Customer Needs
Customer needs are the problems, pain points, desires, and wants that customers experience in their context.
How are customer needs used in product discovery?
Customer needs represent opportunities that product teams can address to drive business outcomes. They emerge from generative research—customer interviews and customer observations—rather than from internal brainstorming or assumptions.
Customers know best when it comes to their own needs, even if they don't know what technology solutions are possible. For example, customers would never have asked for the first iPhone because they didn't know it was possible. However, they did know they hated checking voicemail, that texting using numbers was painful, and that small screens made it hard to find contacts. Apple applied their technology expertise to solve these real customer needs.
Successful products are the result of technology expertise applied to real customer needs.
Teams reconcile the tension between business needs and customer needs by starting with a desired business outcome and only considering customer needs that, if addressed, would drive that outcome. Customer needs include not just pain points, but also opportunities to delight and opportunities to replicate success.
Learn more:
- Opportunity Solution Trees: Visualize Your Discovery to Stay Aligned and Drive Outcomes
- Customer Interviews: How to Recruit, What to Ask, and How to Synthesize What You Learn
Related terms:
- Assessing Opportunities
- Customer Interview
- Pain Points
- Opportunity Solution Tree
Last Updated: October 25, 2025