4/3/2019 Making things people want - Inside Intercom

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Making things people want

DES TRAYNOR
Co-founder & Chief Strategy O cer, Intercom
@destraynor

Main illustration: Sarah Brown

The problems people encounter in their lives rarely change

from generation to generation. The products they hire to
solve these problems change all the time.

If you’re building a new product, it’s because you believe you can create a better
solution that people will want to use because it delivers a better outcome. A
strong understanding of the outcome customers want, and how they currently
get it, is essential for you to succeed in product development.

Focusing on outcome … lets you understand your

real competitors
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Maybe your customers want to be entertained, or spend more time with their
friends, or understand what projects teammates are working on, or maybe they
want to project growth for their business. If the desired outcome is real then
they are already achieving it through some product in some way. Your job is to
improve upon that.

Sidenote: If you can’t find what product they’re currently using, the chances
are that it’s a fictitious outcome (“Wouldn’t it be cool if…”) or an aspirational
one (“Of course I want to lose weight”). Espoused behavior never reflects
reality.

Focusing on outcome, rather than category, industry or product type, lets you
understand your real competitors. The second a company focuses on “the
industry it’s in” rather than the “outcome it delivers”, it loses touch, and shortly
after, loses customers.

Newspapers, for example, believed they were in the “Newspaper Industry”, and
as such struggled to work out why bored commuters had stopped buying their
product. They would look left and right at their competitors and wonder which
newspaper had stolen their customers. They would experiment with new
formats, new layouts, lower prices, sharper headlines, but they couldn’t stop
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the rot. Had they instead focused on the outcome they deliver (bored
commuters want to be entertained for short bursts of time with bite-sized
articles), then their competitors (Twitter, Facebook, news apps) wouldn’t have
been so oblique to them.

What people want

Let’s look at some jobs that, like boredom during a commute, have stuck
around for years, through hundreds of technological advances.

People wanted to pass notes and messages, without fear of other people seeing
them…

People still want this

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People wanted to store photos in a safe place…

People still want this

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People wanted to put their favourite photos in a prominent place, so everyone

could see them…

People still want this.

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People wanted to collect scrapbooks of ideas…

People still want this.

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People wanted to post their friends and loved ones newspaper clippings…

People still want this.

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People wanted to leave nice reviews, and tips for other travellers…

People still want this.

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Making things people want

There are literally hundreds of examples like the ones above and there’s a
common trend in all of them. Making things people want involves
understanding a longstanding human or business need and then using
technology to:

1. Remove steps

2. Make it possible for more people

3. Make it possible in more situations

The first approach, removing steps, is the most common for start-ups. Pick a
need where the existing solutions are old, complex and bloated, and find the
simplest smallest set of steps possible to deliver the same outcome. Arranging a
taxi in a city used to involve calling many numbers until you find a company
with availability, then a lengthy dialogue about your location, destination and
required arrival time. Today you press one button and a car shows up.

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Je f Bezos is famous for saying ‘Focus on the things

that don’t change’

The second approach usually involves reducing the cost (in time or money), or
barriers to using a product so that more people can use it, thus expanding the
market. Not so long ago ago, if someone wanted to get their writing online they
had to rent a linux server, download a .tar.gz file containing the source code of a
blogging engine, upload it, run a series of weird commands to unpack it and
give it write access, and then configure it. Today you can do the same job in two
clicks with Medium.

The third approach involves removing common situational limitations on a

workflow. Accepting payment used to involve bulky machines with rolls of
thermal paper, faxing paperwork to banks, ISDN lines, and batch transaction
transfers run nightly. Today you swipe a card through a phone and you’re done.

Jeff Bezos is famous for saying “Focus on the things that don’t change.” The
problems that people and businesses encounter don’t change often. The ways
they can be solved changes almost yearly. So it stands to reason that making
things people want should start with the “what people want” bit, and not the
more tempting “things we can make”.

Remember: It’s easier to make things people want than it is to make people
want things.

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17 Comments Inside Intercom 

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Pavel Mishin • 20 days ago

Things come to their end. Big things end slowly. People still buy cellphones, use paper
notebooks and travel abroad on packaged tours. Smartphones killed newspapers as they did
with TVs (a way for entertainment at home), digital cameras (with later release of models
with high-quality lenses), wrist watches, paper calendars, timers, books, dictionaries, etc.
Software is a hydra that keeps eating the world where smartphone is its head along with a
computer, laptop and tablet.

I read this article saying that because newspapers didn't focus on outcome they were clueless
why sales were dropping while trying to fix it by changing colors, lowering price, etc. But
why do you think twitter, facebook, etc were oblique to them? There is no reason expect that
they were blindly trying to change their product. I think they did their best to re-engage
customers. And we don't know if that didn't help at all, right? Probably it helped just a bit,
but their couldn't simply give up. Every business is a ship surfing open ocean and it can start
to sink at any point or, as it happened with newspapers, hit an iceberg.

But you can't change your ship to a newly created means of transport with a few exceptions
such as IBM, Microsoft, Yahoo. You aren't saying a newspaper business could pivot to
inventing facebook, are you?

see more

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Brian Deyo • 9 months ago

Every example referenced above is a B2C experience where the connection between what is
wanted and the product is a single step. How do you think about this in terms of a B2B
product? I know you've discussed this extensively in relation to jobs to be done, but how do
you orient around the appropriate granularity. Intercom helps orgs communicate with their
customers. Orgs have always communicated with their customers. But is that the outcome
they want? Don't they want customers to be able to find things and use their product easily.
Don't they want to make money at lower cost (i.e. no communication). How do you stop
moving up in granularity to the point that you reach meaningless expressions - "Every buyer
wants to make more money and do so with less cost"?

I don't disagree with anything said here, but have always struggled to find the right
expression of the job or need at the right level. And more importantly, I think when internal
leaders talk at different levels of granularity, real, devastating values differences can occur.
SHARE: Engineering and product types typically focus on more foundational human problems.
Marketing and sales focus on more tangible needs of buyers If each are oriented around a
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Marketing and sales focus on more tangible needs of buyers. If each are oriented around a
different job granularity, chaos ensues.

Thanks for continuing to attack the main problem that causes many products to never have a
h t I'd l t h b th li i t ll h th
see more

1△ ▽ • Reply • Share ›

Stephane Allard > Brian Deyo • 9 months ago

I think Seth Godin's Hierarchy of B2B needs is highly relevant.
You're always selling to individuals with their own agenda.
https://seths.blog/2012/05/...
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Chris Raymond > Brian Deyo • 9 months ago

Brian, I share your interest, and would love to hear more about this, as I now work at
a B2B enterprise software company.
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Ken Spry • 2 years ago

Finding evidence of some of these things can be difficult, if not impossible. For instance, I
have no idea how the inn review book might help a person who was not already checking in
at the inn. This looks less like a review book for others and more like a record of
happy/thankful guests for the inn owners' pleasure. How do we find evidence of something
no one currently does because it's just too difficult?
We take for granted our living the Internet age where text mining tools are at our fingertips.
How would we find real evidence of someone from the 1980s who's heard a song they don't
know (but would like to know) on a restaurant's radio station? Status quo at the time meant
few people would actually ask anyone except for a friend (because restaurant staff wouldn't
have had access to the song name on a satellite station, Google wouldn't have existed, and
neither would Shazam). How do we know how many people are suffering in silence?
How many more people create scrapbooks with modern tools than with old methods?
Scrapbooking the old way is a much simpler task (with more existing evidence) than, say, a
busy doctor 15 years ago trying to find whether a patient has ever, in the past 30 years of text
notes, had a recorded family history of breast cancer. So finding a busy doctor who tried to
find this information for each patient would have been a needle-in-a-haystack endeavor. Its
lack of frequency among doctors also doesn't tell us how prevalent the need is. In this case, it
tells us how difficult the task is.
see more

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Pece Faisal • 3 years ago

Very good article. Almost everyday I thinking about the people's problem and thinking how
solve or simplifying the process.
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Nils Davis • 5 years ago

SHARE:
Very good article! Although things become a little more complicated when you get into
business applications. Even so, there are still fundamentals: I want to sell more, I want to
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create better things, I want to win against my competitors. Those are the top-level goals. And
there are personal-level goals - I want to be prepared when my boss asks me whether what
I'm doing is effective; I don't want to be one that made a stupid mistake [i.e., that the
computer should have caught]; I want to get home in time for dinner, or my kids soccer
game. I.e., people have always had to CYA for the boss, or double-check their work, or come
up with faster processes - all things that enterprise s/w (and other products) can do faster,
do more completely, or do for more people.
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Olaf de Hemmer • 5 years ago

Better than "what people want" is "what people need" : but they often do not know ... they
need of course not a solution/process but its outcome, to achieve something with it !
Getting back to the goal leads to very disruptive innovations !

Eg, the interesting part in a plastic bottle of water is ... the water, counting for 0 to 5% of the
bottle cost ! The water is needed to rehydrate where they want, not close to the water source
... So the real need is 'drink from a source, where I am' = water + transport. The plastic is
there only to be able to transport and drink. Why 15g of platic ? To manipulate the water :
you would need only a 'plastic poach' (3g), like the ones used for humanitarian purposes,
and pour the water in a carafe ... Of course, this would target only a portion of the water
market in developed countries, but would certainly create a new market !
This analysis comes from the 'value' methods used for years in product and process design.
They can be learned. If interested, contact me ?
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Darren Heaphy • 5 years ago

Great article, reminds of Clayton Christensen 'jobs to be done' talk, there's a succinct
summary on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/wat...
△ ▽ • Reply • Share ›

John Puddifoot • 5 years ago

Thanks for a very interesting post and one that's very relevant to our our challenges.

I just needed to leave a nice review. :)

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Roger L. Cauvin • 5 years ago

Great post. One of the key insights is that the real customer need/want is high level and thus
isn't likely to change. The closer we get to identifying needs close to the "core", the more
enduring they are. Then it's a matter of employing technology to address them in some
combination of the three ways you mentioned.
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destraynor • 5 years ago

@Nik - Funny - I had this image prepared: http://d.pr/i/4UeC but took it out. I referenced
that whole piece in my previous article: http://insideintercom.io/ho...

@Dave - that Ullwick article is very good.

SHARE:
@Lar - There's an art to it that goes beyond the length of a a blog comment in my opinion.
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Matthew Rayfield • 5 years ago

Thanks Des for this great article. Love the examples!

P.S.

I was a little confused by the labels on your comment form. They are closer to the inputs
above them, rather than the below ones which they refer.

No biggie, but gave me pause.

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Dave • 5 years ago

Interested readers can check out Tony Ulwick's "What Customers Want" for more
information on jobs-to-be-done theory and outcome-driven innovation.

http://www.amazon.com/What-...
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Nik • 5 years ago

This article really reminds me about what Ev Williams said at XOXO'13 about creating a
billion dollar company. http://www.wired.com/busine...
△ ▽ • Reply • Share ›

Lar • 5 years ago

Hi Des, great post as always and without exception.

Would be very interested in how you get to "what people want"? There's the famous mis-
quote of "a faster horse".

iPhone is a good example. It didn't come with FM radio, that's definitely something people
"wanted" but ended up doing without. However, maybe FM radio is not something wanted,
just easy access to music, which is what iTunes delivered.

Question is where you draw the line (and how).

Lar
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Erich Stauffer • 5 years ago

I've heard things like "sell the hole, not the drill," but I like the concepts presented here
where you're 'thinking about the outcome', not the process.

It's easy to see in hindsight how new things have solved old problems, but it's harder to see
those things in the present or near-future.

A lot of times, new things come around (like SnapChat) and people don't have a slot in their
brain for what they are yet ("temporary social media").

SHARE:
Intercom blogs are some of the best out there. I'm continually impressed. Thanks for giving
us your unique point of view on business.
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