Importance of Understanding Customer Problems

Here’s something I’ve learned after founding multiple startups (including HOPPR ) and tackling healthcare’s toughest challenges: you can’t fix what you don’t fully understand. It’s not enough to notice a gap—you need to see the problem beneath the problem. Why Deep Problem Understanding Matters 1. It Uncovers Hidden Needs Most incumbents build for their current market, leaving entire groups—often called “non-consumers”—frustrated or underserved. The real opportunity lies in solving pain points nobody else wants to touch. 2. It Guides Sustainable Innovation Building on shaky assumptions is a recipe for constant pivots. When you truly grasp the root cause, your product roadmap becomes a compass—pointing you straight toward what customers really need. 3. It Future-Proofs Your Business Industries evolve fast. If you’re crystal-clear on the why behind a problem, you can adapt solutions over time—staying ahead of disruptions rather than becoming a victim of them. My Take As a radiologist-turned-entrepreneur, I’ve seen firsthand how “obvious solutions” can miss the mark if they’re not grounded in a deep understanding of users’ realities. At HOPPR, we’ve made it our mission to spend time with the very people who will use our AI models and our AI platform —so we can build solutions that genuinely improve outcomes. How to Deep-Dive into Problems 1. Ask “Why?” … Again Whenever a teammate or customer says, “We need X,” dig deeper: “Why do you need that? And why is that important?” Keep going until you hit the emotional or systemic root cause. 2. Go Beyond Your Usual Suspects Talk to the so-called “wrong” customers—people on the fringes or those turned away by incumbents. That’s often where you’ll find the insights that spark major disruption. 3. Prototype Fast, Iterate Faster Even the best market research won’t give all the answers. Build a testable solution quickly, gather feedback, and refine based on real-world usage. Speed of learning trumps perfection. Pro Tip: If you catch yourself making assumptions without concrete insight, pause. Get on a call with a user or run a mini-experiment to verify you’re fixing the right problem. Your Turn: What’s one problem in your industry that everyone’s overlooking—or simplifying? Drop your thoughts below. You might just uncover the spark for your next big breakthrough. #DeepProblemSolving #InnovatorsDilemma #StartupLessons

How can we stay focused on every customer’s experience when we operate at the scale of Chase? 🤔 At the Chase Technology Senior Leadership Conference, I had the opportunity to share my thoughts on a crucial aspect of customer service, and I shared something I find myself thinking about often… we need to stop saying "only." As Head of Chase's Infrastructure and Production Management, I’m concerned about any issue that impacts even a small percentage of our customers. This is because at our scale, 1% can mean hundreds of thousands of customers. Given our scale, there can unfortunately be a tendency to say it “only” affects a small number of customers when we have issues affecting our ability to meet our customer promises. But using "only" can diminish the severity of issues and lead to complacency... and considering our scale, we can't afford to be complacent. Using the word "only" stifles curiosity in improving our business and makes us less empathetic to our customers. Here are my suggestions to remove "only" from our vocabulary: • Solve the "Small" Problems: Give teams the time and resources to address minor issues. This allows them to practice empathy and understand the customer experience more deeply. This allows us to address existing customer friction and helps us build better products for customers in the future. • Engage with Customer Challenges: Visit call centers, listen to complaints, or visit a branch and observe how customers and employees interact. Engaging with front line employees and customers directly brings immediacy and emotion to problem-solving, which makes for better solutions. • Focus on Customer Journeys: Establish "customer journey labs" to review pain points and improve experiences from the customer’s standpoint, not the bank’s. As I shared in Nashville with my peers, every minor hiccup represents a real customer with a genuine experience. Let's commit to "sweating the small stuff" and reward our teams for focusing on every customer problem. #CustomerExperience #Leadership

Misunderstanding Customer Needs = Innovation Failure Most innovation efforts fail because companies don’t truly understand what their customers want. They optimize existing products, chase trends, and build features based on gut instinct—turning innovation into a frustrating, costly guessing game. But it doesn’t have to be that way. This past Wednesday, I had the fun privilege of sharing "Lean JTBD"—how to unlock the secret of making products customers love—with 39 entrepreneurs and business leaders in a TIGER 🐯 Talk at Innovate New Albany. Big thanks to Neil Collins for hosting! Three takeaways: 1️⃣ People don’t buy products and services; they hire them to get their jobs done. 2️⃣ Customers CAN tell us what they want—if you ask the right questions. 3️⃣ If you don’t understand the “job” your customers are hiring your product/service to do, and where their needs remain unmet, then you’re inevitably missing the mark. And that's a completely avoidable mistake. Don’t ask customers what features they want; ask what they need to accomplish. That’s where true innovation starts; not with a "good idea." If you want to make innovation a repeatable business process, it has to start with understanding customer needs. The fastest way to innovate with confidence? Identify your target customers’ important unmet needs—before building anything. This eliminates guesswork and ensures strong market fit—at concept creation. Want to put these insights into action? I'm creating a free PDF: "The Lean JTBD Playbook"—a three-step guide to help you: ✔️ Choose the right growth strategy for product differentiation ✔️ Redefine your market for innovation ✔️ Obtain customer insights that matter Coming soon! Drop a comment or DM me with 'PLAYBOOK' and I’ll send it your way once it’s ready. #Jobstobedone #Innovation #ProductStrategy #differentiation #CustomerNeeds

Most people think success today requires a massive budget. After connecting 100k+ creators with brands, I've noticed something counterintuitive: The companies scaling fastest aren't the ones spending the most money. They're the ones spending the most attention. While everyone chases shiny objects, the real winners focus on something different: Deep customer understanding. When you truly understand your customers: • Your messaging resonates naturally • Your acquisition costs drop dramatically • Your customers become your marketers We've seen this repeatedly on our platform: Brands obsessed with customer insights consistently outperform those obsessed with acquisition tactics. The opportunity isn't in finding more customers. It's in truly understanding the ones you have. Stop optimizing for transactions. Start optimizing for insights. — Leo Limin

The truth? Your customer’s problem won’t magically disappear if they go to your competitor. In Customer Success, we often feel helpless when a customer says, “This just isn’t working — maybe another vendor would be better.” But here’s the mindset shift: 𝗡𝗼𝘁 𝗮𝗹𝗹 𝗳𝗿𝗶𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗶𝘀 𝗮𝗯𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗱𝘂𝗰𝘁. Many customer struggles are 𝘶𝘯𝘪𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘴𝘢𝘭 — meaning they’ll face the same challenges no matter which solution they use. These are gold. If you recognize them, you can shift the conversation from frustration to forward progress. 𝗨𝗻𝗶𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗮𝗹 𝘀𝘁𝗿𝘂𝗴𝗴𝗹𝗲𝘀 𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘆 𝗖𝗦𝗠 𝘀𝗵𝗼𝘂𝗹𝗱 𝗿𝗲𝗰𝗼𝗴𝗻𝗶𝘇𝗲:  • Dirty data — switching vendors won’t clean it.  • Email filtering — new provider, same IT block.  • Lack of internal ownership — no team, no traction. Instead of defending your product, 𝘀𝗵𝗼𝘄 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗰𝘂𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗺𝗲𝗿 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗿𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝘄𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗹𝗹𝘆 𝗻𝗲𝗲𝗱𝘀 𝘁𝗼 𝗰𝗵𝗮𝗻𝗴𝗲 — and that you’re the partner willing to help them fix it. One of my clients helps medical practices convert website traffic into leads. But if the practice doesn’t invest in ads, there’s no traffic to convert, no matter the vendor. Now their CSMs say: “𝘐𝘧 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘺 𝘰𝘳 𝘭𝘦𝘢𝘷𝘦, 𝘱𝘭𝘦𝘢𝘴𝘦 𝘪𝘯𝘷𝘦𝘴𝘵 𝘪𝘯 𝘢𝘥𝘴. 𝘐𝘵’𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘰𝘯𝘭𝘺 𝘸𝘢𝘺 𝘵𝘰 𝘨𝘳𝘰𝘸.” That honesty? It builds trust. And it proves you care about their results — not just your renewal rate. 𝗗𝗼𝗻’𝘁 𝗯𝗲 𝗮𝗳𝗿𝗮𝗶𝗱 𝘁𝗼 𝗻𝗮𝗺𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗹 𝗶𝘀𝘀𝘂𝗲. Because when customers realize it’s not the vendor, it’s the void, they’ll stay with the one who helps them fill it. 𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝘂𝗻𝗶𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗮𝗹 𝘀𝘁𝗿𝘂𝗴𝗴𝗹𝗲 𝗱𝗼 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗰𝘂𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗺𝗲𝗿𝘀 𝗳𝗮𝗰𝗲 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗵𝗼𝘄 𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗵𝗲𝗹𝗽𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗺 𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗿𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗲 𝗶𝘁? #customersuccess