Customer development is a formal methodology for building startups and new corporate ventures. It is one of the three parts that make up a lean startup (business model design, customer development, agile engineering).[1]
The process assumes that early ventures have untested hypotheses about their business model (who are the customers, what features they want, what channel to use, revenue strategy/pricing tactics, how to get/keep/grow customers, strategic activities needed to deliver the product, internal resources needed, partners needed and costs). Customer development starts with the key idea that there are no facts inside your building so get outside to test them. The hypotheses testing emulates the scientific method – pose a business model hypothesis, design an experiment, get out of the building and test it. Take the data and derive some insight to either (1) Validate the hypothesis, (2) Invalidate the Hypothesis, or (3) Modify the hypothesis.[2][3]
Many burgeoning startup companies devote all of their efforts to designing and refining their product and very little time “getting out of the building.”[4][5] The customer development model encourages that more time be spent in the field identifying potential consumers and learning how to better meet their needs.[6][7][8] The Customer Development concept emphasizes empirical research.[3]
Customer development is the opposite of the “if we build it, they will come”[9] product development-centered strategy, which is full of risks and can ultimately be the downfall of a company.[7][8][9]
The customer development method was created by Steve Blank. According to Blank, startups are not simply smaller versions of larger, more developed companies.[2][3] A startup operates in a fashion vastly different from that of a large company and employs different methods. While larger companies execute known and proven business strategies, startups must search for new business models.[2] Customer Development guides the search for a repeatable and scalable business model.[8]
^Alvarez, Cindy (2017-08-30). Lean Customer Development: Building Products Your Customers Will Buy. "O'Reilly Media, Inc.". ISBN 978-1-4920-2375-3.
^ abcRoush, Wade. "Steve Blank Hands A New Owner's Manual to Startup Founders". Xconomy.
^ abcNivi (5 November 2008). "Customer Development: How to develop your customers like you develop your product". Venture Hacks.
^Blank, Steve. "Steve Blank: The Key to Startup Success? 'Get Out of the Building'". Inc. Video.
^Blank, Steve (May 2013). "Why the Lean Start-Up Changes Everything". Harvard Business Review.
^StackSocial (15 October 2012). "A free must-read e-book for all entrepreneurs".
^ abRies, Eric (November 8, 2008). "What is customer development?".
^ abcCooper, Brant. "WHAT IS CUSTOMER DEVELOPMENT?". Archived from the original on 2017-02-11. Retrieved 2016-10-07.
Customerdevelopment is a formal methodology for building startups and new corporate ventures. It is one of the three parts that make up a lean startup...
business to customer relationships, in which a customer goes to the business in order to purchase a product or service. In customer to customer markets,...
author and speaker based in Pescadero, California. Blank created the customerdevelopment method that launched the lean startup movement, a methodology that...
Customer relationship management (CRM) is a process in which a business or other organization administers its interactions with customers, typically using...
technology development. During this part of the front-end, the business case is developed based on estimates of the total available market, customer needs...
meet or surpass customer expectation. Customer satisfaction is defined as "the number of customers, or percentage of total customers, whose reported experience...
Development the practitioners value: Individuals and interactions over processes and tools Working software over comprehensive documentation Customer...
method of fast customer feedback, which Blank called "customerdevelopment", and applied it at IMVU in combination with lean software development, testing alternate...
just enough features to be usable by early customers who can then provide feedback for future product development. A focus on releasing an MVP means that...
Artificial intelligence in customer experience is the use and development of artificial intelligence (AI) to aid and improve customer experience (sometimes...
programming (XP) is a software development methodology intended to improve software quality and responsiveness to changing customer requirements. As a type of...
management, the voice of the customer (VOC) summarizes customers' expectations, preferences and aversions. A widely used form of customer's voice market research...
thinking is used to understand the customers' need in an engaged manner. Design thinking and customerdevelopment can be biased because they do not remove...
Customer experience is the totality of cognitive, affective, sensory, and behavioral customer responses during all stages of the consumption process including...
strategy and the development of an organization. It typically involves activities relating to marketing, sales, product development and customer service to...
In marketing, customer lifetime value (CLV or often CLTV), lifetime customer value (LCV), or life-time value (LTV) is a prognostication of the net profit...
both customer representatives and the development team learn more about the domain problem and figure out possible solutions for further development. Thus...
is a theory for product development and customer satisfaction developed in the 1980s by Noriaki Kano, which classifies customer preferences into five categories...
Customer engagement is an interaction between an external consumer/customer (either B2C or B2B) and an organization (company or brand) through various...
Customer analytics is a process by which data from customer behavior is used to help make key business decisions via market segmentation and predictive...
In the United States, Know Your Customer (KYC) guidelines and regulations in financial services require professionals to verify the identity, suitability...
prospective customer and other business and project partners. Drive prospects through to contract award (including identifying new customers and markets...
Alexander Osterwalder's "Business Model Canvas", Steve Blank's "CustomerDevelopment Model", and Agile Engineering. Students of Lean LaunchPad are said...
software company principally engaged in the design, development, marketing, and support of customer relationship management (CRM) applications—notably...
but now customer engineer is also being used by other companies. Customer engineers are also referred to as customer support engineers or customer service...
A customer representative is an individual who has authority to represent a community that intends to purchase a product. The term is most often applied...
develops ways to involve customers in the business and product development process, such as design, marketing, sales, customer service, etc. The degree...
economics. In 2010, Patrick Vlaskovits wrote The Entrepreneur's Guide to CustomerDevelopment. He, along with Hiten Shah and Sean Ellis coined the term and concept...
Global Information