Overview

Over the last decade, it’s no secret that organizations have focused on transforming their digital ecosystems with a heavy focus on delivering a superior customer experiences. They have invested in top talent, including senior executive roles (e.g. Chief Design Officer) that ensures their customer experience is a primary driver of their business. In the pursuit of perfecting their customer experience, organizations have shifted their culture, mindsets, metrics, and operational models to be customer-focused. As I lead teams through these transformations,  I have noticed teams often struggle with 2 fundamental challenges  (1) They lack the insights into what their target customers most value & (2) They have too many competing problems to solve. Both of these challenges are solvable, but they have layers that need to be unpacked. This article unpacks these 2 challenges & offers some proven methods that have helped teams improve their focus & deliver high-impact to their customer experience.

 (1) Lack of clarity into what customers most value.

First, for teams lacking insights, this problem goes beyond needing more customer feedback. While customer feedback is valuable, it focuses on how to improve the current experience. It doesn’t shed light on how to tap into customer’s unmet needs & what they value the most. This often leads to what I call the “guessing game”, where teams jump implement solutions without enough clarity on the problem they are solving. Not to mention, the missed opportunities to uncover new products & services that could build customer growth &/or loyalty.

 (2) Lack of strategic focus on which problems to solve for.

Often times, this is a symptom of the lack of a systematic way of defining and prioritizing problems that are worth solving. Organizations have many customer problems they need to tackle that range from the customer experience, the supporting technology, operations, growth, talent, competitive pressures , etc. These problems are often connected, but require structure and a prioritization criteria to help everyone focus.

The starting point…

Developing a rigor  product ecosystem and pays dividends 10x in value in the long run. There are many methodologies available that can help frame customer problems and even more that aim to help prioritize them. That said, it can be difficult to select and apply the right combination that works for your organization. I outlined some methods and guiding principles that have helped teams create focus through 3 phase cycle. You can also find the sources at the bottom of the article.

(1) Create a customer-focused framework

First, we collaborate to create a  framework for how the customer problems or opportunities will be structured. I have a few favorites & use the following criteria to choose one:

Altitude

  • High altitude: (ie Business objectives with multiple dimensions, New marketing opportunities, Value proposition,  etc…) I often lean on Ecosystem mapping to shape the customer problems into categories as they relate to the system. This is a 30,000 foot view that needs all stakeholders to understand.
  • Med altitude: Customer unmet needs & the value your product provides (ie Target audience, Customer Offers > Service blueprints, JTBD,)
  • Low Altitude:  Customer interactions within context > (ie Journey maps)

(2) Build confidence through insights

  • Second, generate customer insights. Often times, organizations may have insights
  •  What do we know about the problem? What do we need to know?
  • Remove bias from the equation,
  • Prioritization criteria

(3) Refine & prioritize the problems into strategies

  • Explore through research

——
Methods

– Draft the customer problems
• Journey mapping (Write problems using the same language)
• Personas or target audience

– Refine the problem w/ insights & generate key questions.
• Research matrix
• Issue tree (Analysis the potential drivers & key questions)

– Rank problems by impact/effort (partner with customers to prioritize)
– Prioritize the problems into meaning, delight, ease.
– Provides Delight: offers a competitive advantage, pleasure : crutch field providing deep reviews.
– Provides flow/ease : progressive insurance quote
– Provides meaning : zip car building community and giving back

Principles

– Be inclusive: Facilitate sessions with the whole team to align on what they believe the customer problem they are solving &/or the value they are providing them. Summarize those into  and then brainstorm as team what insights (ie what do we know?) & what uncertainty (ie what do we need to know?) do we have. See example below. I often use Mural or Miro allow for remote participation.

– Be inquisitive: Facilitate sessions with the team to collect “what we know” & generate “what we need to know” questions to inform the research that needs to be done. Keep it simple, restrict 1-2 questions per person. I typically use a Research matrix to structure the session and use the results to draft a research plan that will generate deeper insights that will ultimately improve the problem definition.

– Be exhaustive: Leverage exercises that stretches the team’s thinking to all of the potential causes of the problem. The rule of thumb is to ask “Why?” Over and over again.

(Fishbone diagram of Problem statement > drivers ranked by confidence)

– Be succinct: Draft problems using simple language and in a standard format that everyone can understand. Ensure there is a simple (no more than 1-page) summary of the client problems for the team & stakeholders to reference.If possible, I prefer to anchor on the “client unmet need” format. I have found that helps the team focus on the customer. Write problems as desired outcomes –

  • Customer desired outcome – (what is the customer’s unmet need?)
    • Example: Reduce the time, cost, & effort to get groceries for the week.
  • Key Insight > a key data point indicating a problem (30% of our customers unsubscribed last month)

– Be selective: Not all client problems are created equal & you can’t solve all of them at the same time. It’s important to frame the problem around what you know to be true using the data & research available. If the team generates a lot of problems & has a hard time focusing, a prioritization criteria is needed to focus the team. A simple criteria is to rank the problems by the impact (Which problem is effecting our objective the most?) & confidence (Are we convinced by our insights that this problem is worth solving?).

– Be objective: Let your qualitative and quantitive data be your guide, but make sure you also remove any internal bias. As you frame the problems to solve, you also want to document key assumptions (ie what key questions you don’t have data to answer). I run through a quick checklist of bias. This often generates additional key questions to research.

(Need bias checklist )

– Be transparent: As you go through the process, create a forum to provide updates and participation  for the  team and the broader stakeholders. A regular cadence of customer problem will encourage more engagement and a common customer-focused language will start to form.

Sources

– JTBD resources

Framework

The framework has 3 simple components, each component has key questions & suggested methods for the team to collaborate & answer. The goal is to help teams provide clarify their vision, align everyone on the problems needed to be solve, & outline the path forward.

Vision

  • What is our aspiration?
  • What does success look like?

Gaps

  • What are our gaps we need to solve for to reach our vision?
  • What strategies could we employ?

Path forward

  • How do we activate & track progress?
  • How will we measure success? 

Vision

Step 1: Define the aspiration

Often times, the team are given a business objective by their sponsors or client in some form of a project brief. This is a good starting point, but often lack the answer to a fundamental question, What value are we providing our target customer?  To answer this question, we take a step back & have the team review the company’s “core” inputs. I classify “core inputs” as key materials that define the company mission, such as the company’s value proposition, competitive landscape, mission statement, &/or strategic priorities. During these sessions, everyone builds a deeper understanding of the company’s purpose & start to align on how their product will need to contribute & potentially evolve over time.

The output is simple, a 1-page synthesis of a vision statement and potentially some guiding principles that begins to summarize what success looks like. Keep in the mind, this is a draft. This summary will be revisited & potentially updated as the team progresses through the other phases and learns more.

Key Questions

What value does your product provide for your target audience?

What are the challenges that could threaten that value?

Methods

Outputs

  • A vision statement that the teams & stakeholders agree reflects the desired future state.
  • Guiding principles that will assist future decision making.