How to create an MVP using the Concierge Treatment
A six step process to creating a product, service or experience via the Concierge Treatment.
A Concierge MVP is at the heart of lean methodology and is defined as an MVP produced with the minimum amount of technology that allows you to test a hypothesis and gain feedback from a paying member of the target audience through in-depth interviews.
Please note that this process may have to be done for free for a few times (i.e. 3x) to warm up a customer before asking them to pay.
This process often follows a design thinking innovation model or process and can be executed as follows:
Step One: Define the Hypothesis
In order to create an MVP, you must define the problem that you are trying to solve or the idea that you want to validate.
Step Two: Define the target audience
Concierge MVPs are intended to help you gather an in-depth understanding of how a member of a target audience uses a product, service or experience, the value that it brings and the story that unravels around it.
In order to find and service a paying customer, you must define who they are.
Please note that this process may be iterative until you find a paying customer.
Step Three: Carry out the Research
Perform user research, desk research and carry out interviews and remember to record your findings in ways that can be synthesized into insights and other products that augment your ability to generate meaningful solutions for your target audience.
To learn more about the products that could arise from synthesizing your research consult the link below.
Part of the synthesis should be uncovering what the customers "jobs" are and how a product, service or experience could reduce the Bio-Cost, which is known as amount of energy or time required to carry out the "job."
For more information, consult the Value Proposition Canvas and Harvard Business School article linked below.
Step Four: Define the Concierge MVP
Make a plan of how you will visit the members of the target audience, the technology that is required, the manual work that you will do and the In-Depth Interview that you will carry out.
Step Five: Perform the Concierge Treatment
Create calendar events for the visits for the concierge treatment, perform the product, service or experience and carry out the In-Depth Interview.
Remember to take your fee (i.e. $9.95) at the end of the session.
As mentioned above you may have to do this for free the first few times to demonstrate the value to a customer. If after a while customers still don't want to pay you may have to go back to step one.
Step Six: Iterate until you create
delasign's process
Using the feedback from the interviews, iterate on the product, service or experience.
Once you have enough paying customers, you can assume that you have a product-market fit at which point you can create the go-to-market MVP and market it to the world.
Always remember, the work is never done
delasign's process
When creating a product, service or experience (i.e. creations), it is important to note that they are neither a start nor an end.
Concierge MVPs should serve as a way to test creations, along with the value that they provide and the pain points that they resolve in a way that is meaningful, intentional and focused on the target audience and which result in a return on investment (i.e. a product-market fit).
Concierge MVPs might also demonstrate that it's not worth pursuing and thats OK.
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