Four Levels Of Customer Understanding

🤔 What people do, say, think and feel are often different.
🚫 Assumptions and hunches rely on most obvious reasons.
✅ But most obvious reasons rarely paint the full picture.
✅ People don’t always cancel because they actually want to.
✅ Pricing is never the only reason why people don’t buy.

🤔 Customers often don’t realize why they made a decision.
✅ We built understanding by studying 4 levels of reality.
✅ Level 1: “What we tell others”, unreliable, opinions, hearsay.
✅ Level 2: “What we tell ourselves”, interviews, debrief, surveys.
✅ Level 3: “What we actually do”, task analysis, observation.
✅ Level 4: “Why we do it”, task walkthroughs, context, interviews.

Level 1 is most unreliable, and barely brings good insights. Often people imagine and say things that don’t necessarily represent real reasons for their behavior. They rather explain behavior through the lens of how a customer perceives it, or wants it to be perceived.

The real magic happens on higher levels. But they require right questions, interviews and observations and, most importantly, user’s trust. So ask people to walk you through their daily routine. Explain to you where your product fits in their life. Observe how they complete their tasks in their environment.

Study where they lose time, repeat actions, hover but don’t click, or click and then go back. Don’t ask them to speak loudly. Pay attention to when they scratch their neck, or raise their eyebrows. Smile, or laugh, or look worried.

Many companies speak about “validation”. Yet validation often means accepting and confirming existing assumptions. As Hannah Shamji writes, instead, we should diagnose existing behavior without any preconceived notions or affiliations. So don’t validate — research instead.

The hardest part is understanding customer’s real motivations — and the only way to get there is by building a sincere, honest and trustworthy relationship that feels right and that customers can wholeheartedly engage in. Once your customers really care and want to help, getting to real understanding will be much easier.

Useful resources:

60 Ways To Understand User Needs, by David Travis
https://lnkd.in/eUXJqX6B

How To Avoid Bias In UX Research, via Sundar Subramanian
https://lnkd.in/ewJt2kF2

People Don’t Always Cancel Because They Want To, by Emily Anderson
https://lnkd.in/eMXZWiyT
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How to Maximize Insights In User Testing, by Kara Pernice
https://www.nngroup.com/articles/user-testing-stepped-tasks/

How To Capture Users’ Emotions In UX
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/vitalyfriedman_ux-research-activity-7189158144479014912-18Cn

UX Research Sample Size Calculators
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/vitalyfriedman_ux-design-research-activity-7164173642887606274-rEqq

How To Design Effective And Reliable Surveys
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/vitalyfriedman_how-to-design-effective-and-reliable-surveys-activity-7148589421741711360-3bxe

Wonderful attached illustration by Sarah Gibbons from the piece on Sympathy vs. Empathy in UX (https://www.nngroup.com/articles/sympathy-vs-empathy-ux/). 👏🏼👏🏽👏🏾

I sincerely hope that you'll find them useful, everyone — happy researching!

Understanding customer decisions requires deeper exploration.

We love Hannah Shamji’s chart and post, which explores the real reasons deals are lost. The causes are usually deeper and more complex than they seem, and customers might not even realize them. Changing prices won't fix the core problems–uncovering the root causes behind customer churn or failed deals is essential. Check out her post: https://lnkd.in/gWRjCZM4

We built on her levels of reality:

1. What we tell others.
2. What we tell ourselves.
3. What actually happened.
4. Why we make choices.

Relying only on what customers say (Level 1) is ineffective. The real insights lie in understanding Levels 2 and 3, which require asking the right questions. We’ve added Level 4 to highlight the goal of understanding why it is happening.

She highlights that companies often struggle to diagnose these issues, and bringing in an unbiased third-party researcher can help uncover the unfiltered truth. Though it may be uncomfortable, each loss provides valuable lessons for improving future strategies.

Helio is an excellent tool for uncovering the reasons behind behaviors by gathering feedback in go-to-market scenarios. It offers activity questions that help you understand the actions your target audience is taking.

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