Everyone has heard the saying, “you don’t know what you don’t know.” While this phrase can be applied too many areas of life, it can be especially applicable in business.
Working closely with customers who have a deep knowledge of your product, service or target market is great and can have its benefits when trying to innovate.
It can give you valuable insight into how customers interact with your product, what features are commonly used, how certain elements interact with each other and how specific product or service changes can affect the end product.
This knowledge can help identify problems before they occur, develop creative solutions, and anticipate customer reactions.
Key Takeaways:
- Fresh Perspectives: Inexperienced customers can provide new insights and highlight aspects of a product that regular users might overlook.
- Unbiased Feedback: Without preconceived notions, new customers can offer objective opinions that can be crucial for unbiased product development.
- Creative Solutions: Lack of familiarity with the status quo can lead to unconstrained thinking and potentially innovative solutions.
- Identifying Pain Points: New users are more likely to flag issues that regular users have adapted to, which can lead to valuable improvements.
- Diverse Knowledge: Inexperience in a specific area doesn’t equate to a lack of knowledge but a different knowledge set that can contribute to broader understanding and innovation.
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But what about inexperienced customers?
What can possibly be gained from talking to someone with little to no knowledge of your product or service? What if there was a way to turn inexperience into valuable insights that help optimize and innovate your product or service?
Not having a wealth of knowledge or experience in an area doesn’t mean that innovative strategies and insights won’t be achieved. Having limited experience can sometimes be beneficial for attaining creative outcomes.
The Power of Perspective
It’s no secret that customer feedback is invaluable to a successful business. But while experienced customers can help you refine your product, inexperienced customers can provide the most valuable insights. That’s because inexperienced customers are likelier to notice and comment on features that experienced users take for granted.
When someone is new to your product, service, or industry, they are often more likely to approach it differently than someone who has been using it for a while or is entrenched in the business. This is because they are not yet set in their ways and haven’t become complacent with the status quo. They can make suggestions and consider alternative solutions that experienced customers might not have ever considered before.
Without any preconceived notions about how things should work or look, inexperienced customers have the freedom to explore different options without being hindered by fear or doubt about whether or not something will work.
Inexperienced customers can also bring fresh perspectives into the innovation process, which can help uncover hidden opportunities or problems that may not be obvious from an experienced person’s point of view. A combination of inexperience and curiosity can be invaluable when finding new ways forward for businesses by challenging accepted assumptions or suggesting alternative solutions that could lead to breakthroughs in a particular industry or field.
Inexperienced Customers Notice the Details
Customers familiar with your product may not be able to see small details because they have become accustomed to them due to frequent use of the product over time.
In contrast, inexperienced customers tend to pay closer attention to small details since they don’t have any preconceived notions about what should be expected from the product or process.
This allows them to provide valuable feedback on minor improvements that would otherwise go unnoticed by experienced users who may take these details for granted. As a result, these small changes can add up to a considerable impact on the overall user experience!
Inexperienced Customers Offer Unbiased Opinions
Experienced customers will often form opinions based on past experiences with your or similar products or processes, which can limit their ability to offer unbiased opinions on new products or features.
Inexperience, however, can provide genuine feedback without bias or preconceived notions about how things should work or look. This open-minded approach ensures that you receive honest and unbiased feedback about your product or service — something essential for an innovative business model!
Inexperienced Customers have Unconstrained Thinking
As someone with little or no experience with the product or service, you might not be weighed down by the same preconceived notions that those with years of expertise may have.
Without prior knowledge of what “can’t be done” or “hasn’t been done before,” inexperienced customers are free to think unconventionally and explore different approaches and strategies.
Unconstrained thinking allows entrepreneurs and startups to find creative solutions that may otherwise have gone unnoticed by more experienced users.
Inexperienced Customers Can Flag Pain Points
Leveraging customer inexperience can help reduce support costs by providing clear insights on using the product or service, allowing you to troubleshoot and solve common issues. This will save time and resources and make the customer experience more pleasant overall.
For example, if an inexperienced user has trouble navigating through a specific process within your SaaS tool, by asking them where they got lost, how they got there and how they might solve, you can make improvements accordingly.
Additionally, look for patterns in their answers — are there any common points of confusion among all the users? Are there any features that people don’t seem to understand? By gathering feedback from these users, you will be able to identify areas where your product needs improvement so that future users won’t have the same problems.
In Conclusion
In conclusion, true innovation requires a deep understanding of the underlying subject matter and an open mind willing to explore new possibilities without being constrained by existing boundaries. Expert knowledge of a product or service is undoubtedly helpful when trying to innovate. Still, it should be used as just one factor among many when exploring new ideas and possibilities.
Leveraging customer inexperience presents an opportunity for businesses to find areas of improvement and uncover potential growth opportunities. Inexperience can give you valuable insights if approached from the right angle. By leveraging unfamiliar perspectives, insights from inexperienced customers can help you discover unique solutions that experienced veterans may have yet to consider.
Remember, inexperience doesn’t necessarily mean a lack of knowledge; instead, it means having a different set of knowledge than someone with years of experience in your field. When leveraged correctly, inexperience with a particular product, service or industry can provide valuable insights into how a business should move forward — something that would otherwise remain hidden from view without input from an inexperienced individual.