Common Customer Interview Techniques

Getting feedback from customers should be easy. Just call them up and ask them what they want in your product. Right? Um… no. Customer interviews are a helpful way to get feedback about your product, but you need to make sure you ask the right questions in the right way. Here’s a collection of guides to make sure the time you spend talking to your customers provides some useful results and not just a wish list you have no plan to deliver.

How to conduct a great customer interview. Customer interviews are a great opportunity to dig deeper into how people interact with your product and your brand. An effective customer interview can reveal customer frustrations, help you with product development, and tell you a lot about the customer experience and how you can improve it. If you want to know how to conduct a customer interview, the folks at Vowel put this guide together for you. (via Vowel (acquired by Zapier) )?

Lead better customer interviews with this downloadable guide.? Customer interviews are an opportunity to put a prototype in front of real people to learn what is and isn’t working so you can adjust accordingly. This step helps make sure your team is building the right thing. In order for it to work, you need to get the right information from your interviewees, and that means asking the right questions. Jackie Colburn put together a customer interview guide and shared some general guidelines that give you context for the guide and help you understand how to craft questions that will get the right information flowing. (via: Jackie Colburn )

Customer interviews: How to recruit, what to ask, and how to synthesize what you learn. Customer interviewing is one of the most valuable activities a product team can do. It’s simply the easiest, most sustainable way of learning about your customers and what they need. This knowledge gives teams a competitive advantage that compounds over time. Whether you are brand new to conducting customer interviews or have conducted hundreds of customer interviews, this guide from Teresa Torres covers everything you need to know. (via: Teresa Torres )

13 Open-ended customer interview questions for product managers. There are plenty of different feedback channels you can use to capture the evolving voice of your customer, but customer interviews are ideal for gathering in-depth, granular insights. Giving users this space to share their perspectives means you can get to the heart of customer behaviors, challenges, and opportunities—all key customer data points that can help you deliver a better product and overall customer experience. The team at UserVoice shared these 13 open-ended customer interview questions you can use as a starting point for your conversations. (via: UserVoice )??

How to do customer discovery calls like a pro: 5 tips you should know. Whether you are starting a new business or growing an existing one, talking to customers is essential for success. But just talking to them won't be enough. Leo Wendler gives you five important tips that will help you interview your customers like a pro. (via Jamie )

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