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Gavin Heaton, author of the Servant of Chaos weblog, tackles an important topic: customer focus groups and innovation. Many businesspeople assume that customer focus groups are a proven method for gaining insights into the new products and services that customers want. Wrong!
The truth is that most customer focus groups will tell you what's on their minds now. As the author of this blog puts it:
"Focus groups reiterate old stories. The participants talk about your brand and your products or services and will tell your story according to their experience. In general, the story you will hear in focus groups is already yesterday's story (or last weeks' or last years'). But innovation is about future stories. Innovation doesn't start with 'once upon a time,' it starts with 'imagine if ....' Innovation is hard work, but it must be done by YOU. You can't expect your customers to innovate for you."
The best you can hope for in customer focus groups is to uncover some of their "pain points" - the things that bug them about current products and services (yours as well as your competitors' offerings), and then you may be able to make some inferences based on what they've told you. Or you can do some "what if" exercises with them, like this: "If our product had this new feature, would that make your life easier/make you more productive? Why?"
This post closes with a quote from a famous entrepreneur that really spotlights the limitations of customer focus groups:
"If I had asked my customers what they wanted they would have said a faster horse."
-- Henry Ford |
