Give your customers what they need, not just what they want

While customer feedback is valuable and should be considered, you can’t solely rely on customer input to guide your marketing, process, or development. Best captured by the quote from Steve Jobs, "You can't just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them." Who knew we needed or wanted an iPhone until we saw it?

Customers may not always have a clear vision of what they want or need until they are presented with it. Their understanding or ability to articulate what they want is limited by their existing experiences and familiarity with available solutions. Therefore, solely relying on customer feedback may result in incremental improvements or iterations of existing products, rather than breakthrough innovations.

To create products or solutions that truly meet customers' needs, it’s important to balance customer input with innovative thinking and a deep understanding of your target market. This requires going beyond surface-level feedback and uncovering the underlying pain points, desires, and unmet needs of customers. By understanding their motivations, challenges, and aspirations, you can identify opportunities for disruptive innovation and develop solutions that surpass customers' expectations

One way of doing this is by using a variety of research methods. For example, a survey can help you understand what they want when given a choice. And, by adding in-depth qualitative interviews, it can provide you with the why or the reasoning behind what they want. Another example is when a typical brainstorming session is held. The same people get in the same room in front of the same whiteboard and are expected to come up with new ideas – which is not likely to happen. Bring in new people who think differently or know little about the problem you are solving for. Hold the session in a different environment and introduce a variety of different visual or data inputs to help spark new thinking.

Go beyond relying solely on customer feedback, using the same research methods, or generating ideas in the same way. Take a balanced and multi-disciplinary approach by combining customer input with innovative thinking and a deep understanding of your target market. This approach can empower you to drive innovation, anticipate future requirements, and find solutions you may have never thought of - and possibly create something that your customers love and never knew they needed.