Walk in Your Customer’s Shoes

Andy takes some time walking us through why many great tech ideas fail. Know thy customer is the mantra here. Walk a day in their shoes.

I’ve worked for many companies in high tech where honestly the idea of actually talking to the customer was just too big or too complicated a prospect. Yes, lipservice was paid to market research, but for some reason it’s way easier to analyze a bunch of pie charts than talk one on one with the people you’re building for. 

I don’t know why this is so hard for companies to get right. Research is expensive which certainly has a lot to do with it, but I’ll say there is other deep rooted psychological trauma going on as well.

I mean, if you start talking with customers, they’ll start wanting stuff. These people are demanding! They want things done better, faster, simpler, more buttons, less buttons. They’re never satisfied. Don’t they understand what you’re trying to do? That the underlying technology of the thing is flat out amazing? So forget it, you just can’t talk to the customer because they’re high maintenance and don’t know what they need anyway. But we the Company do, and that’s what we’ll build.

Pause.

Okay, that got a little chippy. So I’ll conclude by saying that companies with the best of intentions can get lost in their own story. You still need to have the story, a damn good one, but you also need the wherewithall to put a great book in someone’s hands and have them read it.