In order to inspire people to use your product, you have to understand them, have compassion and understand their point of view, who they are, what are their emotional needs - real emotional understanding rather than general assumptions. Remember that the faster you speak to real customers the better it is.
8 Listening Skills to Uncover Needs
Sure, customer interviews are not scalable, require time, and can be logistically challenging… but they offer too much to be ignored. Without listening to and understanding your customer's needs, it will be challenging for you to build any innovation or to create anything that goes beyond improving what you already have.
To help you with that, we have already interviewed three Millenial costumers who have bought insurance in the past year in Singapore. Your task is to listen to at least one of these interviews and try to understand what is driving them to buy an insurance product.
Try to be open and curious while listening to these interviews - inside each word, there are powerful insights that can open a new perspective around how you design, sell and communicate your products!
8 Listening Skills to uncover customer needs
The first step in the innovation process is to listen to your customers. You need to understand their point of view, who they are, what are their emotional needs - have a real emotional understanding rather than general assumptions. Remember that the faster you speak to real customers in the innovation process the better your product/service design will be. Be open and curious while listening to customers as there are powerful insights that can open a new perspective around how you design, sell and communicate your products!
Sure, customer interviews are not scalable, require time, and can be logistically challenging… but they offer too much to be ignored. Without listening to and understanding your customer's needs, it will be challenging for you to create any innovation or to create anything that goes beyond improving what you already have.
Pay attention to...
The story behind the Decision
What was happening? Spot the emotional decisions they have made during the decision process.
The needs behind the purchase
Capture the obvious needs - why did they buy it? What was it for? What does this product or service do for them? What pain were they trying to remove?
Why this product is important
What are the needs that they want to address? How is the product or service helping them to meet their need?
Where they go for advice
Look for the types of solutions they explored, and the support they needed when making the decision.
What triggered the purchase
Try to find what was the trigger or the event that pushed the purchase. Understand if there are any life-changing moments that supported it.
Emotional up's and down's
Understand the emotional journey: what they struggled with, what were moments of joy or perhaps there were concerns related to the product or service.
Social needs and people's perceptions
What do they talk about when it comes to how their friends, family or colleagues perceive them after having this product? How does the product impact their social life?
Why this brand
Understand if there are any emotions related to the brand that drives the purchase? Try to understand which types of brands they need in their lives and why.
LISTEN TO THE INTERVIEWS
You have two tasks for this session. These are the last tasks for the week, so make sure to plan enough time to be able to complete both by the end of this week.
1) Individual Exercise - 🏅20 points🏅
LISTEN TO ONE INTERVIEW (10 mins)
- Schedule some time to listen to one of the interviews above.
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Use the 8 Listening Skills to uncover insights.
- If needed, listen a few times, each time using a different listening skill
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Take notes while listening.
SUBMIT TO DORIS
Doris will ask you:
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Whom did you choose to interview?
- What needs from the users did you uncover from this interview?
- If you have to focus on only one need or problem worth solving for this customer, which one that would be?
After you are finished with task 1. You may proceed with this next task.
1) Team Exercise - 🏅🏅🏅50 points 🏅🏅🏅
GO SPEAK TO PEOPLE (30 mins)
- As a team, agree on a specific topic to focus your interview on - It can be a product purchase, service or experience. Go speak to your leaders: We recommend you to make that choice based on your current projects, so you can have a more impactful outcome.
Here are some ideas:
Explore how real customers consumers buy/use/reject your product
Explore how real users buy/use/reject an experience
Explore how/why internal stakeholders buy/use/reject an initiative
Explore how agents sell AIA products
Explore how employees do/don't do the AIA Digital Ei8ght Program
- With your team, find at least one person that you want to interview. Preferably 3 or 4, so that you all get the chance to conduct an interview.
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Divide roles within the team:
- 1 interviewer (focuses on the goal and questions)
- 2-3 observers & note-takers (focus on eliciting insights and needs) -
Run the interview(s) with your team - online (video call preferred!) or face-to-face. - Use the "PAY ATTENTION TO..." 8 skills above as guidance.
TIP: During the interview, you can use the “Five Whys” technique to help you discover what needs people don’t even know they have. Keep asking "why?" until you get at the root cause of the problem and not a symptom.
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Reflect with your team after the interview: Note down the stories you uncovered, the fears, delights, struggles, and needs. Have an agreement on the top needs that you uncovered during the interview, and if there's any particular one that you feel it's worth for AIA to solve.
NOTE: Remember to take a picture of your team in action during the interview. Later on, Doris will ask you to submit the picture together with your insights.
SUBMIT TO DORIS
Doris will ask you to answer the questions:
-
Whom did you choose to interview and why?
- What needs from the users did you uncover from this interview?
- If you have to focus on only one need or problem worth solving for this customer, which one that would be?
- In what ways do you think listening more often to users can help your work to be better?
Every individual of the team has to reflect with Doris in order to collect points. In the end, Doris will give you a link and further details for each team to share their insights on Workplace.
