How To Do Customer Avatar Research Introduction Conducting customer research is a crucial step in product development. Y our team’s goal should be to understand the behavior, needs, and motivations of your customers. This helps you build better products that solve real problems for real people. But it’s not enough to just survey customers or ask them a few questions—you need to dig deep into their habits and mindsets if you really want to know what makes them tick. This article will show you everything you need to know about conducting customer avatar research, including how to identify potential interviewees, what questions you should ask them, and how your team can use this information strategically in product development. Create a list of questions to ask the team. When you're ready to begin, gather the team around a whiteboard and make sure everyone has a pen. Then, ask these questions: What are your customers' pain points? How can we help our customers achieve their goals? What motivates our customers to buy from us or use our product or service? Who is this customer? Where do they live and work on a day-to-day basis? Customer avatar research is a critical step in product development. Customer avatar research is a critical step in product development. It helps you understand your customers and helps you understand the competition, but it also allows you to better understand your product and team. Customer avatar research is used by some of the largest companies in the world, including Google and Microsoft. Customer Avatar Research Helps You Understand Your Customers It’s important to have an understanding of who your customer actually is before you build a product or service for them. When companies think about their customers in broad strokes like “millennials” or “men over 50 years old” they miss out on so much valuable information about who these people really are as individuals—and how they behave when using products or services like yours. Customer avatar research helps paint a picture of these individuals so that companies can create products specifically tailored for them without missing any key details about their needs or preferences. Identify who you need to interview. When it comes to interviewing, there's no substitute for talking directly to your customers. But who should you talk to? Identify the right person: Who is it that brings value to this problem/solution? In most cases, this will be a consumer who uses your product or service; however, if they don't have much spending power and/or aren't willing or able to pay full price then consider talking with their manager instead (or another person that represents their wants). How many people do I need?: You'll want at least 10 interviews per persona type (i.e., 5 moms; 2 millennials; 1 upper-class dad), but if possible try shooting for 50% more than that so that you can get more data points and compare them later on when creating an avatar based on those findings. Identify what you want to learn from each customer. You'll want to start by identifying what you want to learn from each customer. What is your purpose for conducting these interviews? What are the main questions you want answered, problems you hope to solve and challenges you'd like to address? With this in mind, write out a list of all the things that come up during your research and how they relate back to these goals. Share and discuss findings with your team. Once you’ve completed your customer avatar research and gathered the insights, it’s time to share them with the team. There are a variety of ways you can do this, from a meeting to a presentation video or even in an email. The point is that you have gathered all this information and now it’s time to make sure everyone knows about it! Conclusion Now that you know how to create the perfect customer avatar research plan, we encourage you to start harnessing this technique. Whether you’re creating a new product or seeking ways to improve an existing one, do yourself a favor and take the time to complete this research. The customer insight you uncover will be invaluable as you develop your product strategy, and it will help improve your existing marketing efforts as well. After all, understanding customer motivations is key to connecting with them on a deeper level – which ultimately leads to better sales results.