Becoming better customer detectives
Assumptions about our customers are the rocks we wreck upon. Whether we see them and how we handle them, is the best test of our integrity when solving problems.
Let's say you’re a business manager and you need evidence to help steer the change you believe should come. You have a theory about “what is” the goal and “what works” to get there. It’s better to identify the assumptions in your theory or hypothesis before you invest too much.
Deliberately using your assumptions puts you in good company. Scientific method begins with hypotheses that drive logical predictions in different conditions that enable experiments to be set up and test whether the hypothesis was useful.
I embrace experimentation like this: it provides a way to systematically navigate possibility and record learning as we go. But I also acknowledge that important advances in thinking — and whole new orders of hypotheses — can emerge through other ways of knowing, perhaps as the result of an intuitive or philosophically-driven change to the way we observe reality. After all, digging under the same rock for a long time can be awfully barren.
An easy place to start is with people who think differently from you but also have a stake in the outcome. It’s usually not hard to find these people. Stepping outside the office can help. The assumptions that survive dialogue with these people and the new predictions generated with them, are starting places to learn something new.
Detectives use assumptions explicitly, laying down a “theory of the case” based on what is known so far and identifying best guesses to describe motive, events, locations, and instruments of the crime. This enables selection of "lines of inquiry" and the results are used to update the theory. It's iterative.
Try to imagine yourself as a detective who has mapped out a case. You pin up known facts and associations, then you pin up questions about what is unknown. Each question is put against the theory of the case. It suggests potential lines of inquiry: "if that's what happened then we can expect evidence to be here or there." The theory becomes testable, a hypothesis, because it generates either predictions or histories that tell us where to look and what we might be looking for. We then select research methods appropriate to the prediction/history and the people and situation we’ll address.
Let's say you’re a business manager and you need evidence to help steer the change you believe should come. You have a theory about “what is” the goal and “what works” to get there. It’s better to identify the assumptions in your theory or hypothesis before you invest too much.
Deliberately using your assumptions puts you in good company. Scientific method begins with hypotheses that drive logical predictions in different conditions that enable experiments to be set up and test whether the hypothesis was useful.
I embrace experimentation like this: it provides a way to systematically navigate possibility and record learning as we go. But I also acknowledge that important advances in thinking — and whole new orders of hypotheses — can emerge through other ways of knowing, perhaps as the result of an intuitive or philosophically-driven change to the way we observe reality. After all, digging under the same rock for a long time can be awfully barren.
An easy place to start is with people who think differently from you but also have a stake in the outcome. It’s usually not hard to find these people. Stepping outside the office can help. The assumptions that survive dialogue with these people and the new predictions generated with them, are starting places to learn something new.
Detectives use assumptions explicitly, laying down a “theory of the case” based on what is known so far and identifying best guesses to describe motive, events, locations, and instruments of the crime. This enables selection of "lines of inquiry" and the results are used to update the theory. It's iterative.
Try to imagine yourself as a detective who has mapped out a case. You pin up known facts and associations, then you pin up questions about what is unknown. Each question is put against the theory of the case. It suggests potential lines of inquiry: "if that's what happened then we can expect evidence to be here or there." The theory becomes testable, a hypothesis, because it generates either predictions or histories that tell us where to look and what we might be looking for. We then select research methods appropriate to the prediction/history and the people and situation we’ll address.
‘It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.'
Sherlock Holmes, A Scandal in Bohemia
Like Sherlock, we acknowledge that we are prone to jumping ahead of ourselves and making the evidence fit our beliefs. But we also know that previous experience gives us a starting place for questions. At the start of a design project, my clients are never without data, but the data is more or less relevant and reliable. People have hunches and frontline employees hear messages that repeat or show patterns over time or space that point to customer needs. That's why a proper briefing exercise is important: time to reflect on how relevant and reliable the data is and what the best questions to ask right now might be.
What does — and what should — spark our investigation of customers? In the world of the detective, an incident sparks inquiry, and the incident often leaves clear traces of what happened. But customer research may be looking to identify opportunities that have not yet eventuated.
The job is the same: we take what we've seen and heard about our customers and we make explicit our assumptions about what that means.
We acknowledge that what people say about themselves or conversely, what they appear to us to be doing, is not always the most important thing to know. It’s a piece of the puzzle and another piece can throw a very different light on it.
Like the detective, we meet people and use more of our senses to understand what is real and salient about their stories, while holding in tension the principle that those stories are a version of truth based on what they want to remember or have words and concepts to frame.
This is the job of the researcher as investigator.
What does — and what should — spark our investigation of customers? In the world of the detective, an incident sparks inquiry, and the incident often leaves clear traces of what happened. But customer research may be looking to identify opportunities that have not yet eventuated.
The job is the same: we take what we've seen and heard about our customers and we make explicit our assumptions about what that means.
We acknowledge that what people say about themselves or conversely, what they appear to us to be doing, is not always the most important thing to know. It’s a piece of the puzzle and another piece can throw a very different light on it.
Like the detective, we meet people and use more of our senses to understand what is real and salient about their stories, while holding in tension the principle that those stories are a version of truth based on what they want to remember or have words and concepts to frame.
This is the job of the researcher as investigator.
TIP: You can arrange your "theory of the case" visually as you like. Mind mapping works well. If your theory is about the value of a product, service or process to customers, you can use a value-proposition matrix like the one from Roman Pichler. Jeanne Liedtke and Tim Ogilvie have some useful layouts for assumption testing and field trials in their Designing for Growth Fieldbook.