When Is a Cappuccino Not a Cappuccino?

One of the most powerful and lasting insights into unspoken customer needs is analyzed in the following example. A seminar is offered and at noon the class, goes to a nearby restaurant for lunch.

One of the students, Diane,  as usual orders a cappuccino at the end of the meal, only to be disappointed that the restaurant does not offer specialty coffees.

When they return to the classroom, the instructor uses the student's experience to explore the idea of unspoken customer needs.

"What did Diane want at the restaurant?" he asks the class.

"A cappuccino," replies one of the students.

"No, what did she really want?" pushes the instructor.

"Perhaps she was cold and wanted a warm drink?" proposes another one.

"Maybe she wanted to feel special. We all had coffee, but she had to have a cappuccino," proposes another. 

Then a voice rings out from the back of the class, "Perhaps she wanted a relaxing ritual."

Diane realizes that is exactly why she drinks cappuccino—something, until that moment,she never fully understood. She wants the whole experience of smelling the beans, hearing them ground, watching the baristas do their magic latte art, and then sitting by a window watching the world go by as I savors her cappuccino. She would not have been satisfied if the restaurant had added hot water to an instant, packaged cappuccino, even though the restaurant may have thought they were satisfying my spoken need.

Understanding unspoken customer needs is a 10 on the Richter scale of customer satisfaction. Knowing that like Diane many others, crave a relaxing ritual, savvy business owners could meet that need with English high tea or a Japanese tea ceremony.

In his famous model for understanding customer needs, Noriake Kano called this the area of customer delight (see Figure 1). Far beyond understanding and satisfying expected or traditional customer needs, understanding and addressing unspoken customer needs is the frontier of true competitive advantage. That is, at least, until this area of customer delight becomes the new normal, at which time meeting those needs become expected.

How can we understand the unspoken needs of customers, when customers themselves are unaware? Several approaches show great promise, including:

- Going to gemba; in other words, unobtrusively observing your customers as they use your product or service.
- Tapping into the right brain by using collages.
- Design thinking approaches, such as those pioneered by Stanford University.1
- Quality tools and approaches, such as QFD.
Try using these tools to understand unspoken customer needs. The joy of truly delighting your customers is the prize that awaits you.

Reference: QP