Customer Development Simplified
Steven Blank outlined the strategy of customer development in his book The Four Steps to the Epiphany back in 2007 after a career as a serial entrepreneur. His detailed thoughts on understanding customers before building products have become known as the bible for startup businesses. Founders who are in touch with his thoughts fully understand the need for market validation before product development. Customer developmentis challenging because it’s difficult to automate and receive quality feedback. How many times have you clicked diligently through a 10-minute survey? How many times have you beta tested a product and expressed your distaste with a particularly annoying experience? If you’re like me, then it’s not too often.
The process of collecting honest and anonymous feedback was a tedious task, often leaving the founders without the most crucial feedback they are seeking. The service offered by KSSinsights changes the dynamic of customer development by only asking users simple but pivotal answers. The users are given few options to choose on the survey and you have the ability to ask questions that are relevant to the page they are on.
An example survey we’re using on Ingenic for logged-in users only is the short answer prompt: “Is there anything on this page not working the way your expected it to?”. In addition to the short response, KI reports the User Agent (Browser and Operating System) to make troubleshooting much easier. We’re getting more data from our users, and that helps us make better product development decisions for our immediate and long-term success.
Bottom line, it’s quick, targeted, and specific feedback. The burden on the user becomes minimal because the short feedback does not interfere with their experience using the product. No more will I have to settle for a generic question and receive generic feedback. And the installation doesn’t take longer than a couple minutes.
I’ve installed the code on this blog post. Take a look on the bottom right of your screen.
*Note a 2-hour reporting delay due to Amazon Web Services!
Click the image below to take a look at a few survey questions that might generate valuable customer insights for your product development:
What’s the cost for KissInsights, and are there any benefits for the premium account? It’s $29/month, so about $1 per day. And with the premium account you can create unlimited white-label surveys and receive unlimited responses. Each successful feedback submission then calls the user to follow your Twitter account or like your Facebook page. It’s an elegant solution to a complicated and continuous customer development challenge.
