In today’s world, business success largely depends on the ability to correctly understand the needs of each of its clients. However, it is often difficult to determine what exactly consumers need, what problems they are trying to solve, and how best to meet their expectations.
The problem is that often the opinion of product developers does not coincide with the opinion of customers. Therefore, if the target audience is incorrectly identified, its desires and needs are interpreted, then the company will not be able to effectively sell the product. It will simply be unclaimed, despite the efforts and money invested.
What is Customer Development
CustDev, Customer Development is a tool for a comprehensive study of customer needs based on customer surveys and “deep” interviews. It is used to create a product that meets consumer needs and will be in demand on the market.
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Simply put, CustDev is an algorithm or program of actions that aims to:
- develop a hypothesis about what problems and needs clients have;
- conduct research on the target audience and its needs on a small scale;
- Based on the data obtained, either create a new minimum viable version of the product (MVP), or refine an existing product and bring it to market to receive feedback.
What tasks does CustDev solve in business and when is it useful
The main advantage of conducting CustDev research is that its results allow business leaders to focus not on their personal assumptions, but on the real needs of the target audience. You can immediately create practical products that are needed on the market.
In what situations can CustDev be used?In theory, it is possible to “castdev” or test the viability of a future product in any business area. However, the method will be most effective in two situations:
How to Conduct a CustDev Research: Key Stages
Customer Development is, first and foremost, research. Based on its results, a strategy for further actions and a new company product are developed.
The process of conducting Customer Development buy telemarketing list research is quite complex in itself, it must be carried out in a certain sequence. The first customer development research should be carried out under the guidance of an experienced marketer in order to fully understand the algorithm of actions, as well as to obtain the desired result.
Step 1: Create a Hypothesis
First of all, it is important to make a hypothesis or assumption about what the needs of the audience are, what pain points potential consumers have:
- what the audience is missing in general;
- which products are not available in the selected market.
It is important to conduct custom development responsibly. At this stage, you should assemble a team that will put forward ideas based on your own experience, market data, and competitive analysis. New hypotheses should be clearly formulated, measurable, and verifiable. There may be several assumptions.
Step 2: Selecting a target audience segment
The second stage will allow you to narrow down your circle of consumers and clearly define the target audience that the research will be aimed at. In other words, you need to assess the situation and create a portrait of the target audience .
Step 3: Compiling a list of questions
The next step is to prepare for research: surveys and interviews. The most important part in this case is to draw up a list of questions for such an interview. The quality of the information received, and therefore the results of the project research, will depend on their accuracy. The questions should be open-ended and aimed at identifying the problems and needs of clients.
The main purpose of conducting interviews is to obtain unique information, data that is difficult to come up with on your own. For example, you expected that people care about one property of a product, but in fact, almost every person interviewed relies on completely different characteristics.
Step 4: Finding Respondents
At this stage, it is necessary to find and attract respondents from the selected segment. Usually, attraction occurs through your website, as well as through:
- social networks or blog;
- specialized forums;
- email;
- friends and acquaintances;
- opinion leaders.
To conduct, for example, an in-depth interview, you need 20-60 respondents. However, the number may vary depending on the specifics and direction of the business, as well as the budget. At a minimum, you need to invite 10 people to the interview.
Step 5: Conducting Interviews
This is a key stage of CustDev research, which must be approached responsibly. Interviews are conducted in a confidential atmosphere so that respondents can openly share their opinions and experiences.
CustDev interviews can be conducted in person, by phone or via video link over the Internet. It is important to ask questions clearly, record the respondents’ answers during the interview for subsequent analysis.
Stage 6: Results and MVP creation
After conducting the interview, you need to analyze the numbers lists data obtained and determine which problems and needs are most relevant for customers. Based on this data, you will form conclusions and adjust the initial hypotheses.
Once all the necessary information has been obtained, you can begin creating an MVP – a minimum viable version of the product.
How to use the research results
At the stage of familiarization with this tool, some managers do not fully understand what to do with the results of the CustDev study.
To begin, present the results of the survey, feedback or interview with the client in the form of a table or in a graphical version. Usually, the tabular version is more visual, more convenient.
