11 Steps to Identify Customer Needs | Step by Step Approach

Identifying customer needs is one of the most important aspects of any business. If you want to be successful, you must be able to identify customer needs and address them accordingly.

However, many steps need to be followed, and a lot of planning is involved which is why this topic is typically addressed after deciding on business goals and objectives. Here's a step by step approach to help you identify the customer needs:

Step - 1: Developing Product Awareness

Developing product awareness is vital because if your customers are unaware of what you're offering, it'll be very challenging to convince them that they need your product or service.

Distributing information through the right channels is important for promoting awareness about new products. Some of these channels are discussed below:

Public Relations – When you launch a new product, try to spread the word via PR campaigns. You can hire PR agencies that specialize in promoting new products.

Word of Mouth – Your existing customers can be an excellent source of recommending your product to prospective customers. Ensure that they're rewarded for their efforts and encouraged to spread the word about your new product or service.

Co-Promoting with Existing Customers – You can partner with other companies and share the promotional costs. For example, a book store could advertise a new book alongside your product in their store(s).

Sponsorships – Sponsor events to make your presence felt in the industry. This is an excellent way to enhance visibility, especially if you are trying to gain awareness for a new service or product.

Press Releases & Media Mentions – You can promote your product or service through press releases and media interviews. Many publications, such as local newsletters and blogs are often open to receiving stories from industry experts and professionals for free.

Public Relations Outreach – This is a direct outreach to PR professionals, journalists, and other influencers in the field you want to target. This is another way to get the word out about your product or service.

Advertising – You can use advertisements for many purposes, including promoting new products, discounts, and sales. Leverage advertising platforms, such as Google Ads to reach customers across different platforms.

Press Releases & Media Mentions - This is about helping others with their stories by offering helpful advice or information. You want to build relationships with these journalists and bloggers.

Customer Testimonials – These are real-life case studies of how your solution has helped them succeed in their respective field(s). They can be an effective way to illustrate the benefits of using your product/service. Make sure you get their permission before sharing testimonials online.

Solutions to Common Problems – You can reach out to your existing customers who have already gone through your product/service offering and provide them with answer(s) to the most common problems they face when using it. By providing solutions, you are creating value for them, which is a great way of building their loyalty towards you.

Customer Questionnaires – You can send out questionnaires to your existing customers. Asking them questions like, how did they hear about you, what problem were they facing that brought them towards you (if it was the reason for purchase), what do they like most/least about your offering, which feature would they like to see in future, how likely are they to recommend your product/service to others, etc.

Customer Surveys – You can distribute customer surveys (online or offline) and ask them questions like the ones you asked in the questionnaire. But make sure that you clearly state what would be their reward for participating in this survey, else people may not respond.

Phone Calls – If the customer is nearby, you can pick up your phone and call them. Try to avoid communicating in writing here too.

Face-to-face Meetings – Further if they are not very far away from your place, you may consider meeting them face-to-face. This way you will get an opportunity to interact with them and understand their requirements better.

Customer Feedback – In the last resort you can request your customers to provide feedback through emails or phone calls. But make sure not to do it very often as people may get annoyed with this kind of communication from you.

As a thumb rule, if a method does not involve much effort on your part, it is not the best way to get customer requirements.

Step - 2: Gather the Requirements

Here you will learn how to collect customer requirements and task them in a way that provides information that is most relevant for your project.

When we talk about customers, we must remember that people want different things from goods and services. Not everyone has the same expectations from your product or service. An 8-year-old kid may not be interested in the same games as a 20-year-old adult.

A customer's requirements will change with time and age which is why you must identify and gather requirements at each stage of your product or service life cycle.

Step - 3: List all Customer Requirements

List down all the possible needs of your product or service. Do not omit anything. If you are developing software, then list everything that will be required from it. The more detailed requirement lists are, the easier it becomes for developers to create software products without any errors and deliverables on time

Step - 4: Prioritize Requirements

List all the requirements in order of priority. It is best to get this done with your team members. If you are working alone, then prioritize it yourself by checking for overlapping features and listing them accordingly so that there are no conflicts later on.

Step - 5: Identify Core Customer Requirement

As discussed above, we cannot prioritize requirement lists without knowing why certain requirements are more important than others. As a result, every requirement gets equal priority. But this is not recommended. For example, if you ask for password protection in your software then it would be wise to check if there's already an option available within the tool that you are using.

For example, if you want your software to have password protection then it doesn't make sense to look for a tool that does not allow the user to set a password. So here, we need to prioritize feature lists according to customer requirements. If a certain requirement is core i.e. very important then it must be made available in the software. And if it's not so important then it can be implemented as an additional feature.

Step - 6: Again Find Out How Your Product Can be Customized

Now that you have identified the set of features that are mandatory for your software, it's time to look for additional features. Here, you should make a note of the requirements from your customers and see which ones of these can be incorporated as additional features.

The difference between a core feature and an additional feature is that core features are mandatory for your product while additional features are optional.

Step - 7: Review of the Shortlisted Requirements with the Customer

This step requires you to bring together all the relevant stakeholders of your software project, including members of the sales team, marketing team, development team, and customers. The idea is to review the initial requirements and evaluate them together with the customer to see if there are any additional features. The objective is to reduce the demands and expectations of your customers, so you need to be very practical about what your product can and cannot do.

Step - 8: Prioritization of Shortlisted Feature/s

Now that you have a bunch of requirements, you have to go ahead and categorize them so that you can establish a priority list. A good way to do it is by going through the requirements again and asking yourself if these are compulsory for your target demographic. In other words, could you release your product without implementing this particular requirement?

If yes, then simply remove those requirements from the list. This is especially true for those requirements that only cater to your personal preferences, as you want to make sure that your product targets a wider audience instead of just yourself.

Step - 9: Implement Requirements

So now that you have a manageable list of requirements, it's time for you to start implementing them into the design. However, for this step, you don't want to just implement everything at once. Instead, start by installing the requirements that matter the most first - i.e., those requirements that are pertinent to your target demographic while keeping in mind the goals of your product.

Once you've successfully implemented these important requirements into your design, move on to implementing the other requirements that are less important. Doing this will help ensure that your final product is fully functional with minimal differences in terms of design or functionality.

Step - 10: Create a Prototype

Once you've installed all the requirements into your design, it's time for you to create a prototype so that you can test out your design and ensure that it's user-friendly. Create a prototype by using the cheapest available materials to give you an idea of what the final product should look and feel like.

The next step is to go out and test your prototype on real users to see how they would interact with it and if any changes need to be made to your design.

Step - 11: Ask Users for Feedback

Once you're done creating a prototype and it's ready to be tested, ask customers whom you're targeting for feedback on how they feel your product is working and if any changes need to be made. Based on their responses, make adjustments to the features and functionality of your product if necessary. This becomes especially important if you're looking for feedback from a specific audience that your product is being targeted towards.

You can find customers by going out into the real world and approaching strangers who fit your target demographic, attending exhibitions and trade shows where potential customers are likely to visit, or using social media platforms such as Reddit to speak directly to your target audience.

Conclusion

There are a lot of ways to identify customer needs, but the best way is through asking questions. The more you know about your customers’ pain points and what they need, the easier it will be for you to develop products that fit their needs. This blog has highlighted some of these different approaches in detail so now all you have left to do is try them out! Which one was most helpful? Let us know by contacting our team with any feedback or questions. We can't wait to hear from you!