Customer listening or Wow effect?

If you’re in innovation I’m sure you’ve heard this phrase several times! Listening to the customer is in fact one of the most widespread mantras in the world of innovation. A sort of “must-see” to innovate and develop successful products on the market. The issue, however, is deeper and more complex.
The question to ask is: “What should we listen to the customer about?”.

Henry Ford said that if he asked his clients what they wanted they would answer him “a faster horse”!
We need to listen to the customer not to know which products to develop but to learn about them, to understand what goals they want to achieve, what obstacles they face today in achieving their goals, what compromises they are forced to accept with existing solutions.
It’s a bit’ like when we want to give a gift to a loved one: we’ll hardly be able to surprise them by asking them what they want! To make her do “wow” we have to know her so well, and so deeply, that we can make a proposal she didn’t even know she wanted! The same goes for high-impact innovation!

1. Which customers to listen to?

In addition to existing customers, great innovation insights can arise from understanding the needs of non-customers.
In fact, non-customers do not find current solutions sufficiently satisfactory for them. Understanding their needs and the reasons that lead them to reject existing offers is a goldmine of opportunities for high-impact innovations.

2. Build the customer portrait

What needs to be investigated to really get to know a customer?

To answer this question, it can be useful to rely on a simple tool: “The customer portrait”.
The customer portrait is made up of 4 main elements:
1) The desired experience and the task that the customer aims to achieve through the product.
2) The environment in which the customer lives, purchases and uses the product.
3) The opinions that the customer has about himself and the associations he links to the product
4) Our customer’s purchasing behavior, that is, how they behave when purchasing products or services like the one we would like to develop.

3. Transform customer knowledge into high-impact innovations

To transform customer knowledge into high-impact innovations, highlight the problems the identified customer faces when they want to achieve their goals within the customer’s environment. Every problem you identify is an opportunity for innovation!