Whoever is crazy enough to launch a new product already knows the statistics about product failure. According to Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen, over 30,000 new products are introduced annually and 95% fail.
However, even 5% doesn’t always hit the mark, with many not doing exactly what customers need and others failing to meet their KPI targets. We call it the product death cycle, a recurring cycle that emerges when, despite listening carefully to customers and diligently building the features they ask for, products yet struggling to gain traction.
It’s an all-too-familiar scenario known to many product specialists, and the irony is that most product specialists do exactly what they’ve been taught: listen to their customers.
On the bright side, the vicious cycle of product death need not repeat itself. There are ways companies can better understand their customers’ pain points to develop the right products that solve the right problems at the right time. It’s about understanding the basics.
Make sure you solve it correctly problem
There are ways companies can better understand their customers’ pain points to develop the right products that solve the right problems at the right time.
When it comes to product design and development, solving the right problem may seem obvious. We’ve all heard of a solution to a problem — look at the Segway transportation device. However, the reality is that successful products and services succeed because they solve a specific problem that is proven well. The challenge is really and truly understanding customer pain points.
I discovered this in the early days of my startup: We were engaged by a division of a large multinational company. As a young, motivated startup, they were a dream client and we fell head over heels to create a great product for them. But after we developed the solution, they wanted something else because they felt their priorities had changed.
I think that’s something that a lot of startups can relate to — you get in touch with a big company and they tell you their problems. You build a product or solution to solve this problem, but it doesn’t work as you plan.
