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Aim Your Sights at Your
Customers' Downstream Success
by Adele Sommers
Do you strive to ensure that your customers
enjoy downstream success? Are you mostly concerned
with your own financial gain, or do you also express
a desire to see that your customers will succeed? If
it’s the latter, are you consciously considering
the success of your customers’ customers,
or even of your customers’ customers’ customers?
Without a plan for ensuring an ongoing chain of satisfaction,
you can run the risk of developing products, services,
or customized solutions that might fill your coffers
but not provide any significant or lasting benefits
to others.
The way we approach our projects can
influence our customers’ success. Too often,
we myopically limit ourselves to deliver only the “first-line”
requirements. In so doing, we think primarily about
what our customers or clients asked for, even if it’s
not the most suitable fit for their own — or their
customers’ — intended needs.
And although it’s commendable to
listen to what our customers want, and to try hard to
fulfill their stated desires to a “T,” it’s
also possible to generate an incomplete or incompatible
result based on superficial information. This article
offers three ways to adjust our project vision
from “20:20 hindsight” to “20:20 foresight”
in this regard.
1. Consult Your Client’s or Customer’s
“Crystal Ball”
 This
method involves more types of questions than you might
normally ask about the downstream benefits your product,
service, or solution will deliver. It entails querying
your clients or customers about the results they envision
from the product, service, system, training program,
or whatever your project will produce for them, as follows:
- “Imagine the project results six months
to a year after completion. What payoffs do
you see for people in your organization? Describe
the benefits in detail, and any limitations they may
still be experiencing after everything is delivered.”
- “Now imagine how your customers or clients
will benefit in the same period. What improvements
in your products and services do you believe you will
pass along to them from this project? Will those improvements
significantly enhance your clients’ or customers’
situations? If not, where are the gaps in the picture?”
2. Conduct Interviews at Your Customer’s or
Even Their Customers’ Sites
 In
some situations, a customer or client may agree to have
you interview people at their site or possibly at one
of their customers' sites. This process can be considered
part of an initial needs assessment. If you are providing
an estimate for the project, you might even want to
separate information-gathering into its own distinct
phase.
When the possibility of onsite interviewing presents
itself, the purpose would be to learn from as many different
sources as possible how people perceive the situation
that has led to the request for a solution.
Using the information gathered in this phase, you might
acquire insights that will reshape the initial set of
requirements the client had requested. This could be
the case if you and your client ultimately determine
that the requirements do not seem to address the client’s
— or the client’s customers’ — needs
in the best possible way.
3. Use the “Persona Interview” Approach
This method is especially useful if your project entails
developing offerings for mass consumption — where
there is no specific client or customer to please. It
can also, however, work extremely well when you are
working with a client, to help pinpoint specific kinds
of concerns and options that would not have been readily
apparent.
 With
this technique, you begin by identifying a few imaginary
characters known as “personas.” These
characters embody typical customers of your products
or services. Regardless of what you’ll be creating,
you’ll want to make your personas as realistic
as possible. Give them names, ages, genders, professional
or personal roles, families and friends, hobbies, educational
backgrounds, and major challenges, for example.
If the project involves creating a financial planning
Web site, for instance, you might conclude that one
representative visitor is a retired electrician with
limited computer skills. In contrast, another frequent
visitor is a computer specialist who likes access to
“power user” shortcuts. The solution you design
will need to satisfy each persona’s preferred way
of using the Web site, without complicating life for
the others.
After I’ve identified two or three personas, I
like to “interview” each one about how they
are using my offerings, as well as the benefits they
are receiving. (Note that I do this before doing any
development.) I let them tell an entire story about
their circumstances, company situation, personal concerns,
or whatever else “comes up.”
These “interviews” often reveal new ideas
and angles to consider. Once, I used this technique
to “find out” how people might respond to
a new information product I was planning to create.
To my astonishment, one of my personas disclosed that
she was taking advantage of the licensing program I
had developed to allow others to teach the material.
Up until that point, licensing had not even once crossed
my mind — but you can be sure that I added it to
my requirements list after that! This is a great  example
of how a downstream customer benefit can emerge in a
persona interview.
Yes, these exercises do take some imagination.
Once you start the process, however, you’ll be
surprised at how much you can learn about the benefits
— and any potential shortcomings — of a product,
service, or made-to-order solution as defined by your
initial assumptions.
The point is that by using a variety of techniques
to expose more of your clients’ and customers’
needs, you can pinpoint more completely the project,
product, or service requirements. And by consistently
emphasizing the downstream “chain of successes”
that your customers and their customers will enjoy,
you’ll create perpetual value for all who use your
offerings or your final project results.
Copyright 2005 Adele Sommers
Want to publish this article in your newsletter
or Web site? Be sure to include: Adele Sommers,
Ph.D. is the creator of the award-winning “Straight
Talk on Boosting Business Performance” success
system at LearnShareProsper.com.
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While
I was pondering the topic for today's feature article
on how to make your customer's customers happy,
I started thinking about what happiness is. Is it
peace, harmony, balance, joy, love, inspiration, motivation,
contentment, and well being? Or does it also need
a pinch of perspective, a dollop of gratitude, and
a cup of optimism?
One
More Quick Reminder...
