Truly listening during product development

This week I was reminded of the importance of listening to your customers from the most unlikely of places. My son.

My son, let’s call him ‘L’, has recently turned three and he (amongst other things) is a motivating factor in my life. When he was born my wife and I created a list of the person we wanted him to become:

• Happy
• Faithful
• Positive
• Honest
• Ambitious
• Independent
• Kind
• Empathetic
• Curious
• Confident

But this week he taught me something.

In the last few months L has become more and more independent (nailing one item in the above list 💪). He now doesn’t want any help when taking himself to the toilet. Except there is a problem—for weeks now he has been pulling reams of toilet paper off the roll and it was getting rather annoying.

It goes like this. L

Papa I’m going to the toilet and DON’T help me

Me

OK, no problem, let me know when you’ve finished

A few minutes later, he calls and I walk in to see toilet paper all over the floor. I tell him off because I think he’s playing with it (and to be honest, I just think he’s generally being a 3 year old). Those of you with children will understand.

Then one day, I ask him

L, why do you keep pulling all the toilet paper off?

He responds

Papa I can’t break it

The penny finally drops. He keeps pulling the paper because he doesn’t know how to tear it off! Now I feel like the world’s worst parent—how could I be so naive?

Now you’re probably thinking to yourself, why is this guy going on about his son and what has this got to do with product development?!…

Well, I see this same scenario during product development play out all the time. We make assumptions and try our best to understand customers’ behaviour, we pour over the data, we send surveys and we conduct interviews but we don’t hear what they’re saying.

It’s easy to enter into any kind of customer research with preconceived ideas, personal views or even possible solutions. Just like when crossing a road Stop, look, listen (another child reference, do you see what I did there?)

Next time you’re doing any customer research, take a step back, leave all preconceptions behind and listen. You’ll be amazed at what you’ll hear!

I look forward to another one of his lessons next week.