Is confirmation bias in your customer interviews affecting your revenue?

For new product development, customer interviews are the cornerstone of getting customer insights to build products that address a market need and generate revenue. To get unbiased customer input we have to really listen and avoid confirmation bias during our customer interviews.

What is confirmation bias?

Confirmation bias is our tendency to listen to and recall information that confirms our preexisting beliefs or hypotheses. When we listen with a confirmation bias, we are not open to considering alternative possibilities. Let me use a personal example to illustrate how confirmation bias works.

The 4am paradigm

I have heard that successful people wake up at 4am to get a head-start on the day. I am not a morning person, which means I will likely never wake up an 4am. Does that mean I will not be successful? I was intrigued and googled “why is 4am so popular” and got articles that linked early morning with success, productivity, health and spirituality. I felt like I was losing out on this premium life experience by not waking up at 4am. To ease my suffering I googled “staying up late” and got articles that talked about why intelligent people stay up late, staying up late leads to weight gain, ways to stay up late, etc. It was a mixed bag of good and bad, but hey, Intelligent people stay up late!  I heard that and ignored everything else, because my preexisting belief is that I can never wake up at 4am. This is how confirmation bias works.

Customer interviews and confirmation bias

Customer interviews are essential for innovation. We need to understand the customer’s problems if we want to build products that customers want to buy. We speak with our customers during different points during our innovation journey. Depending on the stage of development that we are in, the information that we seek will vary. Irrespective of the stage of development, we must strive to avoid confirmation bias in our customer interview process.

To gain unbiased customer input, we have to ask the right questions and follow the right process. Here are five rules that I use in my customer interviews that helps me understand what my customers really want.

Avoid asking leading questions

If we ask questions like “Will you use this?” “Will you buy this?” “Isn’t this wonderful?”, the customer might respond in the positive because they don’t want to directly disagree with you. This will not provide valuable input. In fact this data can be often misleading because the customer may not really be interested in the product, but did not get a chance to express it. You will also get yes/no answers with questions like these, which does not give you insight into why the customer likes it or does not like it. Instead…

Ask open-ended questions

How do you currently do this task? Are you happy with the performance of the current method? What features would help you do this better? What do you like/dislike about this product? How will you use this product?

Open ended questions like these give the customer a chance to elaborate and share their thoughts. You will also learn about how their lifestyles impact how they use the product. Listen to their stories, because they will share their problems when they share their stories.

Eg: We were trying to identify unmet needs in the day-to-day lives of the elderly. I was interviewing a gentleman who expressed how it is difficult for him to fix things around the house because he can’t sit or crawl into tight spaces easily anymore. While sharing this information, he mentioned how independent he is multiple times during the interview. It was important to him to be able to fix things around the house, because he tied it with his self worth. It wasn’t just about fixing things, it was about feeling good about himself!

This insight was more useful than the information that he cannot crawl into tight spaces. By asking open-ended questions, I was able to get him to open up about how his emotional needs are tied up with accomplishing day-to-day tasks.

Focus on the job that the customer wants to do

Understand the job that is the customer is trying to accomplish with the product. The customer does not care about the product, they care about completing their job. If your solution does not help the customer do the job, they will not buy your product. It is equally important to understand how the customer is currently solving the problem. Are they using other products but are unhappy with the performance? Are they jury-rigging solutions?

Eg: We interviewed a customer about her daily care routine to understand what new cosmetics products are desired in the market. She had an extensive skin and hair care routine, but she was also a professional and a mother of two toddlers. Time was of essence to her. But her health and beauty was also important to her. She expressed that she would buy any product that would allow her to maintain her care regimen, while saving her time. The job that she wanted to accomplish was to stay beautiful while juggling work and family.

Interview multiple customers

Interview at least 5-8 customers in each market segment. You want to make sure that the you are hearing consistent customer input. When you hear the same message from multiple customers, you can be confident that you have obtained the right input.

Conduct a survey to get wider input

You want to confirm that the input you have gathered is applicable to a large base of customers. You can now use the information that you have from your interviews to design a survey to get input from a large group of people.

This process should give you confidence that not only have you clearly identified customer’s unmet needs, but the needs are consistent across a wide segment of the market.

Customer input is imperative at every stage of product development, from Ideation to Launch. Gaining ongoing customer feedback might seem time consuming in the short run. In the long run, however, it can save you and your company months (maybe years) and hundreds of thousands of dollars. More than 40% of businesses fail because they developed the wrong product for the right market or the right product for the wrong market. A little investment and time in customer interviews for discovery and validation can ensure long-term success.