Where are you on the Jobs-Netflix customer-centricity axis?
Are you a visionary creating products nobody knew they wanted? Or do you lean heavily on data to make decisions about what and how to build? Maybe you’re trying to find the perfect balance. In this article, Dipesh Sanghrajka, who has built products at Sony, EE and Experian, proposes a novel way to think about customer-centricity.
As a Product Leader and innovation expert, I hear a lot of cliches. Most are harmless. You want to think outside the box? Go ahead.
But there's one corporate catchphrase I can't let slide.
“Dipesh, we are a customer centric company.”
To which I respond – Tell me what you mean by that. Cue panic.
In this blog I want to explain how to think about customer-centricity using the Jobs-Netflix axis. It's a great way to frame product development.
Let's start with Steve Jobs. The Apple maestro was so contrarian he used to wash his feet in the company toilets, and his hygiene was so bad when he worked at Atari his co-workers demanded he worked the night shift. This was not a man who cared about the opinions of others.
For Jobs, customer-centric thinking meant giving customers things they didn't know they wanted:
“Some people say, "Give the customers what they want." But that's not my approach. Our job is to figure out what they're going to want before they do. I think Henry Ford once said, "If I'd asked customers what they wanted, they would have told me, 'A faster horse!'" People don't know what they want until you show it to them. That's why I never rely on market research. Our task is to read things that are not yet on the page.”
Look at the iPad. Jobs and his designer Jonny Ive selected the size by making 20 prototypes and intuiting the model they liked most. User feedback? Irrelevant.
In fact, the early customer feedback was terrible. If Jobs listened to users he'd never have launched the iPad.
The night after he revealed the project, Jobs recalled:
“I got about eight hundred email messages in the last twenty-four hours. Most of them are complaining. There’s no USB cord! There’s no this, no that. Some of them are like, “F--- you, how can you do that?” I don’t usually write people back, but I replied, “Your parents would be so proud of how you turned out.” And some don’t like the iPad name, and on and on. I kind of got depressed today. It knocks you back a bit.”
For Jobs, the mission at Apple was to discover what customers wanted before they knew it.
Listening to feedback from ill-informed, cynical, or perversely motivated critics (also known as journalists) would cause his team to malfunction. To be customer centric was to ignore the siren calls of critics, luring him onto the rocks.
That's one end of the axis of customer-centricity.
The other end is to listen to customers. Market data is king. Netflix is notorious for relying on user metrics to guide creativity. An early Netflix hit was House of Cards, which premiered in 2013. Netflix used data from its 44 million userbase to identify the optimum show minutes, season length, and which actors appealed to the widest audience. It then multi-variate tested thumbnail images and promotional material.
Todd Yellin, Vice President of Product Innovation at Netflix, said:
“We climb under the hood and get all greasy with algorithms, numbers and vast amounts of data. Getting to know a user, millions of them, and what they play. If they play one title, what did they play after, before, what did they abandon after five minutes?”
Reliance on data is why Netflix dramas can feel a little formulaic. If you are into Vikings you can feast on Norsemen, Vikings Valhalla, The Last Kingdom, Seven Kings Must Die, and the germanic version, Barbarians. It's creativity by numbers. And it works.
Today Netflix' use of data is breath-taking. The use of machine learning to refine artwork for the library is a revelation.
“Given the multidimensional nature of artwork, it is challenging to design an A/B test to investigate one aspect of artwork at a given time. We could be missing many other possible factors that might explain an artwork’s success, such as figure orientation, the color of the background, facial expressions, etc.”
The Netflix artwork flow chart.
If Jobs is at one end of the axis, Netflix sits at the other.
So where should you be?
After two decades of working with the biggest brands in tech and finance, including Sony, Experian, EE, and others I can confidently, if not conveniently say: it depends. Are you satisfying a known need (restaurants have hungry customers) or creating a new market (Heston Blumenthal at the Fat Duck astonishes diners with esoteric creations – calories are irrelevant).
Most likely, you'll need to shift along the spectrum.
Here's a personal example. During my time at Experian, the credit rating agency and data analytics company, we identified that a large number of vulnerable people were not getting the levels of service they deserved from banks, lenders and other institutions. These ‘support needs’ range from reading letters in large font, to getting statements in Braille, or being given more time to complete tasks, to using a British Sign Language interpreter.
An estimated 27 million consumers in the UK are identified as having a support need but just a few have shared that need with the financial institutions they use regularly.
We wanted to help. We heard anecdotes of how they explained their support needs, only to repeat themselves every time they interacted with another department or provider. We had a hunch for the solution: a market-wide data sharing product, so every bank could learn what each individual consumer needed. But we needed proof.
But the customers couldn't tell us the solution. They didn't know enough about financial services and data sharing.
So we moved across the Jobs-Netflix axis. We gathered data. We spent an hour with 15 consumers, with physical disabilities, sensory impairments, and mental health conditions. This validated the problem and helped us to sketch out a possible solution. We followed up with a survey of 1,500 people, large enough to be nationally representative.
Then we went to the Jobs end of the axis. We created the experimental Experian Support Hub, which today works with 26 partner organisations to share information about customer's special needs. They explain their needs once.
It's a hit. It was built on a mix of polling and vision. The more you know about customers, the more intuitively you can act.
One crucial footnote! Asking customers their view is flawed. As the advertising guru David Ogilvy said:
“The trouble with market research is that people don’t think what they feel, they don’t say what they think, and they don’t do what they say”
Ask someone in January if they plan to go to the gym. You are likely to get an answer at variance with reality. A customer-centric leader knows when the numbers are shaky.
Let me be clear. Being customer-centric is an admirable goal. I love to hear it. But if you are going to use the phrase let's be absolutely sure what you mean.
Do you mean listening to customers and data? Or ignoring market signals and creating something buyers will adore, they just don't know it yet? Are you Jobs or are you Netflix?
When you understand the axis you can slide up and down it. Innovate by listening. Or innovate by creating something so new it dazzles the world.
About the Author:
Dipesh is a customer-obsessed problem solver with over two decades of experience in innovation, product management, and commercial strategy. He has an established track record of developing products and strategic initiatives across various sectors for leading organisations, including Experian, EE, and Sony.