Beyond the Survey: How to Truly Understand Your Customers with Monica Bilak

In this episode of “What’s the Startup?!”, we dive deep into the world of customer discovery—a critical process that can make or break your startup. Join us as we explore what it truly means to understand your customers’ needs, motivations, and behaviors. We’ll share practical examples, like the fascinating story of milkshake marketing, and how Sprocket’s own youth programs benefited from rigorous customer discovery. Whether you’re just starting out or looking to refine your product, this episode will equip you with the tools to test your assumptions, avoid bias, and build something your customers will love. Tune in to learn how to move beyond guesswork and start making data-driven decisions that drive success.

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Transcript

0:47

In simple terms, what is customer discovery and why is it important? So customer discovery is finding out what compels, motivates, What is that deep need that people have that makes them pull out their billfold or, you know, Billfold, what's that? Billfold, I know, I just said billfold. Their Apple Pay? Somebody else just said their Venmo. Yeah, and pay somebody else, right? What makes them pull out some cash and say, I want that thing? And you can find out about people's need to buy by going back to figuring out what happens before they make that decision. And then you can actually find out what is causing them to make that decision, what's happening around them. And then what compels them to then make a purchase. And we all assume we know what. It is because we are a person who has bought something. But you can really gain a tremendous amount of insight by actually going back and talking to people who've had a recent, maybe shopping experience or some kind of customer experience. So to me, I believe it has to do with really understanding what people are needing, what they're trying, what is the problem they're trying to solve? And then understanding how they're going about solving it. And then that helps you build a better product or service as well. Yeah. And I think it's important to remember that we're probably our own customers. You know, we created a product that we probably need and came from our own need. And so we're walking forward with a set of assumptions that just belong to us. And that's what customer discovery is all about, is testing those assumptions. And making sure that they're, they're probably not correct, or there's probably holes. And so finding those holes and building a better product. What is the first step to customer discovery? Is it just walking up to somebody and starting asking questions? What, what do you even do if you have a product or you have an idea and you know, customer discovery is the first step. What's next? So, well, I'll give you an example that we used here. So when we first started we actually had a maker space. And we were running youth programs, and we were trying to figure out what programs do we run. And so we started hosting like little pop up shops of, Hey, come, come for the, come for your after school, and we're gonna teach kids how to, you know, do some 3D printing. Or we're gonna teach kids how to play with robotics for one hour. At first we had a, Just a pop up experience, and we had all these different things laid out to see where kids Gravitated and what they went for so that's one way is just testing it so if you think about it It's it's a simple you said Assumption I have an assumption some people call it a hypothesis, or I've got this guess. I think people really like Frozen yogurt, but I'm not really, you know, I like frozen yogurt, but I don't know. And I think there's a market for frozen yogurt. I could send out a survey, but of course everybody's going to say they love frozen yogurt. The only way to tell if somebody likes something is to put it in front of them and see how they act and respond with it. So maybe you just get a frozen yogurt stand one Saturday and hang out in the park, or you push a cart around. You find out how many people are actually willing to buy frozen yogurt. So, that's kind of what we did. Okay, do we really even have enough kids that would want to do things? I will tell you four years later, we, every summer get calls. What workshops are you giving kids this year? We don't have workshop for kids anymore, but we did. And we, and we found out which ones were really popular and we capitalized on them. And that's where we invested our money. Also, because it was a capital intensive in buying supplies and computers and things, so it was really good to go, let's sample this. How fast can we make it? How much does it cost? How skilled does the person have to be? You know, so there was a lot of things we rolled out of that. Those assumptions to see if they were really valid and true. There's a really good story. About have you ever heard of the story of milkshake marketing? No. Okay. I'm going to tell you. So Clayton Christensen is the father of disruptive innovation. He actually coined the phrase. He's one of those Harvard smarty pants. And they were working with a fast food chain. Who needed to, their milkshake sales were flat. And they were trying to figure out how do we, how do we boost milkshakes. And so they, they started with focus groups. And focus groups told them to make a, you know, they would throw out these flavors. And, did you like chocolate fudge chunk? And would you like this? And, well yeah, everybody would like a, a wonderfully sweet flavored milkshake. So they started changing their recipes, but still flat sales. Nothing happened. So finally sent, a guy went in with this group and he decided to just talk to everybody who bought a milkshake. And so he'd stop'em on the way out of the door and he'd say, what is the job this milkshake is doing for you today? And that was where he got all the insights. And what they found out was that people were mostly buying milkshakes between the hours of 6:00 AM and like it was a morning. In in 12 and it was it was for a morning commute and people were buying them for breakfast because they didn't get messy and They they went slow. So they had a long commute So they were slow drinking, you know, and so it was fulfilling all these needs So they decided of course, obviously they went into this whole smoothie business with that milkshake so The same can happen to you if you start talking to your customer, yeah, you have this sense that everybody wants a milkshake because they want something sweet, treat, you know, but in fact, that, that product was actually doing a job for someone and that is how, you know, you kind of start to unravel what is really behind the purchase. So how do we overcome that nervousness of standing at a door asking people, what job is this milkshake doing for you? It's funny. I don't I, I don't know how to get over the nervousness except to say, do you really want the answer? And like, do you want your answer? Do you want your customers answer? Do you want to make money or did you just want to make something you wanted to make? And that's a big one for entrepreneurs. And I think you gotta really, you gotta really have a long hard talk with yourself about what am I in this for, for me or am I really trying to serve a need and fill a gap in, in the market. So you, you just kind of do have to get out there. There's a couple of really good books. One's called the mom test. There's another one called Jobs to Be Done. It's a great little, they're just tiny little books. But they really help you understand kind of how to enter that conversation. And, you know, the cool thing about it is they always say never talk about your product. So while you're, you're talking to somebody, even standing in a line, you know, to buy something you can strike up a conversation about, I was. Trying to get tickets for such and such what how did you do that? You know and people can start to talk about what happened around a purchase rather than Maybe your new idea purchase, you know So when you're talking to people it's better not to tell them your idea or your product because you bias them And then they start to feel like they need to say something nice back to you and you won't get the truth and that's But if you talk about a problem that somebody might have, I'm drinking coffee now, and I need an energy drink in the afternoon. And maybe I'm just going to talk about how tired I am in the afternoon, and see if someone else has that fatigue as well. And then you can start asking them, well, so what do you do when you're tired in the afternoon? What do you find you grab, you know, pick up, what do you go and pick up? How do you eat? What do you do? You know, those kinds of things. So it's about talking around it, the problem and being problem focused rather than your product focused. Does that make sense? Yeah, absolutely. How do you pack some of those questions too? Like, you know how do you start thinking in that way? Cause I think that's a hard shift for a lot of us to make when we have an outcome that we want. Yeah. How do you ask a question without asking a question? Without being direct. And again, I think it is, it's more about like when we did the, we had the user research. We've got a video in our YouTube channel on user research. It's a user research workshop. And she even talks about, talk about ask someone about a time, tell me about a time when you were really let's talk about. I'm tired in the afternoon. Tell me about a time and I want to talk about a coffee purchase. Okay. Tell me about the last time you bought a cup of coffee and then where did you go? Oh, why did you choose that? Or tell me about the last time if, if I'm going to design a new car or something, or I'm selling something along those lines, I might say, tell me about the last time you purchased a car, what, what, what brought you to that decision? And you'll hear a whole story in somebody's life about. what had happened and why they suddenly, boom, that was the moment they made that decision. That's what you really want to get from people. You also can even listen for emotion in those decisions. So maybe I'm tired, but really that's not the problem I'm solving, right? So you're going to listen for Those words that tell you kind of what are some of my emotional needs that I have. Even the people in the milkshake, right? They needed to stay alert. and active to get to work. So, you know, they were just looking for a way to entertain themselves and and also provide some kind of nourishment. And so you want to listen for all of that when you're asking the question. So the best ones are kind of open ended and always try a a what and how question. Don't ask a why question. Why questions put people on the defensive. And they don't actually elicit the kind of response that gives you the most information. Why is that? If you ask me how, how did you come to decide to have coffee instead of tea, Monica? It's the same question as why did you decide to have tea, but what? I feel like why, yeah. I will give you steps. That's a good one. Well, this happened, and then this happened, and then this happened, and you can follow those. What made you think that? I don't know. So, it, it does, it elicits a better response I think, too, the why just does tend to get people defensive, and they feel like they have to shoot back an answer. And so, you're not going to get something thoughtful with that. So, what and hows are a really good rule of thumb. So, after you've done this. sleuthing. What do you do with that information now that you have it? Well, for example, on the milkshake marketing you know, they, they really reconsidered, if the majority of people are coming in the morning for a commute, we've got to really rethink what are we giving them? Like, what does my product look like? What does it need to contain? You know they're probably going to be, want more health conscious so they don't have a sugar crash, or do they want a coffee shake, you know? So there's a lot of different things that are, it's going to create a whole cascade of questions for you to now reconsider. When we did ours here when we did it with our youth programs, it really did make us go, okay, but what can have the most impact? With the least amount of effort because we didn't have a lot, you know, we're starting out really scrappy We didn't have we have one staff person And so what can that one person learn and teach that we can replicate? It's gonna it's gonna impact everything You how am I going to deliver this? How am I going to market it? Oh, well now I've found out it's commuters. You know, these morning commute people, that's a totally different thing. Oh, now I've found out it's all kids between the ages of 11 and 14. And no high schooler will come because they're busy being high schoolers in the summer. You know, we found out so much information by just doing these small tests that had we not We would have, we would have been marketing to high school kids thinking all these high school kids will come in and when we opened up to all the workshops, we never got high school kids coming in because they're busy with, you know, their advanced sports and they're, you know, hanging out with friends and they have jobs. So really our market ended up being heavy into middle school and we had no idea. So customer research is all about just getting started. Absolutely. It's not sitting behind whatever and doing a bunch of surveys, which can be helpful. It can. That's a part of it. But it's all about how can I get my idea out there with whatever I have right now and see how people respond to it. Yeah. And I think also setting it up just like we did in eighth grade, the scientific experiment, you have a hypothesis. Take that hypothesis, take it and test it, and see what, be honest about the data you get back. That's probably the hardest part, is being honest about the data you get back. Especially if you already have a bias and you really loved your idea. Changing that can be really difficult and daunting at first. What are some common mistakes that you see people making when they approach customer discovery? Talking about their product. I would really say practice questioning somebody who you're not going to use as part of your research. Just so you can get comfortable asking the questions and figuring out kind of how to work around them. Read the mom test or jobs to be done and understand how to get out of your way so that you can ask questions. Focus on the person and their need, not what you're trying to get out of it as well. Just try to really understand the need. One user researcher said to us, it's like having a therapy session about somebody's problem they're trying to solve. And, and they actually, she says she's never had anyone who didn't say to her, I feel so much better after talking to you, you know, so they will feel better after talking to you about whatever the problem is they're trying to solve but asking people around that is, is a great a great way to do it. Around a problem that they're trying to solve, not about around a product you're trying to sell. And so if you'll keep that in mind people will really appreciate it and there'll be more forthcoming. Great. Thank you so much, Monica. You're welcome.