Quantitative interviews are a must

Transcript of Chapter 27

In past chapters, I’ve encouraged you to let your customers lead you to their outcomes in qualitative, Discovery interviews. But that’s just half the story for eliminating innovation errors.

First you diverge in Discovery interviews to hear all customer outcomes. But then you converge in quantitative Preference interviews, to understand customers’ most important, unmet outcomes. Discovery interviews stop errors of omission… failing to uncover unarticulated needs. And Preference interviews stop errors of commission… focusing on the wrong needs.

When you start your project, you probably have some ideas of what customers want. Then your Discovery Interviews give you lots of outcomes… way too many to base your new product design on.

To get these to a manageable number, you take those outcomes customers seemed most enthusiastic about into Preference Interviews, and ask customers for their most important and least satisfied today.

This reveals the real gems… which you’ll target in your new product design. This is classic problem-solving that begins with divergent thinking, and then converges on what customers want most.

Your 10 outcomes fit somewhere on this matrix. If an Outcome scores low in importance with the customer, it shouldn’t be important to you either. If an Outcome is important and already satisfied, your product must also satisfy it. But only if an Outcome is important and not being satisfied today, might they pay you a premium.

You get a high Market Satisfaction Gap if customers are dissatisfied with an important outcome. Here’s the formula: If the average market Importance rating was 9 and Satisfaction rating was 6… your Market Satisfaction Gap would be 36%. Gaps over 30% indicate the market is eager for improvement.

If you want one single action to boost your innovation, it’s this: Don’t do any significant product development without quantitative, unbiased data like Market Satisfaction Gaps. You can learn more in this research report on Preference interviews.