Custdev

Custdev - Customer Development, a method of in-depth interviews with clients to understand their real pains, motivations, and decision-making paths. Not to be confused with surveys (questionnaires), focus groups or CSI/NPS.

Custdev is a 30-60 minute one-on-one conversation, structured like this: - Open-ended questions (not yes/no) - Focus on past behavior rather than intentions (“what did you last do”, not “what would you like”) - No product presentation (so as not to influence answers) - Recorded, then decrypted and analyzed

In my practice, 30 interviews with top 50 clients by revenue provide 80% of the insights about on which axis the buyer is actually segmented. It often turns out that demographics (age, gender) are not the main thing. The main thing is behavior, purchase context, jobs-to-be-done.

A case from my practice - in article about failure by 20% custdev top 50 clients showed that I segmented by demographics instead of behavior. This cost 1.5M ₽ of quarterly revenue. From now on, I do custdev before any change in strategy, not after.

Without custdev, marketing works on hypotheses from the head. With custdev - on real data from people. The difference is in order.