I'm a dev, and we typically ask ourselves what are the customers needs? Then we typically go from there by visualising how the customer would possibly solve their problem today. Then we sketch up ways we could solve their problem with our solution.

If we find ourselves saying "we don't know what the user does today" or "we don't know what the user needs in this scenario" we typically reach out to customers and politely ask for a meeting and try to ask questions that only pry at their needs and problems, rather than hinting at our solution.

We also have metrics and opt-in analytics of our services so we can monitor what the customer do with our product as well.

We have UX designers on our team that really really emphasise this type of way of working/thinking and I think it helps us devs understand our customers better, although it can feel slow and annoying at times to keep asking these questions and doing prolonged workshops.