

Ask HN: What is ur biggest frustration with implementing customer development?  - bjoernlasseh


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mindcrime
Mine is simple: time & scheduling, due to working a day-job. Yes, I can meet
people before work, after work, or over lunch, and - thankfully - my day job
is pretty accommodating... but nonetheless, it's an impediment to setting up
face-to-face meetings with potential customers.

~~~
bjoernlasseh
How do you track the results of the meetings?

~~~
mindcrime
Good question. All of the meetings I've had so far have been "sorta customer
development, but not exactly" meetings... That is, I've been meeting with
people who I think are smart, or insightful or connected, or all of the above,
and getting some very preliminary feedback. But they - so far - haven't been
what I would consider "real customer discovery" meetings, with a specific list
of questions to hit on, and a formal mechanism for recording the output.

That said, I'm just now in the process of writing down all of the briefs that
@sgblank talks about, and expect to be getting into the "formal" customer
discovery stuff in the next few weeks. Once that happens, I do have to do a
pretty good job of tracking results, so I've been trying to figure out what a
good way would be. I don't have an intern / secretary / assistant / etc. to
take notes, and I can't write/type fast enough to take a whole lot of notes
during a meeting, without interrupting the flow of the meeting. So far, the
best ideas I've had seem to be

A. tape record the meeting, then transcribe the important stuff later. There
are some downsides to this: some people might not allow you to record them,
the recorder batteries might die, etc. All told though, I do expect I'll try
to do this as much as possible.

B. print paper forms (or make a quick Grails app) to record the answers to the
pre-known important questions, that I go into the meeting knowing I need to
ask. Immediately after the meeting, enter the data for that meeting, before it
fades from memory.

Combined with taking brief notes (on paper, or on my phone, or a laptop,
whatever) during the meeting, I think some combination of this will work.

~~~
bjoernlasseh
If there would be a software tool to help you in your customer development
process - what would be the most important features for you?

~~~
mindcrime
Wait, is this a Customer Development interview? :-)

Seriously though, I haven't given that a lot of thought yet. But I _do_ think
there is a need for such a software tool, but I have neither bothered to look
particularly hard for one, nor thought much about building one (other than, as
I mentioned above, the idea of a quick and dirty Grails app with a _very_
minimal feature set).

Out of curiosity... are you developing such a tool? Or thinking about it? If
so, I'll spend some more time thinking about this stuff and try to give you my
thoughts. Feel free to email me if you'd like to have that discussion offline
(in case this thread disappears into the bowels of HN or whatever.)

