Brown Bag Series: Customer Development with Zac Cohn of LIFFFT

by Michael J. Coffey

Earlier this month, Zac Cohn of LIFFFT, presented our latest brown-bag lunch workshop entitled Customer Development. In particular, Zac took us through a series of techniques to use when interviewing customers--particularly if you haven’t got customers yet. The idea is that if you interview people in general about what their needs and concerns are, you may find that your product or service doesn’t have as large an audience as you might think. If that’s the case, you’ll save time and money by changing direction and offering something they do want.

Once participant said that he basically knew the general area he’d like his business to be in but not the specifics of what he’d offer. Zac said that’s the perfect place to start interviewing people. He suggested just going out and stopping people on the street. Usually you can get some good feedback by simply saying “Excuse me, I’m working on a project and I’m wondering if I could ask you a couple of questions.” You might want a question or two to make sure they’re potentially a customer: “Do you have a dog?” if you’re thinking of pet products; “Do you have children?” if you’re thinking about youth-related services; “Do you own a car?” if you’re considering something in the automotive industry. Now you’re interviewing a potential customer!

Some good questioning techniques? Well, you don’t want to be bias or lead the person you’re interviewing. And no asking “ice cream questions” (questions that really only have one answer--who in their right mind would turn down ice cream?) Instead, the goal is to get the person talking about their own, real-world concerns. A great way to start would be “Tell me about the last time…” and finish it with a situation that might be a pain-point for your target customer. The answer will typically reveal something interesting. “Yes, and…?” “Tell me more about…” “What do you mean by…?” These open ended questions help the other person to express things you might not have asked about. I started asking my partner for one exercise, “Tell me about the last time you had a cup of tea.” By the end of the 5-minutes, we were talking about Chinese politics and ads for milk. Let the other person lead the conversation. Just show interest and ask for more--evoke the stories they tell about their lives--and you’ll probably end up with more information than you would get from a carefully planned questionnaire.

Another useful question was “How are you dealing with your problem now?” The answers to this question allows you to learn more about how important the problem is, or how much time and money they are willing to spend on addressing the problem. If a person says, “Oh, I just try to ignore it if it comes up” there’s a different level of consumer need than if they say, “So far I’ve spent thousands of dollars on specialists and nobody seems to be able to fix it.”

Finally, we looked at some questions for a different take on developing your product or service. It’s a framework to help you develop your own questions for customer interviews, and looks roughly like the scientific method:

1. What is your problem statement? (Be sure not to include your specific take on the answer. “People in X neighborhood have to travel 5 miles to get a haircut” is better than “There isn’t a salon in X neighborhood” because the first problem statement might evoke multiple ways to solve the problem, whereas the second can only be solved in one way.)
2. Do you have a hypothesis you’re testing? (This is your idea--the way you’re considering to address the problem. It might be a salon in the neighborhood, or it might be mobile, in-home haircut house calls.)
3. Who has this problem? (This will help you with that first question or two of your interview. In the haircut example, it might be “people who live or work in X neighborhood”)
4. Where can you find them? (This question will help you find good people to interview, and later to plan where and how you will market your product or service. The answer might be geographic, like a ZIP code, or it might be places they tend to go, like a dog park or day care centers)
5. What are some good questions you can use to explore this problem? (Brainstorm a list of questions that will evoke stories about the area you’re thinking about)

The feedback from participants was positive. Some of the comments included “I’ll use the problem statement and develop good questions.” “Will be interviewing current clients as well…” and “Attend if you need to validate ideas.” We’re glad we were able to host Zac for this workshop and look forward to bringing him back to talk about other topics as well!