Unmet needs

Strategyn frames the aim as finding which desired outcomes customers feel are underserved or overserved (Strategyn). The product-discovery view groups "customer needs, pain points, and desires that are not currently being satisfied" under the term (Product Talk).

Two things follow:

• The person may never have said it aloud.
• It is about the job they are trying to do, not about your product.

A complaint costs the speaker nothing, so it is a hypothesis, not a finding. A pile of complaints only shows what annoys people.

Three look-alikes are often confused with a need:

• A want: a preference with no cost attached.
• A feature request: one customer's guess at a solution. The need sits underneath it.
• A pain point: often real, and part of an unmet need, but on its own it does not show that anyone acts on it.

The gap between talk and action is well documented. What users say and what they do are often quite different, and the mismatch is a rich source of insight (Nielsen Norman Group, 1 March 2024). Interviews collect reported behaviour, not observed behaviour (Nielsen Norman Group).

A candidate need is real when you have seen a workaround, the participant can put a cost on it, and someone paid or switched because of it. Run all three on every candidate. All three must pass for a candidate to count as an unmet need. These pass thresholds are a practitioner recommendation, not an industry standard.

Three tests a candidate need must pass

Half of a small qualitative sample is a signal, not a measure of how common the need is.

Record each candidate on an evidence card with these fields:

1. The situation or job, in the participant's words.
2. The current workaround.
3. Its cost.
4. Evidence type: said, shown or paid for.
5. How many of how many participants, by segment.
6. What they tried and dropped.
7. Verdict: complaint only, unmet need, or overserved (the options already satisfy a need better than the customer needs).

The method that shows an unmet need is the one that lets you see the workaround, not just hear about it. Choose by what you suspect.

Start with in-depth interviews to find candidates. Then use a method that shows behaviour before you call anything a need.

Rank them with a survey of importance and satisfaction, after the qualitative work has produced the candidate list. The common formula is opportunity = importance + max(0, importance − satisfaction) (Strategyn). Respondents rate on a 5 to 7 point scale. The share giving the top two points is converted to a 0 to 10 score, and the formula uses those scores (Buchanan, an unverified practitioner critique).

The scores below are illustrative, worked with the formula above. Importance alone puts B first. The gap puts A first, because A matters almost as much and is served far worse.

Because the formula adds importance twice, check whether the ranking changes when you sort by the importance-satisfaction gap alone before relying on the order. Use the score to order candidates, not as a pass mark. This step needs a far larger sample than interviews.

Unmet need has three close relatives, pain point, latent need and job to be done, and it means something different in health statistics and social care.

• Pain point: a frustration, usually part of an unmet need.
• Latent need: one the customer cannot easily put into words, which observation finds better than asking.
• Job to be done: the task the person is trying to complete, which the need attaches to.

In US health statistics it means "delay or nonreceipt of needed medical care… due to cost" (CDC). In social care it means "A need for care and support that is not currently being met" (Think Local Act Personal).

Qualfacto recruits and runs the qualitative step in India, matched to the test you need to pass. Its formats include in-depth interviews (30 to 120 minutes), digital diary studies (multi-day photo and video tasks on a mobile app or the web), ethnography (home visits or virtual), shop-alongs, in-home use tests and online bulletin boards.

It recruits by city, runs sessions in languages other than English, checks participant identities before invitation, and targets by household and demographic profile. You can bring your own moderators. Deliverables depend on scope and are agreed before the study starts. They can include recordings, transcripts, structured data exports and reports.

Pricing is set per project, based on method, audience and sample, and a free pilot is offered. Email your brief to support@qualfacto.io, Monday to Friday, 10:00 to 18:00 Indian Standard Time (IST). Qualfacto aims to reply within one business day.