Create Your Business Model Canvas

Find Out Why the Customer Is at the Center of it All  

The customer is the person who will buy your product or sign up for your service, use it, and experience satisfaction (or not); then, hopefully, will recommend someone else to do the same. Then, if you’re lucky, when the customer comes to buy that product, subscribe, or need your service, their experience will make them choose you again. Simple, right? 

However, people today have become more selective, demanding, and impatient than ever before.

Just think about how you are today with the different companies you buy from.

• First, reflect on a recent experience with a company where you were annoyed or disappointed or it was difficult to deal with. For example, their website took ages to load, or they kept asking you for the same information you’d already given them, or the product was cumbersome. How did it make you feel?

• Now reflect on an experience with a product or service that felt positive. The product was just what you wanted or needed, worked easily and well, or the service was delivered with such excellence that you felt like you got more than you paid for. What was it you bought? What made it such a great experience? 

As you may have noticed, the bar for what we expect from companies has risen in recent years too. Think of all those businesses whose products work well. The kind that people tell one another about. Brands like Amazon, Uber, and Apple are good examples of companies that understand customer centricity. They put the customer at the heart of their thinking in every way. 

Amazon is an excellent example of this. At Amazon, Jeff Bezos famously mandated that every meeting in the company he founded should always have one empty chair at the meeting table. That chair represents the customer. This physical reminder is always there - reminding participants in the meeting that they must consider the customer in everything they do and every decision they make.

Without customers, there is no reason for a business to exist. In other words, there is no one to receive the value.

So why do ideas need to start with the audience?

Learn to Truly Understand Your Audience/Customer 

Many people in business talk about being customer-centric but often, in practice, don’t live up to that ideal. That could be because it’s often easy to get caught up in the more logistical side of things, such as processes, products, or departments. Of course, it’s normal to want everything to run smoothly, but you can forget why you do those things: to serve the customer and their needs.

• First, you must take a considered, nuanced view of the customer. You need to recognize that they are more than just a socio-demographic profile. Broad brush strokes don’t tell you anything about who they are. 

Let’s consider a classic example – Millennials!

We hear people talk about Millennials all the time, describing their characteristics as a broad grouping. But let’s be clear here, the current age range of Millennials is 26 years to 41 years old! So there is no way that everyone in that group would have the same needs, desires, interests, behavior, etc.

• Second, you must consider the customers’ needs, wants, and possible fears, frustrations, or obstacles related to your product/service category. So, if you were selling swimwear, you would consider your customers’ specific needs around swimming or going to the ocean. You would want to understand what they love about certain products and what frustrates them about others. 

• Finally, you would want to understand how they will likely use your product or service in their lives. Or how they currently use similar products or services. 

Luckily, there is a tool that can help with the task of truly understanding customers.

Use the Empathy Map 

Some time ago, Dave Gray and the XPLANE consulting group’s team designed a tool called an Empathy Map to help with this process and they recently updated it – you can see an example below:

As you can see, it has some clearly defined and numbered sections to help with the order in which you should complete them.

Very simply, to complete the Empathy Map, you should work your way around the outside, following in the numbered sequence:

1. Describe your audience. Who is your audience? What is their situation? What is their role in that situation?

2. What do they need to do? What jobs do they need to get done? Or what decision do they need to make?

3. What do they see? In their immediate environment, what do other people say or do? In the marketplace?

4. What do they say? What have you heard them say? What can you imagine them saying?

5. What do they do? What behavior have you observed? What can you imagine them doing?

6. What do they hear? What are they hearing from friends, family, and others?

   Once you have completed this, you should have a good idea about who they are and what their lives look like. This is invaluable information, but wouldn’t it be even more helpful if you understood what is going on in their head (and heart)? It leads to:

7. What do they think and feel?

The way the empathy map channels your thinking about these aspects is to consider their “pains.” What do you think are their fears, concerns, and frustrations? And their “gains.” What do you believe they want, need, and hope for? 

Look at the blog from Dave Gray, where he explained his update to the Empathy Map.  

Your Turn! Create an Empathy Map

Here is the PDF version of an Empathy Map template for you to try yourself.  

Fill in the printable version of the Empathy Map with our particular case of in mind. Consider The Founders Reading Guild audience to see how simple it can be to complete the canvas.

✅ Once you’ve finished, you can view how I completed the Empathy Map and compare it with yours.

This map is a one-page representation of our target audience. We aren’t just describing the audience broadly, like “Millennials in business.” Instead, we have tried to understand their goals, needs, wants, environment, pains, and gains. With this more considered picture of them, we improve our chances of being certain we have the right market! So, what happens now? We need to translate this understanding of our target audience onto our Business Model Canvas.

Fill in the Customer Segment Block 

So, now that we have analyzed our audience, we are ready to start filling in our BMC:

• Customer Segment block (PDF of the Customer Segment block here) 

What is the best way to transpose/translate what we have on our Empathy Map onto our BMC?

Well, this might seem a little unhelpful, but there is no one definitive way. Remember that this process aims to help you develop and understand your business model, so the simple answer to this question is “whatever works best for you.” As long as it clarifies your customer segment, it will be enough for you to start completing the other blocks. Which is just what we are about to start next!

Once again, if you’re working on your own business idea at the same time, this is a great moment to fill in the customer segment block of your BMC!

Let’s Recap! 

• Consumers’ expectations about the products and services they commit to have grown. They are more demanding than ever before. 

• This means you must understand your customers’ needs and wants and plan to deliver an experience that meets (or exceeds) their expectations.

• An Empathy Map is useful for building a rich understanding of your potential customers. 

You put the customer at the heart of the approach, with empathy for the kind of person they are. An empathy map contributes significantly to the business model development. Now it’s time to think about how to provide a delightful, satisfying customer experience - aligned with their needs/wants while ensuring you make money for your business.