10 tips for customer discovery interviews

A customer discovery interview is there to understand your customer’s problem. It is not there to validate your idea. These ten tips come from my book Passez en mode startup (Eyrolles), and Les Echos Entrepreneurs published an excerpt on 4 October 2022.

1. Listen, including to the silences

Interviewing is not enough: you need to listen actively, take the time to understand the problem and trace it back to its roots. Get comfortable with silence. When the person goes quiet, ask yourself what they are thinking or feeling at that moment. Often the most useful sentence comes right after.

2. Ask for past experiences

The best way to predict behaviour is to understand how the person behaved before. Ask them to tell you about a specific situation: they go back into their memories and emotions. Listening to their story, you understand their motivations, hopes and frustrations.

3. Do not talk about your idea

I have seen it many times: as soon as a solution comes up, even half-mentioned, the conversation turns to features, and you stop learning. And if I think about my product during the interview, I am no longer really listening.

4. Dig for the need behind the request

“I need the latest iPhone” is not a need, it is a solution. Ask why. What will that phone let them do? The question “why” brings you back to the real need.

5. Separate what people think, say and do

The three do not always match, and most of the time the person does not realise it. Elections show it regularly: polls, which rely on what people declare, sometimes land far from the actual vote. Rely on what the person lived through, not on what they intend to do.

6. Reduce your biases

You walk into the conversation with your biases, and so does the person across the table. They slip into your questions and into how you read the answers. Avoid leading questions. Interview in pairs: one leads, the other listens and takes notes, then you compare what you understood. If you recorded the interview, listen to it again: like a film watched a second time, you will notice what you missed.

7. One person at a time

People speak more freely when they do not feel judged. A colleague or a relative in the room is enough to silence the person you are interviewing.

8. Stick to facts

Separate facts from opinions. “I think this product is great” is an opinion, and it leads you in the wrong direction. “… but I bought the competitor’s one, not as good but nicer looking” is a fact, and it settles the question.

9. Take notes

After 10 or 20 interviews, you will no longer remember who said what. Do not trust your memory: take notes during the interview, or right after.

10. Rephrase

Rephrasing works twice. You check that you understood what the person meant. And you prompt them to keep telling their story.

The customer is the expert on their problem, not on your solution

It is not the customer’s job to tell you what they want. Henry Ford is credited with this line: “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” By asking why they wanted faster horses, you would have heard the real need: getting there sooner. Do not ask customers what they want. Try to understand how they lived the problem, what they did, and why.

To go further: the list of 45 customer interview questions, the full method in How to Interview Customers: a Field Guide, and all my notes on the subject in the guide Customer interviews.