Faster Horses: Better Customer Research for Innovation
Asking customers what they want rarely leads anywhere new. Good customer research for innovation shows people different ideas, watches how they react and then asks why.
The faster horses problem
Customers describe improvements to what they already know. The point is captured in a line often credited to Henry Ford. Asked what they wanted, people would have said faster horses.
Surface requests hide deeper needs. A customer might ask you to "make this faster". The real need could be "help me make this decision with confidence".
Deeper needs open more doors. They aren't tied to a single solution. That leaves room for ideas the customer could never have asked for.
Customers are experts in their own lives. They know their frustrations and workarounds well. Your job is to see those clearly and design for the need underneath.
Show, don't ask
We never just ask customers what they want. We show them different rough ideas instead. Their reactions show what they value.
Then we ask why. The why is where the opportunity is.
This works for three reasons:
- Reactions are honest. People respond to something in front of them more truthfully than to a hypothetical.
- Contrast reveals priorities. Seeing several ideas side by side shows what matters most.
- The why explains the choice. It tells you what to build on and what to drop.
People decide with emotion first and explain with logic after. Direct questions tend to collect the explanation. Watching reactions gets you closer to the decision itself.
Where customer research for innovation adds value
Familiar methods each have a place. None of them is built to find what's new. Here is how customer research for innovation adds to them:
- Surveys size what you already know. We find what's worth sizing.
- Focus groups hear many views at once, but they slide into groupthink. People jump on one obvious idea, and you lose genuine diversity of thought. We hear each customer on their own, so every view counts.
- Consultancy and desk research read markets. We find the human reason behind the choice.
- Internal ideas sessions build energy. We bring the customer in to settle the debate.
Use them together. Once you've found something worth pursuing, a survey can size it.
What showing reveals that asking misses
A survey can point you at the wrong opportunity. A leading European media company was developing a home proposition. A survey said customers wanted home security.
Letting customers talk about their homes told a different story. Water damage and the health of the home came through. The proposition that followed launched.
The same approach works for harder questions. For a leading European news broadcaster, we worked on a new news proposition. The aim was to find what customers valued enough to pay for.
Both answers came from real people. Neither came from a market report. Each came from hearing customers explain what mattered in their own lives.
Their words are the evidence
Record exactly what customers say. Verbatim quotes keep the evidence honest. Paraphrase tends to drift towards what the team hoped to hear.
Keep the outliers. The unusual comment is often where a new idea begins. Averaging it away loses the signal.
Listen to the language. The words customers use reveal segments. They also give your marketing team language that already resonates.
Run it in small, fast rounds:
- Six to eight customers from one audience per round.
- One week per round.
- Rough ideas first. A card or storyboard draws out honest reactions. Polished concepts tend to get polite ones.
- Your team in the room. People back what they've heard themselves.
Find what customers value
Faster horses are what you get when you ask. Showing customers different ideas tells you what they value and why. Start with one audience, a few rough ideas and a week of conversations.
If you want customer research that finds new opportunities, we'd be glad to talk. Get in touch to explore a customer evidence sprint.
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