{"id":1551,"date":"2010-05-06T17:47:31","date_gmt":"2010-05-06T17:47:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.questionpro.com\/?p=1551"},"modified":"2010-05-06T17:47:31","modified_gmt":"2010-05-06T17:47:31","slug":"to-ask-or-not-to-ask-that-is-the-question","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.questionpro.com\/blog\/to-ask-or-not-to-ask-that-is-the-question\/","title":{"rendered":"To ask or not to Ask? That is the question."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>There are two broad schools of thought \u2013 \u201cListening to your customers is the most important activity you can do\u201d and the proverbial Henry Ford quote \u2013 \u201cIf I asked my customers what they want, they simply would have said a<br \/>\nfaster horse.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I came across a couple of very thought provoking ideas and discussions:<\/p>\n<p>TED Conference \u2013 Malcolm Gladwell talks about Howard Moskovitz \u2013 how he changed the way Consumer Packaged Goods companies did segmentation and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.questionpro.com\/blog\/cluster-analysis\/\">cluster analysis<\/a>:<\/p>\n<p>http:\/\/video.google.com\/videoplay?docid=-6449479356304659254#<\/p>\n<p>The final analysis from my standpoint is \u2013 Asking customers what they want vs. analyzing their needs. Obviously the latter is actually what you really want to do. In our own business, we come across many clients every day that want \u201cfeature x\u201d \u2013 We also have to think hard about _why_ they need feature X \u2013 that is the larger question.<\/p>\n<div style=\"background: none repeat scroll 0 0 azure; border: 1px dashed skyblue; margin: 20px; padding: 5px;\">\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"background: none repeat scroll 0 0 #ffffff; border: 1px solid #666666; float: left; margin: 10px; padding: 4px;\" src=\"https:\/\/1.gravatar.com\/avatar\/942c51593546464fcc358dd1e028a645?s=48&amp;d=identicon&amp;r=G\" \/> <b>Vivek Bhaskaran<br \/>\n<\/b><\/p>\n<div><i>President and CEO \u2013 Survey Analytics<br \/>\n<\/i><\/div>\n<p>As head of privately held Survey Analytics, Vivek is responsible for all aspects of strategy and direction.<\/p>\n<div><a href=\"https:\/\/www.questionpro.com\/vivek\/\">questionpro.com\/vivek<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There are two broad schools of thought \u2013 \u201cListening to your customers is the most important activity you can do\u201d [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":93,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[180],"tags":[793,428,429],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v20.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>To ask or not to Ask? 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