How to write a real customer problem statement
Quite often customer problem statements are not customer problems, and often it’s not due to a lack of actual research (although often it is). Lean canvases are full of customer problem statements that are just afterthoughts that have been reverse engineered from a solution the business stakeholder has already decided to fund, or a designer is convinced is awesome. Even if you’ve been handed a solution you should follow this process, in fact, especially if you’ve been given a solution without a clearly articulated customer problem.
Why is a real customer problem statement important?
As Einstein is quoted as saying (probably erroneously)
If I had only one hour to save the world, I would spend fifty-five minutes defining the problem, and only five minutes finding the solution.
Attribution accuracy notwithstanding, the point is well made. If we don’t understand the nuanced experience we are attempting to transform with our new product or service, it is far less likely that we will be successful in transforming it. And if that’s not enough, at least you’ll want to avoid solving the wrong problem altogether.
It should go without saying that you need to do customer research to discover and validate the problems. This article is not about how to find problems; it is a tool for understanding how to articulate them to ensure they don’t mislead your team and short-circuit the best solutions.
A simple rule of thumb
If you mention your product, service or solution in the customer problem statement, then it’s probably not a customer problem.
Put simply, your solution is not part of the problem (if it is you’ve got a bigger problem). The customer problem is independent and preexisting.
A badly written customer problem statement
Customers want to be able to pay bills using their smartphone camera
This is a poor customer problem statement for a project to build a feature which enables customers to pay bills using their smartphone cameras. It is not a customer problem, and neither is it a meaningful definition of an opportunity to do something better. The problem needs to be framed as a problem with the status quo, a limitation with the way customers currently pay bills.
A well written customer problem statement
Customers find paying bills tedious and the process of entering the details for each bill cumbersome and time consuming.
You can improve this by adding in the specific customers who have the problem (which you learned from research).
Customers who use their mobile phones for banking find paying bills tedious and the process of entering the details for each bill cumbersome, error prone and time consuming.
Why is this one better?
- It does not presuppose a solution
- It targets a specific customer group with whom you can build empathy
- It reflects the actual user experience
- It directs the project to solve the underlying problems
- It provides measurable obstacles (problems) to overcome and thus a way to measure the success of your proposed solutions and learn how to improve them
Understanding the problem is the key to solving it. Don’t rush.
What’s next? How about kicking off your project with planning workshop using Uncertainty Mapping. Learn how in, ‘How to Ride a Pool Pony Down the Zambezi’.
