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H O W T O C O N N E C T T O C U S T O M E R S T H R O U G H T H E 5

W H Y S

When You Understand Your Customer’s Needs You Can’t Go Wrong

A R T I F I C I A L L Y I N T E L L I G E N T C L A I R E . C O M

Validation of the Customer Problem Through the 5 Whys

Focussing on the Customer can help you avoid costly development mistakes and grow product revenue.

Everyone online talks about understanding your ‘why’ and being customer obsessed.

But how do you get started with this in your business?

It’s one thing to know you need to understand why your customers users your product and their pain points, but another entirely to actually do it.

Well, fear not, today I am going to take you through a simple exercise to help you get started and reconnect with your customers on a deeper level.

The methodology I will share is taken from the principles of LEAN project management.

In case you’re not familiar with these techniques, I will start with explaining the principles in more detail.

C O N N E C T I N G T O C U S T O M E R S

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An Introduction to Lean Methodologies

There are seven main principles of running a business in a Lean way.

• Always focus on the customer• Understand how work really

happens• Make your processes flow

smoothly• Reduce waste and concentrate on

value• Stop defects through removing

variation• Get buy-in from the team through

collaboration• Make your efforts systematic and

scientific

The most important part of the whole process is to focus on the customer.

Instead of getting caught up in the hype you can focus on the customer get to the root cause of the problem and build out a simple solution to solve it.

Once your solution is in place you can create a feedback loop with your customer to develop continuous improvements.

L E T ’ S G E T S T A R T E D !

A R T I F I C I A L L Y I N T E L L I G E N T C L A I R E . C O M

Reverse Engineering From the Solution: Connect with The Customer

The first step to any good digital product innovation is understanding the customer problem you are trying to solve on a deep level.

One way you can start to do this is to for your digital product is by putting yourself in your customer’s shoes and asking the 5 whys.

In this process, you start with the idea and work through it to understand any customer pain points and how innovations within your digital product can solve these.

If your understanding of the customer is solid this should be fairly easy.

However, if it is not, you will end up with some more work to do refining it into an idea with impact.

Be warned this is harder than it seems! Stick with it though, it’s worth it!

L E T ’ S G E T S T A R T E D !

A R T I F I C I A L L Y I N T E L L I G E N T C O N S U L T I N G . C O M

THE 5 WHYS EXERCISE

WHY does your customer need your product innovation?Y 1

So you know they need your product innovation because of Y1 . But WHY does your customer need Y1?Y 2

So you know they need Y1 because of Y2 . But WHY does your customer need Y2?Y 3

So you know they need Y2 because of Y3 . But WHY does your customer need Y3?Y 4

So you know they need Y3 because of Y4. But WHY does your customer need Y4?Y 5

Before starting this exercise decide what part of your product you want to dive into or what problem you are looking to solve. Spend some time looking at your product through your customer’s eyes and try to identify any pain points. Once you have your focus area, complete the exercise asking WHY 5 times.

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STARTING A PROJECT CHECKLIST

Who is your customer?Who is the person who will ultimately use the product you are developing

Why do they need this product/what is the root cause of their problem?Complete the 5 why’s so you can clarify the needs

What do I need to get started?Now you know what you need at the end, work backwards to understand how you get there. i.e. what data do you need?

A checklist of items get you and your team started and driving a digital product innovation roadmap

What is the process?Time to map out the project and understand what you need to do based on your working backwards

How will I measure success?Decide this before you start - if not you may accept a sub-par solution that doesn’t meet the customer need

How will you get feedback from Customers to iterate on my solution?Think about how you will build a feedback loop into your project before starting

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Notes

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Notes