How to Write an Effective Customer Problem Statement
For organizations, and for product and design teams, there can be a number of reasons why a product could fail. But not taking the time to consider a customer’s conditions and their current situation could potentially harm your product’s future. By working with a problem statement you can make sure you’re defining a customer’s experience and attempting to transform your product for the better.
A Customer Problem Statement is a detailed description of an issue that needs to be addressed. This document thoroughly elaborates on the problem that your product or your service solves for your particular customers. It takes into consideration your customer’s unique pain points and how your product goals about solving their situation. A customer problem statement helps you and your team understand the detailed experience you are attempting to transform by analyzing and empathizing with your customers.
The statement also helps to ensure teams are focusing on the right thing during the innovation or the development process, by analyzing the problem and coming up with ways to solve them before the product is fully built.
The Importance of a Customer Problem Statement
The customer problem statement is a critical component of a project. It benefits everyone involved with the project because it helps people understand why they’re working on the project, providing clarity on the reasons behind the product or service. Team members will consider how your customers will be impacted by your project, what their thoughts and needs are, and thus come up with truly effective and valuable ways to improve their experience.
A well-rounded customer problem statement will have a big impact on how successful your final product is. This document helps your team define the problem and guide them during the product development process.
How to Create a Customer Problem Statement
To create a customer problem statement, you need to describe your customer’s current conditions and situation. How they feel, the frustrations that they face, their thoughts or feelings, can provide valuable insight and will help your team align their efforts around a common goal. By taking this information into consideration, you will be making sure you’re creating something your customers will find valuable, increasing your chances of them buying it or investing in your product.
When creating a problem statement, there are three main pieces of information you need to focus on; the outcome that your customers want, why they want that outcome, and what’s painful or frustrating to them by not getting that outcome. Commonly, project managers create customer problem statements by following and focusing on the following steps:
Describing the current conditions of a customer’s situation.
Explaining the current problem from the customer’s unique point of view.
Explaining the intangible costs of the financial costs of the problem that they’re facing.
Provide backup evidence.
Proposing a solution.
Explaining the benefits of the solution.
Summarizing the problem and the ideal solution.
Tips for Creating an Effective Customer Problem Statement
Great customer problem statements have one thing in common: they focus on a challenge customers are facing and elaborate on the problem without mentioning the product, but rather by taking the time to understand how they’re disrupting a customer’s status quo.
Let’s dive into some of the most helpful and effective tips to keeping in mind when creating your next customer problem statement:
Dissect the status quo and describe how you’re planning to disrupt it.
Focus on the problem, not the solution. With this in mind, there’s no need to mention your product or service yet.
Think about and analyze the different limitations your potential customers may have.
Build empathy around your customer’s problems and frustrations.
Customer Problem Statement Template
By starting with the problem your customers are facing every day, you can make sure you’ll be setting your team up to create truly effective, creative, and valuable products for your customers. And by defining the main pain points, you can help your team prioritize where to focus their time and efforts.
And now that you understand the importance of a problem statement, it’s time to focus on the right platform. Instead of using a traditional platform such as Microsoft Word or Excel, you can opt for the smart option and use Instagantt to create your next customer problem statement and instantly start collaborating with your team. Instagantt is an online Gantt chart software for project management that helps teams all around the world plan, coordinate, schedule, and execute their projects during the entire lifecycle. Teams can rely on Instagantt to create professional-looking Gantt charts in a matter of minutes and to manage their work efficiently by being able to visualize relevant project-related information such as deadlines, resources, and budget, and to keep tasks, conversations, and documents in a single, centralized location.
