Similar to Five Whys you can just keep asking the same question to customers to get to the root of what is going on…
Customer: “We need this export feature so I can send this report in Excel?”
Me: “Why?”
Customer: “My boss wants this report emailed to him on Friday and he only uses Excel”
Me: “Why does he need the report?”
Customer: “He wants to see how many tickets we’ve answered.”
Me: “What does that tell him, or in what cases would he be surprised or worried? Too few tickets? Too many?”
…etc.