What is customer development?

• Customer development is one of the most important tools that as a PM I use to find out if we’re building the right thing.
• Customer development is the practice of establishing a continuous and iterative communication line with our customer, so that I can come up with ideas, hypotheses, try them out, get feedback, and adapt our product accordingly
• Customer development is a framework developed by Steve Blank
• In this framework, there are 4 steps in the product lifecycle:

Discovery, Validation, Creation and Building

• Idea is to focus on the customer interviews

Customer interviews help me understand the reasons why customers buy or don’t buy our product

The customer development cycle:

1. Validation

• In this phase, we use customer interviews to figure out if our product is needed and if it solves a real problem
• Good! Validation helps you figure out things like…if the problem you’re solving is a real problem, if anyone has that problem, what features you should add to your MVP to solve the problem, how to prioritize features, and so on.-

2. Development of the first version

• In this phase, we use customer interviews to figure out what features we should build

3. Iteration

• In this phase, we are improving the product
• I use customer interviews to figure out if they are enjoying the product, who is getting the most out of it, what are we missing, what new features it might need

As a Product manager I use customer development as a tool for

• Risk mitigation
• Opportunity recognition

Questions:

• A pre product interview question might ask, “How do you usually get from Point A to Point B?” Yes, it’s also an Exploratory question that could help in brainstorming product features.
• A post product interview question might ask, “Can you show me how you get to Point A to Point B using our app? Yes. User wouldn’t be able to use your app if it weren’t already made.
• This is an example of which type of interview question: “What is your least favourite thing about this app?”
• This is an example of which type of interview question: “What is your least favourite thing about this app?” Satisfaction
• This is an example of which type of interview question: “When do you usually use feature x of this product?”
• This is an example of which type of interview question: “When do you usually use feature x of this product?”
• This is an example of which type of interview question: “When do you usually use feature x of this product?” Efficiency as we’re trying to optimize what we have and better understand the customers using it.
• You have to give a “validation interview”, which of these questions would you ask? How often you loose your keys in the office? Correct question
• Why — Here we’re gauging the depth of the problem. Is the problem really that big of a deal?
• Going from Exploratory to Validation to Satisfaction to Efficiency, a question would evolve as such?
• What do you do when you can’t cook at home?When ordering for delivery do you order from same restaurants?What make you order from the same restaurant?Is it easy for you to log in and use your rewards points for the restaurants you usually order from?

Note:

• Validation helps us to figure out things like…if the problem we’re solving is a real problem, if anyone has that problem, what features we should add to our MVP to solve the problem, how to prioritize features, and so on
• A pre product interview question might ask, “How do you usually get from Point A to Point B?” True
• A post product interview question might ask, “Can you show me how you get to Point A to Point B using our app?Customer wouldn’t be able to use your app if it weren’t already made.
• What is your least favorite thing about this app? Satisfaction
• This is an example of which type of interview question: “When do you usually use feature x of this product?” Efficiency
• You have to give a “validation interview”, which of these questions would you ask?How often do you loose your keys in your house.
• Going from Exploratory to Validation to Satisfaction to Efficiency, a question would evolve as such: “What do you do when you can’t cook at home?When ordering for delivery do you order from same restaurants?What would make you order from the same restaurant?Is it easy for you to log in and use your reward points for the restaurant you usually order from?”

Reference link: https://steveblank.com/category/customer-development/