The 5 Customer Questions

The 5 Customer Questions are more than just a set of questions – they are a way of thinking.
Rob Kennedy, CEO

The questions guide us through the Working Backwards process, and serve as the framework for jump-starting a high-qualiity PR/FAQ.

1) (Listen) Who is the customer and what insights do we have about them?

What you need to know

The purpose of the question is to identify who you are solving for. (Remember – your customer can be an internal customer.)
Great ideas often have multiple beneficiaries. For example, an IdP benefits businesses, users, and developers. Focus on a primary customer segment to get as crisp as possible — a good PR/FAQ has a clear customer in mind. You can always address secondary beneficiaries in your Customer FAQs.
Be specific. When your audience is too broad (e.g., “all Talegen customers”), it’s hard to gain a deep understanding of the customer and their pain points to develop a relevant, high-impact solution.
The question prompts you to summarize what you know about the customer. It’s not enough to just name a customer group; tell us what you’ve learned about them in the Listen stage.

Example answer

Our customers are the more than 17.22MM people in the US living in urban areas, or low-income communities located more than one mile from a grocery store.

Insights: These communities skew more heavily toward low-income and minority customers than communities where nearby access to a grocery store. In the US, 35.8MM or 27.9% of US households have an annual income <$35k and spend approximately $400B in retail; of this population, less than TK% are online shoppers vs greater than TK% of shoppers making >$35k.

Customer Behaviors: Many in this demographic spend earlier in the month when benefits are received.

What makes this a great answer?

The customer is specific. This answer tells us who the customer is, where they live, and includes defining characteristics about them.
We get a sense of the “job to be done.” A “job to be done” is what a customer is trying to accomplish in a given scenario. 17.2MM customers are a lot of people, and there is likely a lot of diversity within that group, but they share the common characteristic or pain point of not being near a library.

2) (Define) What is the prevailing customer problem/opportunity? What data informed this?

What you need to know

The purpose of this question is to define the problem or opportunity that you will focus on for the rest of t\the Working Backwards process.
The Define stage is all about synthesizing data and insights into a singular problem, so this question prompts you to think about how you know that you are focusing on something relevant to the customer.
Since it’s very likely that you’ll surface multiple problems, the work “prevailing” is intended to push you to identify the problem/opportunity that rises to the top.

Example answer

Today, urban residents of cities without a car have to either a) choose high-priced, low-quality fast food or convenience store food or b) travel an average of 10 miles each way at a cost of $5-7 to get to a supermarket. Customers need a way to conveniently access quality, affordable grocery selection. Data: Food desert study, interviews with food desert residents, research on our current offerings for underserved customers.

What makes this a great answer?

It follows the recommended template: “Today, [customers] have to [problem/opportunity] when [situation]. Customers need a way to [insert need].”
This answer isn’t trying to do too much; there is one problem and a clear focus.
The answer is specific. We know the pain point that the solution needs to address.
The answer doesn’t name the solution. This answer leaves room for multiple possibilities to solve the problem/opportunity.
There is data. Data on the customer problem or opportunity comes in many forms, including behavioral metrics, qualitative data, and subjective metrics. Data strengthens the credibility of your answer.

3) (Invent) What is the solution? Why is it the right solution to address the customer need versus other alternatives?

What you need to know

The purpose of this question is to name your solution at a high level.
In the Invent stage, you’ve generated multiple ideas for solutions to the customer problem/opportunity. This question asks you to explain how you decided which solution to move forward with and why. Evaluating alternatives is a safeguard to prevent the common pitfall of “falling in love” with one idea, or reverse-engineering ideas.

Example answer

Community partnerships is a local food access program with the goal of giving residents living in urban food deserts more options to find affordable, quality, diverse, and convenient groceries. Access to home delivery of groceries with no extra fees, competititve prices, broad selection, acceptance of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), and discounts on grocery items for SNAP recipients. To build awareness, they use a word-of-mouth approach by hiring members of the community to build local partnerships.

Alternative considered and rejected: The team had an idea to fund nutritional education to support long-term health outcomes. After receiving feedback that we should remain agnostic as to customers’ dietary choices, the team pivoted. Instead, they would focus on a partner marketing and engagement strategy to encourage discovery and adoption of their grocery offerings.

What makes this a great answer?

It’s brief. You should be able to name your solution in 1-2 sentences. If not, that’s a sign that your solution isn’t clear. Think: How would you write your idea in the form of a Tweet?
The team was willing to pivot away from an alternative solution to the problem based on the feedback they received.

4) (Refine) How would we describe the end-to-end customer experience? What is the most important customer benefit?

What you need to know

The purpose of this question is to get crystal-clear on how your solution works and what the customer experience looks like. This question asks you to imagine, in detail, how your customer will interact with your solution from beginning to end.
Imagining the end-to-end experience will help you identify the most valuable part of the experience that is most essential to solving the customer need. That’s your most important customer benefit!
To kick-start your thinking on the end-to-end customer experience, try writing 1-2 paragraph customer vignette or sketch a storyboard.

Read the Press Release below to see how the writer refined the end-to-end customer experience. In the Press Release’s first paragraph, you can see the primary benefit for customers: convenient home delivery of affordable groceries with broad selection.

This paragraph of the PR lays out what the customer experience would look like:

To build awareness with this customer segment, which was not purchasing groceries from Amazon at the time, the retailer focused on a community-centric word-of-mouth approach rather than a national campaign. It created a unique program, offering full time jobs to members of the community who were tasked with building a coalition of partnerships with non-profits, government benefits offices, schools, religious leaders, council members, subsidized housing managers, and more. These partners spread the word about Amazon’s services, acting as force multipliers with credibility and trust in the community. “When Jamie from Amazon approached us, we had a long conversation about GeorgiaWave’s mission to facilitate access to and awareness of healthy food choices for all Georgians in need. We now operate in 68 neighborhoods, and we’re excited to let our SNAP recipients know about Amazon’s grocery offering. We put messages in all our community touchpoints and walk SNAP recipients through how to order on Amazon in addition to encouraging them to try our farmers’ markets,” said Will Sellers, Executive Director of GeorgiaWave. “It has turned into a very positive multi-year relationship.”

What makes this a great answer?

It paints a picture. The reader gets a sense of how the solution will play out for the customer in realistic scenario.
The most important customer benefit is clear. This clarity makes it easier to know what to prioritize in the first version of a product, service, or experience and determine your Minimum Viable Product (MVP).

5) (Test & Iterate) How will we define and measure success?

What you need to know

The purpose of this question is to find out if the solution solves the customer problem or not. In other words, does your idea work?
To know if your solution works or not, you’ll need to define the impact that your solution will have on the customer and the customer problem. What does success for your solution look like? What customer behavior or attitudes would be indicators of success? How will you measure and look for those indicators in a test or experiment?
A follow-up question is: What is the possible unintended impact of the solution? The purpose of this follow-up question is to prompt you to consider unintended and long-term impacts of your solution, in alignment with our Long Term Thinking principle.

Example answer

We estimate that Project X will enable us to acquire 3.9MM urban food desert residents as customers, driving an incremental $1B in SNAP spend (growing our share of the SNAP program from 0.8% to 5% compared to competitor W’s 26%), $2.3B consumables spend, and $4.7B total spend over three years. This will drive greater adoption of all of our services: SNAP EBT customers who make a first purchase with EBT spend $1,534 more annually than those who have not made an EBT purchase.

We will also measure success by an increase in the number of partnerships and increase in positive sentiment among local communities and residents. Additionally, more quantitatively, we will measure new-to-business behaviors resulting from Project X, including new to Consumables, as well as new EBT cards added and overall new customers acquired. We will also measure new to Z service, including discounted Z.

What makes this a great answer?

It describes the change they want to see. This answer names success metrics, including quantitative metrics and qualitative changes in customer behavior.

What’s Next?

The 5 Customer Questions are a great jumping-off point to start writing your PR/FAQ and further refine your vision for your idea. If you are not yet ready to write a full PR/FAQ, try starting with a mini-PR/FAQ to get your ideas on paper.