The 3 crucial elements to being truly customer-centric

Raika Sarkett

Jun 14, 2023

Knock, knock.

Who's there?

Your customer.

What does he want?

He doesn’t know.

* * *

Today, the common advice for designing great products is to “talk to your customers”. To take a customer-centric approach with customer research.

And this sounds like a great way to de-risk a project, right?

The thing is, you can’t just ask customers what they want.

Why? Most people don’t know what they really want. And by the time you build what they say they want, they'll want something new.

In fact, there’s a "knowing-doing gap". The disparity between what people say they will do (or want) and what they actually do. It’s not malicious or even intentional, people just aren’t good at self-reporting preferences. More often what they report doesn’t align with their actual actions or choices.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m a big advocate of customer research, but too often I see research used for mere order-taking and affirmation.

Here’s the secret to being truly customer-centric:

1. Have a deep understanding of your customer.

Understand user needs, preferences, behaviors, and motivations.

Steve Jobs believed that customers didn't always know what they wanted. But he had a deep understanding of his customers. He famously said,

"You can't just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they'll want something new."

It’s up to companies to innovate and create products customers will love, even if they don’t know it yet. Jeff Bezos was the same, his focus was always on providing the best possible experience for Amazon customers.

By truly understanding the needs, wants, and pain points of your target audience, you can create products and services that truly resonate with them.

Don’t just ask questions, be sure you watch and observe your customers as well.

This means going beyond surface-level demographics and really getting to know your customers on a personal level. What motivates them? What challenges do they face? What do they value?

By answering questions like these, you can develop deep empathy for your customers and create solutions that meet their needs in a meaningful way.

Leverage ethnographic observation, contextual inquiry, interviews, user testing, and prototyping to understand the broader design context, uncover user pain points, explore opportunities, and generate creative solutions.

2. Brainstorm for specific personas.

I’m sure this one sounds obvious but it can be far too easy for ideas to start from a company problem. “We need to monetize” is a common one these days.

I’ve sat in countless meetings like this, where there’s no evidence that the customer wants the solution that’s being proposed, but from the business perspective, it’d be lucrative “if we could just get them to ____”.

Instead, take what you know about your customer and ideate on those key learnings. Ideate for both big and small ideas. Brainstorm using customer personas (detailed profiles that represent groups of your customers). Personas are a great way to keep the customer at the core. And not the general customer, but your different customer types.

Don’t design for all.

Designing for all, designs for no one.

The best ideas come from the unique needs and pain points of your specific customers.

When just one person has a particular experience, it can be tempting to question the validity of the data point or anecdote and consider them as an outlier. But, because human behavior is highly generalizable, experiences shared by just 1-2 people in small sample-size research can prove to be common out in the wild. Serving as great fodder to ideate creative solutions.

At Amazon, we aren’t competitor-focused, we’re customer-focused. We look at metrics to see how people are engaging and we invest in various research methodologies to really understand who our customers are and make sure we’re designing for their needs and wants.

3. Focus on the details

Great design is achieved in the details.

Think about your favorite product. It serves its core function reliably and so much more. There’s something delightful, unique, magical, enjoyable about it. Or it may solve a problem that you weren’t even fully aware of.

Attention to detail sets a design apart, solving problems, creating emotional connections, and leaving a lasting positive impression.

This is also true of great relationships. And it’s the relationship you have with your customer that drives loyalty.

Great relationships are closely tied to attention to detail by showing care, consideration, meeting the other person’s needs, communicating well and more.

Again, there’s focus on the details.

Detail work isn’t easy. It takes time, inspiration, and imagination. But detail work is how you stand out and differentiate. It’s how you show your customers that you truly care.

As Bezos said, “Even when they don’t yet know it, customers want something better, and your desire to delight customers will drive you to invent on their behalf.”

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