The Case For NOT Listening To Your Customers’ Requests

Steve Jobs, world-famous innovator and CEO of Apple once said that you should never give customers what they ask for:

“Some people say ‘give the customers what they want’, but that's not my approach. Our job is to figure out what they're going to want before they do. I think Henry Ford once said, 'If I'd ask customers what they wanted, they would've told me a faster horse.' People don't know what they want until you show it to them.”

While you may or may not be a fan of Steve Jobs, the point is this: The fundamental job of a product manager is not to just deliver what customers ask for, but instead to identify their latent (hidden or unrealized) yet pervasive (widespread) and urgent (needs solving immediately) unmet needs and find ways to meet them. It is your job to figure out what they truly need – even if they don’t themselves know what it is.

Yet, customers never seem to hesitate to tell a product manager exactly what they should make. So how is one supposed to handle such a situation?

How To Handle Customers’ (Bad) Ideas

First – Acknowledge the suggestion! Perhaps, “That’s an interesting idea!” Nobody likes to hear that their idea is a bad one (even if it is truly awful).

Next – ask open, foundational questions such as:

“Why do you need this new product? How would you use it?”

“What was the situation you were in when you thought of this? What were you trying to do, but couldn’t?”

“What is the problem you’re trying to solve?”

“How would you solve this problem otherwise?”

“Does anyone else have a product that meets this need well? Why?”

“What would it be worth to you if this problem could be solved?”

The goal of these questions is to back-track from the conclusion (which this customer has already reached, at least in their opinion) to the inputs or experience that first led them to that conclusion; to ‘the why’.

Then when you return to the office, your primary objective must be to validate the pervasiveness and urgency of the problem you uncovered through your questioning. How many other customers might have this problem? How bad of a problem is it for them? By conducting similar interviews with multiple customers, you can begin to identify trends, understand the size of the opportunity, gauge strategic fit with your company, and ultimately begin to contemplate a solution.

But many times, great insights don’t come directly from customer conversations or interviews at all – but instead from keen observation of how customers go about their lives or operate their business.

Detective Work and Diplomacy

As a product manager, you must think of yourself not only as an interviewer (for those customer conversations), but also as a detective. Your responsibility is to look for clues and evidence. The best way to gain insights that can unlock a new product idea is to watch and understand your customer doing their job. They are so good at it that they do not notice the barriers they constantly overcome, the workarounds they often make. They just get it done. But you, the detective, can uncover these problems (and potential opportunities) if you are watching closely.

At the same time, you must be a diplomat. In order to open themselves up to observation, your research subjects will need to trust you – and to trust that ultimately helping you is a means to help themselves. Your goal is to be able to observe your subject in their natural environment, exhibiting their natural behaviors. It is exceedingly difficult for someone to act ‘normal’ when they know they are being watched or if they feel intimidated – so this process can take time and require patience and humility. To start things off on the right foot, consider setting up the observation session with statements such as:

“Please use this product like you normally would – I want to see what’s working well and especially what’s not working for you, a serious (professional, if B2B) user.”

“I can’t make things better unless I know what isn’t working well – so please be completely open and honest with me about what you think and what we got wrong.”

But if you are patient, observant, diplomatic and curious, you will gain important insights about your customer that they do not even know about themselves. And this, in the world of product management, is the origin of great products.

For further information on this topic, check out these great resources:

• Faster Horses and the Model T on Productboard

• Henry Ford, Innovation, and That “Faster Horse” Quote in the Harvard Business Review
• Identifying Unmet Needs in a Digital Age in the Harvard Business Review.
• Give Customer What They Need (Not What They Want) in Forbes.

Adam Shulman is a Product Manager with extensive experience in software/hardware systems and a passion for music and audio technology. He currently leads the Installed Systems business at Bose Professional and has been a member of the BPMA since 2016.

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