Which Customer?

Everyone agrees that it's good to listen to  what your customer wants. But which customer should you be listening to? This can be a surprisingly difficult question to answer, and getting it wrong can have unfortunate consequences.

Most companies have many types of customers. They can be sorted according to purchasing power, loyalty, enthusiasm, early/late adopter, knowledge, purchase frequency, and many other characteristics. You can also add in potential customers, who are often the key to success, but you may not even know who they are yet.

Some customers will let you know what they want. Some are articulate. Some are loud or persistent. Some are brutally honest, while others try to ingratiate themselves by telling you how great you are. Others, you will never, ever hear from.

There are several traps that the most well-intentioned people can fall into. Here are some customers that we're always tempted to listen to, and then try to please:

• The squeaky wheel. This is the person who complains the loudest and most frequently. We want them to be happy, and sometimes we want to satisfy them so that they'll be quiet.
• The fattest wallet. This is the customer that Sales wants to please, for obvious reasons. But making one fat wallet happy may mean disappointing hundreds of other customers.
• The most recent customer. After you (or your CEO) talks to an articulate, thoughtful customer, it's tempting to take her ideas and start working on them. Regardless of whether or not her ideas should really be your top priority.
• The most customers. This one's tricky. Let's say you get emails from hundreds of customers about an idea, far more than about any other issue. It must be important, right? Well, it may be safe to assume it's important to customers who write emails, but is that who you have to please to succeed? And does a chorus of agreement even mean that this issue is really the most important issue to these people?

Who do you listen to?

The single most important thing you can do is identify, and remember, who your target customers are. These are the people that you must satisfy in order to succeed. You need to understand their needs, their desires, and even their personalities. Picking your target customers is central to developing any product. There are many factors to consider, including things like customer need, the competitive landscape, readiness to purchase,  pricing factors, access to sales channels, geography and culture, etc.  It's an ongoing process - customers change, the market changes, and you have to continually readjust your target.

Once you know who you have to satisfy, in priority order, you need to keep this in mind whenever you seek or evaluate customer input. Go ahead and gather information from all kinds of people, but be sure to weigh the results according to your priorities. The most effective thing that you can do, though, is talk to the most important customers in the first place. Your time is limited and valuable - spend it with the people that you need to hear from.

However carefully you plan your research, you will still run into different personality types and people who care about very different things. That's good, as long as you can balance their input wisely. Don't let the squeaky wheel lead you away from the quieter wheels - they matter too. This is particularly important in a focus group or online forum - strong personalities can influence or intimidate less-forceful people, and it's up to you to ensure that these folks have a voice.

It's important to prioritize what you hear. Often, different types of customers will have very different priorities. By asking customer s to rank their preferences in a questionnaire or in-person "$100 test," you'll get a good idea what they consider most valuable. You may find that, for example, your top-priority customer's second highest need is the most important feature for all your other customers, and decide to make that feature your development priority.

No matter who you are listening to, it's important that you, as a product manager, don't take people's words at face value. Don't fall into the trap of doing what the customer says. It's your job to understand what's behind the customer's words and requests, and interpret them. Figure out what the customer's problems and desires are, whether or not they can articulate them. A request for one thing may actually be hiding a need for something very different.

Finding the right customers, then getting inside their heads, is the essence of great product management. Identify.  Listen. Interpret. Understand. Then act.