customers included - a book review

Book Report: Customers Included by Mark Hurst and

Phil Terry

review by @darylhemeon

What does the customer want?

http://creativegood.com/consulting/

@markhurst@philterry

https://customersincluded.com/chapter1.html#chap1

The Authors

1. Observe customers directly.2. Discover customers’ key unmet needs.3. Build consensus across the organization to meet those needs.

Simple to describe - easy to understand

Sound familiar?

The Case Studies

So Netflix recovered by taking “No shortcuts, a steady disciplined” focus to “execute on the fundamentals” - provide great service for its customers.

The cost of not including the customer

let’s just innovate it

finding a contact is too hardsending a text message was clunkysetting up a conference call was impossible

what started the revolution?

i hate focus groups

Focus Groups - misguidedPersonas are fake Why is my survey are full of lies?

What are you saying?

Here’s your sign

talk with your customersdiscover what they want mostinclude your executive team to show them how bad it really is

Listening Labs

Recommend approach is to get executives to participate in Listening Labs so that consensus can be built around the INSIGHTS

Can you make change?

what are the corporate barriers?

“The first 5 times I used the site it timed out while trying to bring up the page...This site is so slow it is unusable.In fact it felt more like a puzzle. It told me to go to Windows Update and do a bunch of incantations. Why should I go somewhere else just to download what I want…”

feedback example

microsoft.com - windows movie maker

Rapid Prototyping and Involving the customer fit nicely - the research portion I believe happens prior to sprints to help inform the design and User Experience.

How does this fit with Lean UX?

My .02

These types of User Research activities should be done by the development team and product owners (discovery) - BUT I do believe that this should inform the product vision and stories that get created for the backlog.

How does this fit with Agile?

● design thinking - a good start● we don’t even know what the unmet needs

are - stop guessing and find out● use our network of client managers to

identify listening partners● go back to customers for Lean UX testing

after the lab

What does this mean for us?

Peter Drucker from 1954’s The Practice of Management

“There is only one valid definition of business purpose: to create the customer … What the customer thinks he/she is buying, what he/she considers value is decisive - it determines what a business is, what it produces and whether it will prosper. The customer is the foundation of a business and keeps it in existence.”

What a company is for

1. Observe customers directly.2. Discover customers’ key unmet needs.3. Build consensus across the organization to meet those needs.

let’s review

thanks for listening - now go make it better

@darylhemeon

next up - Remote and the Lean Start Up http://37signals.com/remote/http://theleanstartup.com/

Questions?