ThemeCustomers & Market
CardCard 64 of 66
Questions5 to explore

Users & customers

Those using your product & services

Understanding who actually uses what you offer, in their own terms, is the part of customer knowledge that most organizations think they have and rarely do.

Customer knowledge tends to degrade into assumptions. The early team had direct contact with real users and formed views about what they need. As the organization grows, those views get cited more than they get tested. The original evidence fades and the assumptions harden.

What is worth capturing is not just a demographic profile but a textured picture: who the customers are, what they are trying to do, what they find confusing or delightful, and how their needs have shifted over time. Quotes, stories, and direct feedback belong here alongside the more formal data.

This part of organizational memory also captures what the organization has learned about customers that surprised it: the use cases that were not anticipated, the segments that turned out to matter more than expected, the complaints that turned out to be early signals.

What to capture

For this part of the company brain, what is worth writing down and keeping current. The goal is not a complete archive but a living record that new people can read and returning people can trust.

Customer segments

The distinct groups of customers the organization currently serves, with a brief description of each and a note on how that picture has evolved.

What customers are trying to do

The underlying goals and needs that bring customers to the organization, in their own words where possible.

Direct feedback & quotes

Real feedback from customers, including both praise and criticism, kept accessible rather than buried in old survey exports.

Surprises & shifts

Use cases, segments, or needs that turned out to be different from what was expected, and what was learned from the gap.

Questions to explore

Use these on your own or in a group. There are no right answers, only better conversations.

Who are the distinct groups of customers we serve today, and how have those groups changed over time?
What are customers actually trying to accomplish when they use what we offer?
What feedback from customers has most shaped how the organization works?
Are there customer segments or use cases that surprised us, and what did we learn?
Where is customer knowledge most concentrated in the organization right now?

Things to notice

Customer assumptions harden quickly. Early direct knowledge gets passed on as received wisdom, and it can take years before anyone checks whether it still holds.
Qualitative knowledge gets discarded. The quotes, stories, and edge cases that give customer knowledge its texture are often the first things left out of a summary.
Customer knowledge is treated as the sales and marketing team's job, which means the rest of the organization works from a thinner picture than it realizes.