As innovators, we aim to build successful products and bring them into the market to solve the problem customers experience as it eases how people live their lives. Deploying such a product and seeing how it’s become a go-to in the market space could bring a sense of fulfilment and drive to become more innovative.
By being innovative, you are offering more in terms of ideas, methods or products as to what’s already been established out there. In simpler terms, you are providing solutions to problems you know will help the progress of potential customers.
With all these innovative works being put into place, customers rarely stick to just one product of similar contributions. Even though human wants are insatiable, why do customers really switch from one product to another in a highly competitive environment? Is it because they want a better experience, to minimize cost or just trying out something new?
Whatever you think the answer is, you might be right or wrong, but we can definitely agree on one thing: “It offers more value than the already established product”.
What consists of this value?
Switching Costs
As product owners keep innovating to retain or attract customers, customers are also being exposed to other similar products in the market. How easy it is for a potential customer to leave their current product and switch to yours will play a key role.
Note that, the ease of migration will be dependent on certain factors like the cost of switching, time and how much better in general the product is.
For example, A product owner uses a tech company to build products that provides mainly just on-demand product teams which without a doubt gets the work done. Later on, they discover another company, let’s say Grupa, which does not only offer on-demand product teams but provides a system that manages every one of the engineering processes and effective collaboration with the cost being less and considerable.
What Grupa has achieved here is
• Low switching costs
• 2–4x more value
Focus on customers’ needs
It is important to note that customers use products that are beneficial to them in either solving a problem or basically making their lives easier. For product success and ease of migration, your product needs to communicate to customers that you care for them.
However, customer needs change as time goes on and this is because needs vary by customer. According to the Job-to-be-done framework, Functional, Social and Emotional are the three (3) categories of customer needs.
A quick dive into what they entail:
Functional Needs — A product focused on helping customers achieve a desired task. They are very specific in what customers need. For example, Grupa uses Brex for financial functionalities; a product focused on payment ease while using debit or credit cards.
Social Needs — A customer need influenced by others when using a particular product. A very good example is the “iPhone” which amongst other smartphone devices stands out. This easily creates a bond with customers and influences the purchasing decisions of many when buying a product.
Emotional Needs — A product that influences how a customer wants to feel. As difficult as it may be to understand when identified, it helps tailor a customer’s needs in the right direction.
Customer’s experience of the product
In recent times, customers tend to want more than just functionality. They want to get more from using a product. The ease of use, consistency and emotional comfort it brings. All this boils down to how innovative a company can be to always update or push out products for this purpose.
Research has shown that design-driven innovation has helped products gain a competitive edge as it redefines what is most important and relevant to customers. That being said, human-centred design and a smooth user experience offered by a product also help customers switch between products.
Conclusion
Take a moment and think about products that have changed the world, and a deep look at what people buy. Things in their consciousness, needs and wants, things they didn’t realize they needed and the intrinsic/extrinsic motivations behind how they buy.
The underlying truth is that “people passionately buy progress not solutions” and companies that are progressive build products that customers absolutely love and are delighted to pay for. The progressive thinking forces us to consistently and continuously iterate upon creating abstractions required to deliver more simplified interfaces and help customers do things better, faster and cheaper.
In a nutshell, job-to-be-done consciously is about building solutions; and progress to be made is about inventing the future for customers.
To build iconic companies and products that dramatically change the world: Think and build progressively.
