Be constantly in contact with your customers, like user feedback interviews. A good book on how to conduct those interviews so that you get out the information about their behaviour rather than what you think they need (most of the time people don't know what they need) but from their behavior you understand that. I would recommend you also to read this book - https://www.amazon.com/Obviously... it helped us a lot in the interviews with our users. I read it 4h and from it completely change the way we approached our interviews with users.
Interview potential customers about their challenges
Observe them in their natural environment while they work/live
Look for patterns in complaints or workarounds they've created
Focus on understanding the root causes of their problems, not just symptoms. Thanks to domypaper.com I have a lot of time lately to do all that. They save me so much of my important time.
Customer research for sure. We ran surveys and user interviews - I honestly found the interviews to be the most valuable. Asking the right people the right questions will unveil everything!
@ella_ey Incentives if you can! They can be monetary, but don't have to be - we offered discounts on the full product when we launch, and the top 5 most active users a 1:1 strategy session w/ our CEO. I also really like these templates for email outreach: https://www.rallyuxr.com/post/th...