While much talked about, customer needs remain an elusive concept. The consensus is that customer needs are random, latent, unknowable, and therefore not actionable. Consequently, most startups choose to move toward product-market fit by means of approximation (by not only testing product hypotheses but also market hypotheses). In truth, customer needs are actionable. Customer needs are the performance standards (metrics) against which customers evaluate success toward their objectives.

It are statements such as “Why does this take so goddam long” and “This is so bloody unreliable” which tell the story. Therefore, to uncover customer needs, a good strategy is to inquire about aspects of the process that cause variability, general inefficiencies, as well as drawbacks of current solutions. Move step by step to focus your conversations with customers. Write out each customer need into a single statement using this formula: [direction of improvement] + [performance metric] + [object of control] + [contextual clarifier (optional)]. For example, while monitoring tests (in the context of quality assurance), product teams need to minimize (direction of improvement) the likelihood (performance metric) that reports are non-descriptive (object of control).

Note that the standardized sentence structure is essential, for later we want to return to customers to ask them to quantify their needs. As to the direction of improvement, it can take two forms: minimize and maximize. Most often, customers need to minimize a performance metric. Regarding the performance metrics, customers are mostly concerned with time and the likelihood of some (negative) occurrence. Expect to uncover 100+ customer needs.

With the customer objective, the process steps, and the customer needs uncovered, your market blueprint is almost complete. We continue by quantifying customer needs to add granularity to your blueprint.