Customer validation is a significant action in the product improvement process, the steps needed to get the product from idea to market. At this stage, the Company validates assumptions and hypotheses about customer issues, target markets, and products.
The findings obtained during the verification phase are used repeatedly to develop the product and find appropriate market suitability. Verification also allows people to connect products with viable prospects and build meaningful products they need. Customer discovery was about knowing who the customer was and how to reach them.
Customer Validation
Product Managers (PMs) validate customers and problems, solutions, and pain points to help make product decisions. During the verification phase, the product team will focus on the market, the difficulty to be solved, and the product.
To create a product people want and use, the founders must first verify their issues and needs and then understand if their solutions can solve them.
Customer validation is the stage in the customer development model where the Company gets solid evidence of the potential success of its business model. Dealing with a hypothetical scenario does not help ensure the business plan is sound. That is why the product manager needs to verify all the information he thinks he knows.
Why Does the Company Have a Customer Verification Process?
This customer validation process aims to validate the sales process and the assumptions that underpin the company business model. In other words, customer verification is an important step that must be taken before a venture company can grow.
The nature and importance of customer verification strongly suggest that this is a business in which the Company’s top management should involve. Customer validation consists of four phases:
Why Should PM Care?
PM wants to create a meaningful product that solves customer problems. By validating early in the product development cycle, PMs can iteratively develop products that fit the market.
The following are other benefits of customer validation:
- Proves customers buy and use the product
- Facilitates product companies to emphasize early in the growth process.
- The product team can save wasted resources and development time by making meaningless products.
- Gain trust and support for products from investors and internal stakeholders
- PMs can maximize their success by engaging in a curious customer validation process, leveraging insights, and iterating, building genuinely unique products that people buy and use.
What Validation Requires?
Understanding what to validate is as essential as learning the importance of client validation. Three things must be verified in this process. However, the product manager must not forget that each of these is unique.
- The chief concern to make is to validate the market. It is essential to identify the potential market, and the amount of demand the product can reach within it. It is critical to be realistic when validating the market, as the Company needs to ensure the market it offers is large enough and some people will buy products.
- To learn more about the market, a Company can use several tools. First, consider using industry-wide industry reports to get to know the broader market.
- Market forecasts should be avoided during the verification process. Many predictions are based on assumptions. During the validation process, avoid assumptions and prioritize complex data.
Verdict
Finally, the product needs to be validated. Because finding the market and solving problems is not related to the product, but somewhat related to establishing the needs of the product. Product validation checks whether the Company’s product compensates for the information gained from validating the market or product.
It is not easy to validate a customer. The process itself is not complex. Interviewing customers with good questions is easy if the product manager knows what to look for.
The challenge with customer verification is to accept that the product team may be wrong. These mistakes can create new information worthless to businesses. It is because these mistakes ultimately lead to the loss of precious data.