When Customer Data Leads You Nowhere

It’s inevitable. Eventually, you will put time, energy, and money into gathering customer data that fails to provide clear, actionable insights. So what do you do? Ideally, you will either be doing continuous discovery or realize this while in the midst of a wave of customer interviews. This makes course correction easy.

But even if you don’t realize it until the end, you can still make changes for the next round to help you gain better results.

Whether it’s tweaking your research methods, rethinking your target audience, or uncovering hidden insights, there are practical steps you can take to move forward effectively.

First of all, don’t panic. Every product manager has been there. You conduct customer interviews, surveys, or usability tests, but the results are vague, contradictory, or outright unhelpful.

Many Product teams (or impatient/inexperienced Product leaders) either give up too soon or double down on flawed approaches, hoping for clarity that never comes. They might ignore the signals that their research methods or customer segments need adjustment, leading to wasted cycles and missed opportunities.

When customer data feels like a dead end, the real skill is knowing how to ask better questions and where to pivot next.

Discovery is more an art than a science. It can be challenging to understand the root of where the breakdown took place. In order to figure out how to fix it, you must first diagnose where it went wrong.

Takeaway 1: Reevaluate Your Research Methods

Your data might be unhelpful because of how you’re gathering it. Are your questions too broad? Is the format discouraging honest responses?

Examine your approach. Break down the research process to identify weak spots and refine your methods.

There are three likely problems to look for. Your questions may be too broad. You may be using the wrong format to ask the questions. Your questions may be close-ended, poorly worded or unclear.

Do your questions focus on specific Problems? Narrow the scope of your questions to avoid generic answers. Instead of asking, “What do you think of this feature?”, try “How well did this feature help you in completing that task?”

Depending on what you are trying to learn, the best format to use can vary. If you want to understand a customer’s buying habits, you may start by thinking a face-to-face empathy interview is ideal. But if they fail to get clear results, maybe try creating a lightweight prototype, and assigning them tasks will help you get the insights you’re after.

You should review and iterate your questions. Test your questions with a small group to ensure they’re clear and elicit actionable feedback. This is especially important if the interviews or surveys are unmoderated. The people answering will only answer based on what they think you’re asking. If they misinterpret the question, you will get an irrelevant answer.

Takeaway 2: Reassess Your Audience

Sometimes, the problem isn’t the method. It’s the people you’re talking to. Your current audience might not fully represent your target customers or may lack the pain points you’re exploring.

If you’re looking for people who use your product enthusiastically and you find yourself talking mostly to casual users, you’re not getting the real customer perspective you want.

In fact, you will probably get feedback and see trends that conflict with your target customers’ needs. It’s good information to have. But, not the most valuable insights out there.

There are usually two main offenders here. The first is that you either have recruited customers from the wrong segments, or you were looking for a segment that is either too narrow, or may not even exist at all.

Start by revisiting your personas. Do the customers you’re talking to reflect the personas you are building for? If they don’t, you will need to refine your search criteria.

You may need to either add or remove some of your filters. It’s also a good exercise to revisit the problem you are trying to solve. Maybe it’s not as prevalent or common as you thought. Or maybe your customers don’t even see it as a problem at all.

You may also want to reevaluate your target segment. Sometimes we set out to look for a group so specific, that we start looking for a needle in a haystack. Or the pain points you’re looking to solve for are experienced more by a different segment than you anticipated.

Look at adjacent customer groups who might have overlapping or more relevant pain points and may be a better target.

Takeaway 3: Look for Hidden Insights

It’s easy to dismiss unclear data as useless, but often, there are hidden insights waiting to be uncovered. Sometimes, you can find even better problems for your product to solve.

I’ll never forget a product called the PowerPot on an episode of Shark Tank.It was a kettle designed to charge a cellphone, powered by the boiling water in the pot. It was targeted at camping enthusiasts.

Not successful. But they found that it was selling most often in countries like Uganda. Not places Americans typically go for camping trips.

Turns out it was being used more to power light fixtures in countries where indoor fires are common, but electricity is not.

Same product. Same company. Completely different customer base for a completely different problem. They got a deal on the show and have since sold the company.

Do you think they care whether people use their kettle for phones or lamps while they drive their lamborghinis around South Beach?

I don’t either.

Dive deeper into the data and analyze it from new angles. What patterns or anomalies can you spot? You might find something better than you set out to.

Cluster your responses, same as you would any other data. Group similar answers to see if broader trends emerge. Sometimes this is more a revelation that the trends you thought you were chasing aren’t as prevalent as you thought.

Identify edge cases Sometimes, outliers reveal opportunities that mainstream users overlook. This can be a slippery slope however. Don’t jump to solve edge cases too quickly. But definitely consider that this data may be better than you thought, just an edge case anomaly.

Document What You’ve Learned. Even something that seems like a dead ends provides valuable insights for future research.

Final Takeaways

Hitting a dead end with customer data can feel discouraging, but it’s not the end of the road. By reevaluating your methods, audience, and goals, you can turn those dead ends into stepping stones.

Use the strategies above to find the insights you need to keep moving forward.

Thanks for reading and see you next week.

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