Four Levels Of Customer Understanding - Smashing Magazine

People’s stated thoughts, feelings, and actions often differ, so surface-level feedback rarely reveals underlying reasons for behavior. Companies frequently rely on assumptions and hunches with little evidence, even when some obvious explanations are correct. Understanding customers requires triangulating across multiple levels of customer understanding to account for messy, noisy reality. Directly asking users “burning questions” can produce inaccurate answers because people may not know their true motivations, may interpret questions through their own context, and may exaggerate edge cases. Word choice also matters, since “possible” statements do not necessarily indicate what is “probable” in real behavior.

"What people say, feel, think, and do are often very different things. To understand the underlying reasons for user behavior, it helps to look beyond the surface and explore hidden motivations, root causes, and the different layers of reality that shape how people act."

"Many companies think they know fairly well what their users want and need, and how they make their decisions. Yet most of the time these are merely big assumptions and big hunches - with little real evidence to support them. In practice, obvious reasons might be true, but they rarely paint the full picture."

"To learn about customers, it might seem reasonable to ask people what they think and draw conclusions from it. But it's rarely an effective way to get actionable answers. In fact, as it turns out, what people think, feel, say, and do are often very different things."

"We don't always understand or are aware of our true motivations. We often apply our own context and interpretations to questions. We also exaggerate ( a lot!). We focus on edge cases and unrealistic scenarios, and we favor short-term goals over long-term goals."

Read at Smashing Magazine