Understand the problem before proposing a solution

Northstar Services is a fictional example. Its customer operations team reports that staff sometimes re-enter request details as work moves between teams. Use this conversation to understand what happens, when it matters, and what the customer considers a worthwhile improvement—not to pitch a predetermined answer. Keep customer-specific notes and follow-up in your organization's approved CRM process.

Colleagues around a whiteboard covered in sticky notes

A focused 45-minute agenda

Reusable example agenda; these are facilitation time boxes, not a live workflow.

Time Focus Intended output
0–5 min Opening context Shared purpose, participant roles, and permission to ask and clarify
5–20 min Understand the problem A clear account of the current process and a recent example
20–35 min Explore evidence Reported impact, frequency or scale, workarounds, and unanswered questions
35–45 min Agree the next step A corrected summary, one question to resolve, and an agreed follow-up owner and timing

Prompts that uncover the customer's experience

Ask one question at a time. Follow the customer's account before exploring possible improvements.

Open with the current process

“Could you walk us through what happens from the moment a request arrives to the point it is ready for the next team?”

Ask for a recent example

“Thinking about the most recent time this happened, what did each person or team do?”

Explore impact and workarounds

“What changed for the people involved?” and “What do you do today to keep the work moving?”

Clarify scale and variation

“How often does this come up, based on what you can observe?” and “Does it differ by request type or handoff?” Record estimates as the customer's estimates.

Define meaningful improvement

“What would be different in the work if this improved?” Let the customer describe a useful outcome in their own terms.

Turn a leading question into an open one

Instead of “Would an automated form solve this?”, ask “Where do details get lost or repeated, and what happens next?” The open version explores the experience without presuming a solution.

Capture evidence without mixing it with interpretation

Record what the customer described, what your team inferred, and what remains unknown as separate things.

Evidence

What to capture

For each concrete example, note the situation, roles involved, sequence of events, reported frequency or scale, impact, workaround, and unanswered questions. Attribute statements to the customer or participant role rather than presenting them as independently verified facts.

  • Recent example: which request and handoff the customer described
  • Roles involved: who entered, checked, or received the information
  • Impact and workaround: the effects and compensating steps the customer reported
  • Unknowns: details to verify before drawing a conclusion
Illustrative example

Worked example: repeated request details

In the fictional Northstar conversation, the customer operations lead describes a recent request whose details were entered by one team and re-entered when another team picked it up. The lead estimates that this occurs on several requests in a typical week; no measured count is supplied.

  • Customer-reported: a recent request was entered twice during a handoff
  • Customer estimate: the pattern occurs on several requests in a typical week
  • Team interpretation: the handoff may not carry all needed context; this is a hypothesis, not a confirmed cause
  • Unknown: which request types are affected and whether the estimate can be checked against an approved source

Close with an agreed next step

A useful close gives the customer a chance to correct the record and leaves both sides clear about what happens next.

The conversation itself does not submit or store a record. Put customer-specific notes and follow-up in your organization's approved CRM process.

  1. 1

    Summarize what you heard

    State the current process, the example discussed, the reported impact, and the workaround in neutral language.

  2. 2

    Invite corrections

    Ask, “What have we misunderstood or left out?” Update your summary based on the customer's response.

  3. 3

    Name the question to resolve

    Choose one open question that would change your understanding, such as which request types are affected.

  4. 4

    Agree who follows up and when

    Confirm an owner and a mutually agreed timing aloud. Record the customer-specific agreement in the approved CRM process.