How to avoid solving the wrong customer problem

Updated October 2026.

New product teams struggle to find the time to talk to customers. Even when they do, they don’t always go deep enough in their research, which can lead them to build the wrong product or feature. By adopting a hypothesis-driven approach to gathering voice of customer data and testing assumptions, your team can spend its time and effort on products customers will love.

What does it mean to not go deep enough in customer research?

Typically, it means your team either isn’t asking enough “whys” or is forgetting to validate that the problem is both urgent and expensive.

It often shows up when inexperienced researchers accept the first answer a customer gives as the true problem and don’t ask the obvious follow-up question: “Why is that the case?”

What are the three traps of shallow customer research?

Shallow research tends to fail in one of three ways. Each one sends a team off to build something that misses the real problem.

Trap 1: Confusing the current solution with the problem

A line often attributed to Henry Ford goes, “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” Product teams tell us a version of this all the time: “This is exactly what the customer asked for, and they still aren’t using it.” That’s why I urge teams to dig a little deeper. Why did people want faster horses? To get from point A to point B faster. That is the real problem, not that their horse is too slow.

Trap 2: Addressing a symptom, not the root cause

This is another case where product teams take what a customer said and run toward fixing it. Delta Air Lines is a good example of a company that avoided this mistake. Even with lower-than-average flight delays, customers were complaining about delays. Instead of trying to cut delays further by buying more planes or hiring more staff, Delta asked another question: “Why are delays a problem for you?”

The answers were revealing. Customers said things like, “It’s frustrating when I have to sit at the airport for so long,” and “It makes me anxious not knowing when I’ll get to my final destination.” Rather than chase an already low delay rate, Delta solved the root cause by sending customers earlier, more frequent, and more detailed notifications. Now travelers can get an early delay alert and stay home instead of waiting at the airport.

Trap 3: Mistaking a commonly cited problem for an urgent and expensive one

This happens when researchers forget to check whether a problem is urgent and expensive. Getting too many notifications from an app may be annoying, but that doesn’t mean the pain is bad enough that anyone would pay to make it stop.

Vecteris defines an urgent problem as one a customer needs to solve within the year, and an expensive problem as one they are willing to put resources toward solving. (More on this test in what is an urgent and expensive customer problem.)

You have to understand how big a problem is for your buyers and users. Where does it fall on their list of priorities? How soon do they need to solve it? Would they pay or dedicate resources to solving it?

A hypothesis-driven approach to voice of customer research is how you avoid all three traps.

What is a hypothesis in customer research?

A hypothesis is a testable statement that offers a possible answer to a business question. Put simply, it’s your best guess at the answer. Vecteris uses hypotheses in customer research for three reasons.

1. Hypotheses make decisions more data-driven

If you’re only looking for the answer to a question, you risk accepting the first answer and moving on. With a hypothesis, you have to prove or disprove that answer. That pushes the researcher to understand why the answer was given.

2. Hypotheses keep team discussions healthy

How often have you been in a meeting where two people think there are different answers to the same question? With a hypothesis-driven approach, every idea on the table is a hypothesis to test with the market. The team can discuss all the possibilities without deciding who is right or wrong. If both opinions are captured as hypotheses and tested against the market, the conversation moves forward quickly.

3. Hypotheses focus research where it matters most

Product teams have a lot on their plates, so use hypotheses to prioritize what’s most critical or riskiest before moving to the next step. Take Rent the Runway. When the company was getting started, it had a few critical hypotheses, such as:

• “People will rent dresses that others have previously worn.”
• “People will rent dresses without being able to try them on first.”

Those had to be tested first because they were far riskier than something like “People will rent black dresses more often than other colors.” Writing hypotheses lets you focus your research, so you don’t have to answer every question at once.

How do you prepare for a customer research interview?

Hypothesis-driven research gives product teams a better chance of success. Before your next customer research interview:

1. Write hypotheses for what you need to learn.
2. Prioritize the list by what is riskiest or most critical to the next step in your research.
3. Build an interview guide that keeps the conversation on track and includes questions to test each high-priority hypothesis. Our five tips for understanding customer need can help.
4. Don’t be afraid to ask the 5 whys to get to the root cause of the problem.
5. Validate that the problem is both urgent and expensive.
6. Understand what is driving the urgency, and whether the customer will dedicate money and resources to solving the problem.

Vecteris specializes in voice of customer research, including problem framing, solution design, messaging and positioning, and win/loss analysis. The work gives your team a clear picture of your customers’ urgent and expensive problems early in development, so you can design around your buyers and users and prioritize investment with an outside perspective. If you need guidance, talk to Vecteris about your customer research.