Deep customer empathy is an essential skill not just for the Product Managers, but for anyone who is working on creating, selling or supporting a product. You can have lots of data and hence lots of customer insights, but for customer empathy, you have to feel something – feel the problems your customers are trying to solve or the pain they are going through… even feel the happiness on how the product or a feature delights them when it does (so that you can do more of that).
Following are some of the simple ways to test if you have customer empathy [or develop it]. And I want to share what I call ‘The Ultimate Test of Customer Empathy’ through a personal story.
Do You Read What They Say?
This is the least expensive method of gaining customer insights. Your company’s Support site, Users’ Community site, and Social Media are the best places to look out for customers’ problems or their needs. If you read and analyze all that, you will get good customer insights. But the Insights turn into Empathy when you start responding to those posts and questions, which often requires you to try those scenarios yourself and understand various intricate usecases.
Do You Talk To Them?
Talking to customers either in a one on one setting or in groups, directly listening into Sales and Support calls, and other such interactions come in here. Sometimes you may even have customers’ experts to talk to e.g. Accountants in case of QuickBooks, who potentially represents hundreds of customers. These will give you good Insights but again to turn those Insights into Empathy, you will have to do more, like, answer those phone calls as a Sales or Support specialist OR ask multiple follow up questions (e.g. five whys) to understand the root cause or the actual customer intent.
Cost wise, this is medium-high depending on how much you are doing.
Do You Watch Them Use The Product?
This is where Usability sessions and ‘Follow Me Homes’ come. Watching customers use your product in a non-judgmental and friendly atmosphere gives you lots of Insights. For packaged software or hardware + software products, this includes the experience right from the unpacking, installation, sign-up, to first time use on to normal ongoing use. You just observe them perform certain task or simply run their business on your product without helping them (if they are stuck). There are even tools to assist you such as eye-balls trackers. Experience Designers and User Researcher use these tools to see how exactly customers are responding to, say, a new design concept.
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Now let me share a story before I discuss my ‘ultimate test of customer empathy‘.
In February 2014, I visited a Pet Store in Los Altos who used our ‘QuickBooks Point of Sale’ software. The owner was a smart lady who primarily sold ‘Pet Supplies’ in her store and used our software to manage all retail operations. I introduced myself as the Lead Product Manager for the POS product. I explained to her that my goal was to observe her as she uses the product and that I will be taking notes. But… here comes the twist. She was already upset with the product and asked me to actually use the product and run the store for her so I can experience the problems first hand. No way! I thought. While she assumed that I am the product expert (the product manager), I was barely a week into my new role of owning this product and had used it only a few times so far. So I tried to avoid the situation being afraid of messing something up (and also being ‘exposed’). But she insisted and I
had to agree.
Customers came and she asked me to scan their items and take money and return money and print receipt and everything else that a typical POS retailer does. Man! That was some experience. I was almost sweating and for the very first customer, my hands were trembling while accepting and returning cash. Looking at me, one customer even asked her if I was a new trainee and she confidently said yes.
I spent just about 45 minutes serving 5-6 customers but that was the experience of a life time. Though the fact that I was new to the product made it a little extra hard, it was still the best learning experience I had. In those 45 minutes, I experienced some patient customers and some impatient ones, one who was already upset when he came in, and some who were a regular to that store and were happy. I made mistakes while using our software and she kept on pointing and explaining to me all the things that were not up to her expectations. With just 5-6 customers, we covered a lot many usecases. I was already envisioning all the changes that were to be made 🙂
That according to me is the ultimate test of customer empathy.
Can You Be The Customer You Are Trying To Serve?
Becoming the customer yourself; being in the customer’s shoes and running their business where your product is only a tool to run the business – a mean to achieve an end, not the end itself; where the product is only supposed to solve problems and not create additional ones; where it is supposed to always work in anticipated and even unanticipated ways; where all the nuances show up. Then you realize that howsoever great your product maybe, how much more can still be done. Then you get true customer empathy.
Late Steve Jobs famously said
It’s really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.
Well, if you are like him, you don’t need any of these tips. You can predict future needs of the customer and even induce those needs. But there are not many (any?) like him. So for the rest, I think these tips still work.
What other methods do you use to develop customer empathy?
