The Empty Chair Technique: A Path to Customer-Centricity
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Chapter 1: Understanding the Customer-Centric Approach
Jeff Bezos once remarked, "Prioritizing customer experience is the only sustainable competitive edge." Whether or not you resonate with this statement, one fact stands out: comprehending customer needs is vital for developing successful products and services. However, gathering this information isn't always straightforward. Directly asking customers for their input isn't feasible during brainstorming sessions for new features or services.
While surveys and social media analysis can yield insights, they often demand significant time and financial resources—luxuries that small businesses may not possess. Fortunately, you can adopt a simple yet effective technique from the founder of Amazon to ensure that both you and your team continuously adopt a customer-focused mindset. All you need is a chair or one of several alternative strategies.
The Empty Chair Method
So, what exactly does Bezos do? In every meeting—regardless of whether it includes three, twenty, or one hundred participants—he places an empty chair at the table. This chair symbolizes the presence of the customer. Whenever someone proposes an idea, Bezos directs their attention to this empty chair, urging them to consider the customer's perspective. This practice serves to shift individuals away from their own biases, emphasizing that the customer's viewpoint should be central to every decision.
This approach has been pivotal in establishing Amazon as "Earth's Most Customer-Centric Company." But what if incorporating a chair into your meetings isn’t your style? Over the years, I have assisted various companies in enhancing their connection with customers through alternative methods. Here are three of my top suggestions:
Section 1.1: Role Play
To encourage employees to step into the shoes of different clients, my clients and I devised a quarterly meeting format in which participants assumed roles that starkly contrasted with their actual identities while representing typical customers. For example, in a scenario involving an app designed to help individuals practice yoga at home, a 20-year-old female marketer from the U.S. might portray a 60-year-old stay-at-home dad from India eager to learn yoga for relaxation.
This role-switching exercise lasted for one hour each quarter, allowing team members to discuss potential features and product ideas from their assigned perspectives.
Subsection 1.1.1: Cultural Product Evaluations
If acting isn’t quite your forte, creating a targeted questionnaire can also prove effective. For a client managing a chain of co-working spaces, I crafted a set of questions paired with five to ten roles based on typical customer segments. Respondents were prompted to adopt a specific role when answering questions, such as:
“If you were insert role, what times or days would you typically visit the co-working space?”
This structured approach facilitated a deeper understanding of customer needs and inspired new service ideas, such as offering laundry facilities.
Section 1.2: 1:1 Speed Dating
Yet, nothing beats direct interaction with customers for truly grasping their perspectives. In collaboration with a new client, we organized a speed dating event where employees conversed with customers from diverse backgrounds. Each pair had ten minutes to discuss before rotating, allowing every employee to engage with multiple customers. While we provided a set of starter questions, participants were free to steer the conversation as they wished.
Running a thriving business necessitates keeping customer interests at the forefront of product and service development. This ongoing understanding should be treated with the same importance as any other business function. It’s a continuous process, much like how solopreneurs and content creators remain attuned to their audiences by identifying pain points and offering tailored solutions.
Chapter 2: Insights from Jeff Bezos
In this insightful video, Jeff Bezos discusses the importance of customer obsession and how it has shaped Amazon's success.
This video features Jeff Bezos at MIT, where he elaborates on Amazon's commitment to being the most customer-centric company on Earth.