How Fear Can Get in the Way of Solving the Customer Problem

Building great products and solving the right customer problem go hand in hand. The theory is pretty straightforward in my opinion. First, figure out the most pressing needs of your target customers. Then, build products that meet those needs. The result will be a suite of products that your target customers love and are willing to pay for.

In practice, this plays out much less cleanly. Solving customer problems involves navigating through uncharted territory, lacking any right answers, and having a finite amount of resources at your disposal. It involves pushing through an endless amount of conundrums. Customers can often put forth wants as needs, so how do you know when you’ve truly identified a need? Everyone on your team has an opinion on the most pressing problems to solve and the products you should be building, so how do you know what to listen to and what to ignore? Budgets are finite, so how much runway do you have before you need to get a product out of the door? The list goes on and on. Because of the level of vulnerability required to solve customer problems, it’s all too easy for decisions to be made out of fear. In my career, I’ve identified 4 different sources of fear that, when left unchecked, result in products that don’t meet the needs of their target customers.

Fear of Leadership

It's beneficial for knowledgeable leaders to set direction or provide guidance. As long as there's a healthy two-way culture where those on the receiving end can challenge it and be heard, everything is well. However, when those driving product development are fearful of challenging their superiors, they may not push back even when the success of their product depends on it. You know you're in this situation when you ask the question "What problem did we set out to solve again?" and the answer is "[this person] said we have to do it." There are of course times when initiatives need to be executed in short order, requiring strong top-down leadership and empathy from all those involved in executing the work. However, this should be the exception rather than the rule. If it becomes the rule, it results in products that meet the needs of leadership above all else, with the voice of the customer taking a back seat.

Fear of Customers

This fear manifests itself in several ways. The first is indiscriminately building what customers want because of the fear of losing them if the wants go unfulfilled. Doing this risks giving customers what they think they need rather than what they actually need. Over the long-term, this is likely to result in customers leaving for competitors who understand their true needs.

The second way this fear manifests itself is when a product needs to be perfect before putting it in front of a customer because of the fear of losing customers otherwise. However, without putting the product in front of a customer, there is no way to know whether the product will solve the customer’s needs. Even worse, this process of perfection may take so long that by the time the product ships, the goalposts have moved and the product is no longer relevant.

Fear of Missing Out

This fear stems from the emergence and popularization of new technologies, trends, and best practices. Certainly, it is useful to keep up with the times and continuously ask how your business can be improved by advances in human capabilities and understanding. But when this becomes the primary focus, tremendous amounts of resources may be dedicated to efforts that end up solving no pressing customer needs (think Amazon Fire Phone). Never lose sight of the need to solve a customer's most compelling needs. Always ask yourself, how can [technology/trend/best practice] help solve a customer need? Does it solve an existing need more efficiently? Would using it make my customers happier? Are the benefits enough to prioritize its implementation and use over other customer-focused initiatives?

Fear of Change

It’s all too easy to be a victim of one’s own successes. When there’s nothing to lose, one has no choice but to focus on customer needs. But when there’s a lot riding on the status quo, it can be tempting to put everything on cruise control. However, just because a product solved a pressing customer need a year ago doesn’t mean it still does today. Always ask yourself, what will keep my customers around in the long term?

People also fear doing something different and failing. It can result in doing things because "that's the way we've always done it." Celebrating failures stemming from calculated risks is key to helping people overcome this fear.

A challenge that’s unique to companies building products for their own internal use (perhaps in a bid to improve business efficiency) is that employees fear the introduction of new products that make them redundant. Others fear making their colleagues redundant. This makes it all too easy to prioritize incremental improvements to existing products, processes, and tools over what will truly move the needle for the business. Keeping this fear at bay requires managing the fears and feelings of those impacted.

In Summary

When fear abounds, the result is a product that is a reflection of those fears. If the fears ended up getting in the way of solving the customer’s most pressing problems, the customer is unlikely to love the product and pay for it. Does this happen in your organization? How do you manage it? Please let me know in the comments!