Customer interviews

A customer interview is a conversation with someone who has the problem you want to solve, about what they did the last time it happened. Before, decide what you want to learn. During, ask for stories, not opinions. After, judge how important and frequent the problem is, and whether this person is an early adopter. The questions themselves are in 45 customer interview questions.

One way to find out if a problem is worth solving is to interview the people who have it. It looks easy. It is hard to do well.

Start with the field guide. Its interview sheet has three parts: what to be clear about before the interview, what to explore during it, and what to conclude after. Why customer discovery comes first, how to get your first customers and ten tips in French from the book Passez en mode startup complete the basics. The problem interview guide is made to print and take along, with its note-taking template and Alexander Cowan’s Customer Discovery Handbook.

Then the practical questions. Where do you find people to talk to? How do you get to the why behind what customers tell you? Why does a statement often draw out more than a question, and which of six social needs is someone voicing? Why does a survey tell you less than a conversation, and how do you avoid the usual mistakes of a focus group? One team ran 167 interviews before launching. With B2B clients, it can pay to break the rules.

Inside a large company, finally, the sales team guards the customer relationship and research too often ends up in a drawer.