Customers aren't always right. Companies need to listen, observe, and test them — and these are the best ways.

Listening is where most companies start. And it's unfortunately where most end. While listening is a good place to start, it will almost always lead you down the wrong path if you take what the customer says at face value. Instead of just focusing on the 'what,' focus also on the 'why.' Try to understand your customer's motivation and aspiration. Build a hypothesis that can serve as a starting point for further observation and testing.

For the Indian beauty brand, we spent over 30 hours listening to our customers — at the mall, at local Indian stores, and even in their homes. One thing we heard over and over again is that people didn't want turmeric-based products. If we had stopped there, we would've missed a key insight — that the concern was about staining vs. the actual ingredient.

There are several ways to listen to your customer. I prefer to start with the informal, like mall intercepts, to understand who the customer is and what they care about. From there, I develop a longer set of questions for more formal sit-down interviews.

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