Instead of a Formal Customer Council, Build a UserLab: Never be at a loss for on-demand customer insights

Conventional customer councils call on a select group of folks who are opinionated about your product. Often, they are the squeakiest wheels, and come in with an agenda for the features they’d like to see. A council formalizes your engagement with buyers and users, but how can you avoid the bias that comes with working with power customers? How to get a sense of what your broader pool of current and future users might really need? How to turn over insights quickly, as ideas arise and reprioritize? You need actionable results from representative customers, now.

In my twenty years behind the applied research wheel, I’ve seen waterfall approaches transform into a new need for rolling customer insights. This continuous-delivery approach lacks the rigor of a formal scientific study, and the weight of a regular customer council meeting at a convention. But it offers real, representative insights from the right users, on the right initiatives at the right time. Here’s how I approach this kind of project.