast Paced Market Driven Competitive Market Custom

Feature Rich Social Networking Customer Ratings

5 Stars Yelp Epinions Angie’s List

Customer Service Customer Complaints Gross Revenues

Answer: They all relate to how happy customers are with your product!

What do the following terms all have in common?

Every company, new and old, starts down the road to profitability or failure with the same essential start: a Minimally Viable Product. An MVP is a product’s genesis and is often bereft of features. It includes just what’s needed to get a saleable product to market. Most inventors and business leaders think they have a good idea of what will sell. But do they?

According to AcuPoll, nearly 95% of all new products fail (i). WHAT? How could that be?

Minimally Viable Product (MVP)

Crappy productsnobody wants!

The Market

The productsyou will build

next (v.2,3,4…)

Joan Schneider and Julie Hall of the Harvard Business Review (ii), postulate that there are five primary reasons why products fail in the market. 1. The company cannot support fast growth (e.g. Mosquito Magnet). 2. The product falls short of claims and gets bashed in the market

(e.g. Microsoft Vista).3. The new product exists in „product limbo“ – somewhere between

products people actually want (e.g. Coke C2).4. The product defines a new product category requiring substantial

consumer education – but doesn‘t get it (e.g. Febreze Scentstories). 5. The product is revolutionary, but there‘s no market for it (e.g.

Segway).

And I would add – that the product is too focused or that the company simply fails miserably in the area of customer service (i.e. the other 90%).

Why Products Fail

Customer Driven Design is a customer-focused mindset that attempts to place the customer at the center of design. Design is not limited to just products. The whole company experience and everything it does should be driven by a solid customer focus. It begins and grows within the earliest steps of business creation and addresses such questions as:• How accessible will our company be (CEO, Sales, CS,

Support, Design)?• How will we research, develop, and test packaging,

marketing, and return on ad placement?• And ultimately, how will we learn about and integrate what

people really want into our products?

What is Customer Driven Design?

Step one – ask questions, ask often, LISTENStep two – ask more questions, INTEGRATEStep three – ask more questions, IMPROVEStep four – rinse and repeat

Adopting Customer Driven Design

ASK QUESTIONS

LISTEN INTEGRATE

BUILDIMPROVE

Step one – Ask Questions: LISTEN

If want a better coffee experience – tell them about it (iii)

In his article, 14 Customer Feedback Tools for Small Business (iv),Sig Euland of PracticalEcommerce suggests that customer feedback is Essential.

Step two – Ask Questions: INTEGRATE

MeCam – a $49.99 always on video camera

INC Magazine, How our Customers Helped us Create a Better Product, By John Brandon (v)Bootstrapped MVP with a low price – listened to customers and improved:

Button size and battery life; but he did not add an LCD… why?

Step three – Ask Questions: IMPROVE

(i) http://www.forbes.com/2010/03/31/brand-flops-apple-ford-pepsi-coors-cmo-network-brand-fail.html

(ii) http://hbr.org/2011/04/why-most-product-launches-fail/ar/1(iii)http://

www.starbucks.com/coffeehouse/learn-more/my-starbucks-idea

(iv)http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/2827-14-Customer-Feedback-Tools-for-Small-Business

(v) http://www.inc.com/john-brandon/mecam-customer-feedback-created-better-product.html

CUSTOMER DRIVEN DESIGNBuilding what you can sell and selling what you can build…

Citations