Articulating Customer Outcomes and Key Behaviors: A Pre-Product Roadmap
Defining Goals, Enabling Behaviors.
Introduction
Defining the specific outcomes that target customers want to achieve is one of the most critical first steps in startup product development. Doing so provides much-needed clarity and direction while avoiding many problems associated with vague, ambiguous outcomes that often arise later. Without a deep understanding of what customers want to accomplish, startups risk building products that miss the mark and fail to resonate with real needs.
This article provides an in-depth, step-by-step process for clearly articulating customer outcomes and aligning them to key associated behaviors before beginning product development. Following this process allows startups to build their product around real customer needs and desired results right from the start.
One cannot overstate the importance of adequately defining outcomes. Ambiguous outcomes lead to disjointed product development efforts down the road. Engineers build what they think customers want. Marketing messages ring hollow. Value is difficult to communicate. And the risk of complete failure looms large. This outcome definition process avoids these pitfalls.
Throughout this guide, I will use an example of a fitness startup focused on weight loss to illustrate the critical steps involved in articulating outcomes and key behaviors.
Table 1. Steps for Articulating Customer Outcomes and Key Behaviors
1. Draft the Initial Opportunity Statement
The first step is to create a draft opportunity statement that frames the target customer segment, the context of their situation, the outcomes they desire, and hypothesized key behaviors - all at a high level. An opportunity statement template helps to capture details on outcomes, metrics, key actions, obstacles, and enablers.
This initial draft provides a starting structure for beginning to articulate the vital customer outcomes and associated behaviors to be enabled by the product. It provides an overview of the core elements, which founders refine through customer discovery activities.
The opportunity statement is critical in capturing the founder's initial assumptions and framing the customer's needs and desired outcomes. It establishes a baseline for upcoming validation efforts, from early customer discovery through prototyping and testing. The opportunity statement articulates what the customer is trying to accomplish and the context in which they are operating. Questions to consider include:
What specific goal or outcome is the customer trying to achieve?
What need are they trying to fulfill, or what problem are they trying to solve?
What barriers and obstacles do they face in accomplishing this today?
Additionally, the opportunity statement should identify the most essential behavior the customer must consistently exhibit over time to accomplish their desired outcome. It highlights critical behaviors that drive the achievement of results.
Defining this critical behavior provides a focus for subsequent discovery and design efforts by establishing clear behavioral goalposts. Questions to uncover the necessary behavior include:
What does the customer need to do to achieve this outcome?
What actions or changes in behavior are required on their part?
What barriers might prevent them from successfully exhibiting this behavior?
For example, for a fitness app focused on weight loss, an initial draft opportunity statement might be:
"The opportunity involves helping busy professionals achieve effective weight loss by facilitating regular workout routines and healthy eating habits. The customer segment is busy professionals aged 30-45 with sedentary office jobs and limited exercise and meal prep time. Their goal is to lose 10 pounds in 2 months, measured by weight on a smart scale. However, due to limited time, they face key barriers like lack of motivation when working out alone and not having healthy prepared meals readily available. There are opportunities to leverage their health goals through digital fitness trackers and social accountability from participating in a weight loss program with peers."
This statement identifies the target customer segment as busy professionals, the context that they are seeking weight loss, the outcome of losing 10 pounds in 2 months, metrics to track weight, hypothesized key behaviors like regular workouts and healthy eating, barriers such as lack of motivation and time, and potential enablers including health goals and accountability.
With this starting framework, the startup can conduct customer discovery to validate further and refine each element.
Essential Terms
2. Specify the Customer Outcome
The next step is to define one clear, measurable outcome customers want to achieve using the product. What is the specific, tangible change customers want to see occur?
Define the outcome in a way that allows for an unambiguous measurement of success. Make it as concrete and quantifiable as possible. Avoid vague, generalized outcomes that are hard to measure, such as "get in shape" or "become healthier."
For the fitness app example focused on weight loss, one can define the target customer outcome as:
Customers lose an average of 10 pounds over two months.
This statement articulates a tangible, measurable outcome that can be easily tracked and quantified. Achieving this goal would represent success for the target customer segment.
Some probing questions can help further refine the specifics of the outcome:
What precise results do customers expect to see?
Where exactly does the desired change take place?
What will be observably different before and after?
When exactly does the change need to occur?
Get detailed to create a focused outcome and incorporate all necessary elements into a concise outcome statement.
3. Understand Key Behaviors
With the high-level outcome defined, the next step is to identify 1-3 key behaviors the target customers will likely need to exhibit consistently over time to accomplish that desired outcome.
The product or service must facilitate and encourage these behaviors that drive the outcome. For a fitness app focused on weight loss, two hypothesized key behaviors may include:
1) Completing at least three workout sessions per week of 30 minutes or more
2) Logging all meals and daily calorie intake in the app's food tracker
Of these two behaviors, consistently completing workouts is seen as more challenging but also most critical for driving weight loss. Ideally, potential key behaviors will become evident based on the defined customer outcome. If not, more discovery work is needed to understand how customers achieve the outcome with existing solutions.
Some ways to uncover what the most critical potential key behaviors are include:
Directly asking customers what specific actions they currently take related to achieving the outcome
Observing customers as they complete tasks and interact with products associated with the outcome
Conducting secondary market research on common behaviors tied to the outcome or similar/analogous outcomes
4. Define the Key Behavior
From the 1-3 potential key behaviors identified, the next step is to select the single behavior that will likely be the most difficult to influence or change consistently but is also the most critical for achieving the desired customer outcome.
Define key behaviors by articulating specifics around who must demonstrate this behavior, the precise action, when or how frequently the behavior should occur, and the time frame or duration.
For example, for the weight loss app, the defined vital behavior is:
"New app users completing a minimum of 2 workout sessions per week of at least 30 minutes duration within the first month of using the product, tracked using the automatic exercise tracker."
This statement makes the behavior specific regarding who does it, what action occurs, when, and how frequently. This level of precision is essential.
5. Refine and Finalize the Outcome
With the draft opportunity statement and the selected key behavior now clearly defined, the next step is to ask additional probing questions to refine the specifics of the customer outcome statement further.
Get very detailed on what change customers want, where the change should occur or be visible, what will be observably different before and after the product usage, and when the change will occur within what period.
For the weight loss example, customers specify that success means:
They will see their weight decrease by an average of 10 pounds over two months, measured weekly on a Bluetooth-connected smart scale, with their progress tracked on a weight graph in the app.
Having before and after front and side photos documenting visible positive changes in their body shape and appearance resulting from losing weight using the program.
Use the answers to these probing questions to finalize a comprehensive single outcome statement incorporating all the necessary precise details.
6. Uncover Barriers and Enablers
With the desired customer outcome clarified, the next step is to uncover the significant barriers that either prevent target customers from being able to perform the defined key behavior at all or make it very difficult for them to carry out consistently over time.
Some common barriers may be a lack of time, financial constraints, deeply ingrained behaviors or habits, or lack of awareness/knowledge.
Additionally, identify any key enablers - external factors or situational conditions that actively support and enable customers to exhibit the key behavior regularly and successfully.
For example, social support from friends or family and tools that increase accountability often enable the desired behavior.
Both surveys and in-depth customer interviews can uncover the most significant barriers and enablers. Journey mapping can also highlight pain points and potential supporting factors along the customer experience.
Gaining this understanding will later inform product designs that seek to reduce the effect of barriers while utilizing enablers proactively.
For a weight loss-focused app, common barriers uncovered through customer interviews are:
Busy work schedules leave limited time for exercise
High costs of purchasing healthy fresh food
Stressed induced poor eating habits and emotional overeating
Lack of enjoyment and intrinsic motivation when exercising alone
Key enablers identified that could facilitate weight loss are:
Having social support from friends/family participating together
Competitions and social accountability features to stay motivated
Personalized meal plans tailored to food preferences and schedule
7. Define Success Metrics
Once the customer outcome, key behavior, barriers, and enablers are clear, the next step is to determine what specific, quantifiable metrics accurately measure the achievement of the desired customer outcome as a direct result of the defined key behavior being performed consistently over an extended period.
These metrics must validate that the product effectively facilitated and encouraged the target behavior while overcoming key obstacles for the customer to reach their desired end outcome.
For the weight loss example, critical metrics for the app tied to desired weight loss outcomes and behaviors are:
Pounds lost per customer over two months based on weekly weight tracking
Percent achieving 10-pound goal
Number of workout sessions completed per week
Percentage of meals logged in food intake tracker
8. Prioritize the Outcome
For most startups, the focus will initially be on a single primary customer outcome. However, there may be some cases where multiple potential high-level outcomes are under consideration across different customer segments.
In these situations, it is essential to prioritize the outcomes by carefully identifying which outcome is the most important to focus on first and foremost.
Another approach can combine outcomes across segments into one aggregated outcome that satisfies all stakeholders. The key is avoiding ambiguity - settling on articulating one definitive, measurable outcome statement.
Qualitative customer research methods like in-depth interviews and focus groups can help determine the most essential outcome. Surveys can then quantify the level of importance.
9. Avoid Solution Focus
With this foundation of articulating the customer, outcome, behavior, barriers, and enablers, it can be tempting to start brainstorming potential product solutions and features.
However, at this pre-development stage, it is critical to resist that temptation and remain strategically focused on fully understanding the customer and their needs before exploring how the product will deliver the solution.
Founders should avoid jumping ahead to solution ideation. The clarity around the customer developed in these steps will guide and inform the creation of much better solutions when that phase arrives.
Conclusion
Drafting an initial opportunity statement starts with articulating desired customer outcomes and hypothesizing associated vital behaviors.
Further refining and finalizing the specifics of the outcome and critical behavior through customer discovery provides vital early customer insights before product development begins.
This upfront analysis and clarity regarding what target customers want to achieve and what behaviors are required establishes a solid foundation for developing products that genuinely resonate with real market needs.
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