Most successful marketing strategies for creating product demand require the use of customer feedback to assess just how well a product actually impacts market needs. While the success of some products rely more heavily on factors that are sometimes difficult to define—such as impulse buying, stylistic preferences, and market trends—the essence of most product marketing is finding ways to satisfy actual, functional customer needs. Successful product marketing is as much about developing products that provide solutions to real customer problems, address necessary tasks, or fulfill documented needs, as it is about communicating product benefits. Market adoption of many types of products often depends on how well a particular product satisfies its customer’s requirements.

While companies employ a variety of tools for soliciting customer feedback and assessing market needs—including enhancement requests, customer surveys, customer-service reports, sales feedback, and focus groups—there really is no substitute for actually standing in the shoes of a customer. Understanding market needs requires the ability to see the world from your customers’ points of view, and acquiring those perspectives demands an ongoing program of visits to customer sites.

As with any research endeavor, the effectiveness of customer visits and the value of the information gathered for improving and marketing your products are directly related to how well you plan, conduct, document, and utilize customer visits. When conducted effectively, the information gleaned from real-world customer environments can be an important part of your product definition and marketing efforts. The information in this article is the result of more than 200 visits conducted over the past decade to companies in more than 10 countries that use a mechanical design software product.

Become an explorer

Before visiting a customer, you need to clearly define the purpose of the visit. Ask yourself why you need to visit customers. What are your motivations and what are your goals? How can visiting customers result in a better, more marketable product? By carefully considering these questions, you will be able to define the objectives of your customer visit program, determine how many visits to make, select the specific customers to visit, and choose the geographies you should cover.

Customer visits may not be the appropriate market research vehicle if your intent is to forecast potential sales in a new market or determine a customer’s preference for one product over another. The single, overarching purpose of product management customer visits should be to explore the customer’s environment, problems, and needs, so you can understand how to improve the functional performance and marketing of your product. To do this effectively, you have to assume the role of an explorer.

By assuming such a role, you will discover how your customers actually use your product and determine what is working well or not so well. Does your customer have a need that your product does not satisfy? How does your product fit within your customer’s ecosystem and what are the opportunities for improving your product’s usefulness to the customer?

Such visits contrast markedly with sales or support calls, during which the sole objective is to either develop workaround solutions to overcome the customer’s objections or troubleshoot a critical customer problem. You are not there to tout product features or an upcoming product introduction, as you probably would at a conference or a trade show. You should commit yourself to listening and absorbing information, like a sponge.

The reason a customer visit is different from other market research vehicles is that it truly gets you out of the “feature” world, where you are thinking in terms of features, technology, and assumed priorities, and realigns you with your customer’s “product” world. Your customer is more concerned with completing tasks (independent of specific features or technology used), meeting product deadlines, and beating the competition. As an explorer, you can take off your blinders and get a sense of the real priorities your customer faces. From a product marketing standpoint, your visit should be a learning exercise with most of the information moving in one direction: from the customer.

While many product marketers believe they know their customers inside out, there is much to be learned from visits to customer sites and more than a few surprises. Customers have a tendency to reveal more in an open, frank discussion on their own turf than they would over the telephone, on a survey, or in a focus group.

Some important discoveries are even unspoken. For example, during one of my customer visits, I noticed drawings marked up in red ink on a customer’s desk. I asked myself, why so many markups? Should we provide additional markup tools? Or why does the customerhave to do so much rework? Is it because we need additional design validation tools? Or do new designs always start as reworked old designs? Is there an opportunity for design reuse tools? These examples illustrate how unspoken discoveries can be made during customer visits that will enable you to improve your products and enhance their marketability. Such discoveries are not possible through telephone calls, customer surveys, technical support logs, or other research methods. You need to be on-site to observe what I call “unadvertised customer exhibits” and see the problems the customer may be facing. Sometimes, customers do not realize their pain points themselves, until you, as a product marketer, ask probing questions based on observations made during these visits.

Who to visit?

Once you have decided that a formal program of visiting customers would be beneficial to aid your product definition and marketing, you need to determine which customers to visit. In compiling a profile of the types of customers you want to visit, establish some general objectives. Are you more interested in learning about customer needs in emerging or established markets, among new or experienced users, among existing customers or prospects, among users or actual buyers, at the user or management level? The ideal customer profile will depend on the nature of your product and how customers purchase and deploy it.

You should also assess how your customers break down geographically. If your product is used globally, you should design your customer visit program based on the geographic distribution of your customer base, such as 40% of visits in North America, 28% in Europe, 19% in Asia, 8% in Australia, and 5% in South America.

Another consideration is developing a list of customers who are open to a visit. Sources for names include sales staff, support personnel, and customer surveys. It’s easier to generate names if your company values, acknowledges, and promotes your customer visit program. We visit more than 250 customers a year and promote the program at all customer interactions, including trade shows, conferences, and user group meetings. We tell our customers that we would like to visit them for two hours at their location so that we can better understand their products, processes, and needs. By participating, the customers help us shape the future of our products so that they can better meet customer needs. We make it explicitly clear that such visits are not sales calls or product demos. In fact, I make it a point not to carry my laptop with me so there is no way I could get drawn into a demo of existing functionality. You have to keep reminding yourself that this is not about your product: it is all about the customer.

After you have established a list of prospective customers to visit, you will need to qualify each customer by convincing them that they need to participate. In order to make the visit as productive as possible, you want to visit customers who are cooperative and enthusiastic about the visit. This doesn’t mean you should only visit happy customers who will say “nice” things about your product but customers who are willing to provide insights into their design processes and give you an honest scorecard on how your product stacks up. You also need to clear the visit with your field/sales professionals so you know as much about the customer in advance as possible. You need to know if there are landmines to avoid or skeletons locked away to be left unearthed before scheduling a visit. Set expectations regarding the purpose and duration of the visit, as well as determine the availability of the appropriate personnel. Then, schedule the visit.

Who should visit?

Ideally, a customer visit should be made by a cross-functional team of people, representing key product management and development functions. For example, in the software realm, the team should include the product manager, the development manager, and the lead quality assurance professional. Individuals with similar roles should be involved in customer visits for manufactured products. The reason why this diversity is necessary is to include different perspectives in identifying and resolving customer issues. Because each member of the team has a distinct role, each will view customer problems and possible solutions from their own unique point of view. The combination of these viewpoints results in more pragmatic, suitable responses, in terms of product definition and marketing, to address newly discovered customer needs.

By a similar line of reasoning, the same team of professionals should participate in multiple visits to gain a wider perspective encompassing as many customers as possible. One cannot generalize the findings of a single visit across the entire customer base. Word of caution: software developers tend to go through the motions of doing a single customer visit so that they can claim they know what all customers want. It’s rarely that simple. Customer needs and desires vary as widely as the businesses they are involved in, and assessing what customers really need and want requires multiple visits to many different customer sites.

Another reason to establish a cross-functional customer visit team is to facilitate greater interaction and collaboration across functions through the natural bonding and familiarity that occurs through business travel. When individuals share airplanes, cabs, rental cars, hotels, and restaurants during a customer visit, they get to know one another on a personal level, which can result in closer professional relationships and greater cohesion in applying information gathered during customer visits to product definition and marketing activities. I joke that it is difficult for people who have suffered through traffic jams, missed flights, and rushed meals to argue over product features.

Preparing for the visit

Scheduling the visit is merely the first step in preparing for a successful customer visit. Be sure to research the company extensively to have a thorough understanding of the customer’s products and services.

Visit the company’s Web site, review all prior communications with the customer—such as bug reports and enhancement requests in the software industry—and go over whatever notes or communications came out of previous visits.

After you have completed your research, develop your interview questionnaire that includes a list of specific questions to ask customer representatives about the company’s operations and use of your product. Send the questionnaire to the customer for them to review and prepare ahead of time so you can maximize the time allotted for the visit. Reconfirm your visit a week before and a day prior to the scheduled date. And don’t forget to take along “goodies” for the customer, such as company hats, shirts, bags, and other promotional items. Don’t underestimate the value of these “goodies.”

Special preparation is required for international visits because of language barriers and cultural differences. When visiting a customer overseas, have your local office or representative arrange every aspect of the visit, from the dress code required to the expected forms of greeting. Including a local representative who not only speaks the language but also is steeped in the particular culture, ensures you respect cultural differences and avoid causing offense out of ignorance of local customs and norms.

The day of the visit

When the day of the customer visit eventually dawns and you have completed the necessary preparations for a successful, productive day, remind yourself to leave your personal opinions and biases behind so you can become an objective listener. As Ries and Trout said in their book Bottom-Up Marketing,“Too many marketing people go through the motions of visiting customers, looking for facts that will confirm their previously formed opinions of what should be done.” You are there as an explorer, a listener, and must try to refrain from making the visit about you instead of the customer. Take the advice of the Greek philosopher Epictetus, who said, “Nature has given to me one tongue, but two ears, that we may hear from others twice as much as we speak.”

Your visit should last no longer than two hours. Following greetings, a sample agenda would include an introduction, a plant/facility tour, a review of the customer’s products/services, a discussion of the customer’s operations, and lastly, a discussion of the customer’s “pet” requests for your product.

Use the introduction period to set expectations and be sure to ask about both the good and the bad news relative to your product. This is your chance to set your customer at ease to get them talking and keep them talking. You are there to collect information, not defend positions, and must convince the customer that you need them to be as honest and forthcoming as possible in order to help you to help them. Start with simple questions and remember to remain polite and genuinely interested. Do not put customers on the defensive, challenge them, or question their professionalism by asking them, for instance, about why they choose to use one method over another. Usually, if I am visiting a customer who has manufacturing facilities on-site, I request a plant tour. This enables me to familiarize myself with their products, their way of doing things, and the terminology they use, keeping an eye out for the “unadvertised customer exhibits.”

Visit dos and don’ts

Our experience in conducting numerous customer visits has led to a list of dos and don’ts for conducting effective customer visits.

Do:

• Employ the principle of the five whys to get to the root of the problem. Customers tend to propose solutions rather than describe problems, so ask them why they need a solution in at least five different ways to truly understand an issue.
• Observe the human dynamics within the room, taking note of the customers’ expressions and emotions to determine who is being most candid about a problem or issue.
• Facilitate discussions by asking follow-up questions.
• Take notes, more notes, and even more notes. In other words, take as many notes as possible. It helps to designate certain roles within the team, such as a moderator, an observer, and a note taker.
• Write down customer quotes verbatim. Actual customer quotes are valuable for reporting back to management and promoting the potential resolution of an issue.

Don’t:

• Begin the discussion by asking for their “pet” product requests. If you do, it will dominate the discussion throughout the visit.
• Ask convoluted, overly complex questions. If “X=Y” and “Y=A” and “Z=D,” will it satisfy your need? Keep it simple.
• Ask leading questions, such as: “Don’t you think this solution is better than the other?” Be as objective as possible.
• Ask biased questions, such as: “We are thinking about this great idea. What do you think about it?” Even if they didn’t think the idea was great, they might agree with you rather than offend you. Don’t color your questions.
• Get defensive if a customer snubs the project you slaved away on.
• Take control of the computer mouse to show a customer how to use the software. Instead make a note and wait until the end of the meeting to educate the customer about any existing functionality that will satisfy his or her need.
• Tell the customer that his or her need is satisfied by an existing feature. Even if this is true, the customer may feel either insulted or stupid for not being aware of it. Continue listening to ensure that the feature will address the need and inform the customer of the fact during the closing stages of the visit.

What to do when things go wrong

Like anything else, Murphy’s Law applies to customer visits, where things can and do go very wrong. Here are a few examples: A customer can fixate on a particular “pet” product enhancement and monopolize the entire visit. The discussion can go off on a tangent completely unrelated to the customer’s needs relative to your product. The customer can criticize and insult your product, your company, and every person or partner related to it. The customer can contradict himself. The customer can speak primarily about another competing product.

When and if these things happen, do whatever you must to keep your cool. The worst thing you can do is to become angry with the customer. Never cut off the customer but don’t agree with him or her if he or she is wrong. Acknowledge what the customer is saying but don’t ratify it.

At the conclusion of the visit, prioritize the customer’s product enhancement requests as must have, should have, and nice to have. Remember to thank the customer for his or her time, hospitality, and candor, and send another thank-you note when you return to your office.

After the visit

As soon as you leave the customer site, conduct a debriefing session with your team to capture the salient points you learned during the visit. Note any problems that you may not have heard before. Compare the visit with other customer visits and determine whether there are any mid-course corrections to make.

When you return from the visit, write a report of your findings. It’s a good idea to write individual trip reports for each customer site. You can combine these individual reports into summary “group” or “segment” reports later. Your report should contain only “qualitative,” not “quantitative,” information. Include customer quotes and outline the possible next steps in terms of product definition and marketing as a result of your findings.

Your customer visit reports should be sent to anyone in your company who is a decision maker regarding the definition of your product and how it is marketed. Sales and support personnel should be kept informed as well. By conducting an ongoing, effective program of customer visits, you can keep your finger on the pulse of your market’s requirements, improve your product to satisfy customer needs, and continue to differentiate yourself from your competition.

If you are interested in learning more about customer visits, I would strongly recommend reading Edward McQuarrie’s book titled Customer Visits: Building a Better Market Focus. To me, this book is the definitive text on how to do customer visits right and has aided my efforts to establish a productive customer visit program.

Finding a budget

I presented this topic at a few conferences and was asked how I was able to get a budget for customer visits. Like anything else, I suggest you start small, make it work on a smaller scale, promote the benefits of the program and then ask for more money. Asking for money to get on a plane and visit customers in Asia or Australia is not going to be easy without a proven track record of successes. If you have local customers, visit them first—it is not only cheaper to do that but also allows you to beta test your interview questionnaire and your program before spending a lot of money. Invite some of the managers whose support you will need later to justify the program to visit with you. Once you are able to justify how some of these visits have had a positive impact on your product/service and hence to your bottom line, money will come. Good luck!!

Gopal Shenoy is Strategic Marketing Manager at SolidWorks Corporation (www.solidworks.com), a leading producer of 3D computer-aided mechanical design software that has more than 525,000 users worldwide. Shenoy manages a group responsible for understanding the future requirements of the customer base and ensuring that the functionality delivered in the software meets customer needs. For more than ten years, Shenoy has visited customers ranging from Fortune 100 companies to mom-and-pop shops worldwide. In the past, he has also served as the Director of Educational Programs for the Boston Product Management Association and has spoken at the Software Marketing Perspectives conference. Contact Gopal at gshenoy@solidworks.com

Copyright © 2006 SolidWorks Corporation