"We don't know who discovered water, but we know it wasn't the fish" - Marshall McLuhan

I received some great email and comments on the recent "What Will The Customer Buy?" blog entry.  A disturbing theme arose, however, in those comments.  Customer ethnography is too hard...It is too expensive...It requires specialized experts or consultants...Customers and employees are too close to our products to think of new things.  Wrong...Wrong...Wrong...and....Wrong!

Here is a three step process to learning something brand new about your organization, your products and your services through the eyes and ears of your customer:

Step 1 - Be the customer

• Are your employees customers of your own organization?  Are you sure?  Why are they?  Loyalty?  The best products/services available?  Self-serving interests?  Why don't they?  What does that say to others who know that employee...others who are potential customers?
• Call your customer service line and be a customer.  What kind of experience do you get?  Do this at different times of day.  Do you get different experiences?  Is that a problem?  Do the same with your order taking/sales entry points.
• Walk in the front door of your business like a customer.  Experience your physical surroundings like a customer.  Anything annoy you?  Anything not feel or look right?  Anything that sets your organization apart from the competition?
• Be a customer at every single entry point into your organization.  Online, phone, brick & mortar, etc.  Are there any other places you could be interacting with customers?  Are the existing entry points easy, helpful and efficient?

Step 2 - Adopt a customer

• We all have them...the "favorite" customer.  You would do anything for this customer because this customer would do anything for you.  Well...take him up on that offer!  Ask him if it would be okay if you had a team of people follow him home for a day or two.  Just to watch how he uses your products, where he has a need for your services, how he may use your products/services in ways you never dreamed of, how he has developed "work arounds" to the short-comings of your products
• Do some real research by placing survey takers outside of your biggest competitors and asking their customers why they do business with them instead of you.  Ask them if they are even aware of what you have to offer.  Ask them if you can observe how they use, have a need for, use in unexpected ways or have developed work arounds to your competitors products/services.
• Do you have some innovative new products in the pipeline?  Good!  Since the economic meltdown, most of your competitors don't...so you are ahead of the game.  Get prototypes of these products into the hands of your adopted customers!  Get feedback now!

Step 3 - Learn and Create

• Now that you have "customer ethnographic data points" (sounds fancy doesn't it?) you can begin to transform the data into ideas.  Ideas, via your idea management system, start to get refined into actual business concepts.  Business concepts, via your innovation management system, start to become opportunities for research and development prototypes.  Research and development prototypes, via your new product development system, become products and services.  Products and services, via your production, marketing and sales systems, become the lifeblood of your organization and provide the profit necessary to invest in finding new ways to gather "customer ethnographic data points" to start the process all over again!

There...was that really so hard?  Much of what I have described here isn't even going to cost you a dime!  You just need to take that first step and aggressively go out and find problems that your customers will pay you to solve!