I had to bookmark and capture this terrific post on Found+Read by Mike Simonsen that addressed in a simple sentence what Health2.0 start-ups need to do in order to validate their service development ideas [and quite frankly, we haven't done a great job of this either... but we will NOW].
Mike writes:
Everyone founder knows they need to “talk to customers” and “get customer feedback” before they get too far…What’s less well understood is that customers often give lousy feedback. They’re unimaginative, stuck in the status quo, and distracted. They already manage their day without your product, and life will go on if you don’t exist.
How to guarantee that you’re getting good information out of your customer conversations?…Use the Present Tense.
When conducting reconnaissance with customers for your as-yet-unbuilt product, speak about it in the present tense. This is what the product does. This is how much it costs. (Even though it doesn’t, yet.) And be specific.
Definitely never ask: “What do you want the product to do?” or “How much would you pay?” Customers have no idea what they want. But they know they don’t want to pay for it.
Rather, when you use the present tense, you get immediate, usable feedback. In fact, the more specific you are about what your product “does” now, the better your results will be.
Mike – I’m sorry to have clipped so much of your article, but i wanted people to see the true gem of an article that you posted! The best part of his post are his examples of using this approach for product/service development…definitely go read the whole post.
The irony of Mike’s post and a multitude of conversations that i have had with potential partners and friendly competitors is that NOBODY has taken Mike’s approach. In the Health2.0 community of companies, there is a general feeling of “we know healthcare and what consumers NEED.” There are multiple companies that are attempting to “consumerify” [a term i just made up] or taking current clinical-focused healthcare applications/processes and try to convert them into consumer-friendly versions of aforementioned applications/processes.
Additionally, there are a multitude of healthcare organizations and employers that are trying to offer patients/employees valuable information, increase transparency, and embrace technology such as giving consumers access to their doctor appointments, clinician’s profiles, medical notes, and other health-based information. But as an industry, are we asking people who don’t know what they want, what they wish they could have? I’m not implying that Personal Health Records and other medical information access/storage/sharing mechanisms are ill-gotten pursuits. In fact, i am certain that most companies are focused on the correct “what“. I’m just not certain that we are figuring out the “how” very well.
I honestly don’t have any answers… but i think that i will be much better suited to gain customer feedback by presenting our product/service development ideas to customers in the present tense:
Another example from Mike’s post…
Hypothetical:
You: “What what would you like our product to do?”
Customer: “What I’ve been thinking about is…X, Y, Z.” (Read: something totally wacky and way outside your vision or expertise.)Present Tense:
You: “We’re building our company, here’s the problem we saw. So we built Product X. It does this and this and this.”
Customer: “But does it do X, Y, Z?” (Read: completely obvious incremental feature that you’ve totally missed so far.)
You: “Not yet, but that’s a great idea. Tell me more. How/when/why do you need that?”
(By your next customer meeting you can decide if the product “does” that too!)
