In product development, it’s tempting to take customer requests at face value. After all, who knows better than the customer what they want? However, a common pitfall emerges when features are built blindly based on these requests, only for them to go largely unused. This disconnect reveals a critical insight: what customers ask for isn’t always what they actually need. Needless to say, this also has a cost to the company that didn't yield any benefit to the customer and the overall product.
Take, for example, a situation where a group of customers requests a detailed dashboard feature for tracking various metrics. On the surface, this seems like a clear request that should be fulfilled. However, after the dashboard is built, the product team notices that usage is low. Despite the initial enthusiasm, customers aren’t engaging with the dashboard as expected.
Digging deeper, the team realizes that what customers really needed wasn’t a complex dashboard, but a simpler way to access key metrics quickly, perhaps through periodic summary reports or alerts sent directly to them. The original request for a dashboard was an attempt by customers to articulate a need they felt but didn’t fully understand—what they truly wanted was easier access to information, not another tool to manage.
From a UX perspective, this example highlights the importance of focusing on underlying needs rather than simply fulfilling feature requests. While customer feedback is crucial, it’s up to UX practitioners to dig deeper and identify the real opportunities for improvement that might not be immediately obvious from what customers say.
By focusing on these underlying needs, teams can avoid the trap of building unnecessary features that don’t truly add value. Instead, they can create solutions that are not only used but are indispensable to the customer’s experience. This approach ensures that the time and resources invested in development lead to meaningful improvements, rather than just checking off items on a feature request list.
In the end, the goal is to build products that solve real problems and meet genuine needs. It’s about moving beyond what customers ask for and delivering what they actually require to achieve their goals. By prioritizing needs over requests, teams can create products that are truly valuable, ensuring long-term success, customer satisfaction and a meaningful relationship with your product.