How do you use customer interviews to generate problem ideas?

2 Recruit your interviewees

The next step is to find and invite people who fit your target customer profile. You can use various channels and methods to reach out to them, such as email, social media, referrals, online communities, or surveys. You should offer some incentives or rewards for their participation, such as discounts, vouchers, or free trials. You should also explain the purpose and duration of the interview, and ask for their availability and preferred mode of communication.

3 Conduct your interviews

When you conduct your interviews, it's important to create a friendly and comfortable atmosphere. Introduce yourself, your project, and the consent and confidentiality terms. Additionally, use open-ended questions that encourage elaboration and exploration. Listen actively and empathetically, probing deeper into the reasons and emotions behind their responses. Ask for examples or stories to illustrate their points and record or take notes of the key points and quotes. This will help you get the most out of your interviews.

4 Analyze your data

Once you have completed your interviews, it is important to review and organize your data. To analyze your data, you can use a variety of techniques and tools, such as transcribing and coding your recordings or notes, identifying patterns, themes, and insights across your data, creating personas, journey maps, or empathy maps to visualize customer segments and their experiences, and generating problem statements or hypotheses based on your findings.

5 Validate and prioritize your ideas

The final step is to validate and prioritize your problem ideas. To do so, you can use surveys, experiments, or prototypes to validate your assumptions and measure customer feedback. Additionally, you can use the Kano model, the ICE score, or the RICE score to prioritize your ideas based on customer satisfaction, impact, confidence, and effort. Lastly, you can utilize the MoSCoW method, the Eisenhower matrix, or the Impact vs Feasibility matrix to categorize your ideas based on must-haves, should-haves, could-haves, and won't-haves.

6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?