Customer interviews

Customer empathy, customer centricity, thinking outside-in etc are all terms that are being used frequently when talking about important factors when an organization aims at developing products or services that customers really want. One very important approach to obtaining that knowledge is to conduct customer interviews, but does sitting down with customers and chatting about a little bit of everything mean that you will automatically gain insight detailed enough for you to draw conclusions and create actions on? Possibly, but not likely. As with a lot of things in life, the more prepared you are, the more value will you get.

“Last time I came unprepared to an interview was 1967. It was awful. I will never forget it. I still get sweaty palms when I think about it” - Jan Guillou, famous Swedish journalist and author. ???

In this post we will provide you with some recommendations that hopefully will help you get more value out of your interviews.

Open-ended questions vs focused open-ended questions when conducting customer interviews with the aim of discovering

You've likely heard about the significance of using open-ended questions in interviews, especially when the goal is to delve deeper and explore. They are a key component of any interview that aims at exploring. However, the drawback lies in their lack of specificity, potentially leading to superficial responses lacking in value. Therefore, it is recommended to also ask focused open-ended question. In a customer interview, asking focused open-ended questions involves directing inquiries towards specific topics while allowing for free-form responses. This approach encourages depth and detail, uncovering nuanced insights. In contrast, open-ended questions provide broad prompts without specific direction, potentially yielding varied responses but risking superficiality. Focused open-ended questions deepen understanding, fostering engagement and empathy, while open-ended questions offer flexibility at the expense of specificity. The former resembles a guided exploration that focuses on targeted areas, while the latter resembles a wide-ranging conversation, potentially lacking depth. Both have their place, but the former is more effective for precise insight gathering.

So, if you ask “Tell me about your experience with our product”, chances are that the answers will be quite broad and not offer valuable insight.?

If you instead ask “Tell me your experience while installing our products”, chances are bigger that this will result in a more in-depth answer creating actionable insight.

If you want suggestions of possible areas to ask your focused open-ended questions on, think of the different steps in a customer journey. ?????

Understand the problem before you ask about the solution

In customer interviews, the focus should be on understanding the customer's problems rather than pushing your own solution. Leading with a solution can bias the conversation and detract from truly grasping the customer's needs. Customer discovery isn't about selling; it's about uncovering what matters to the customer.

By prioritizing understanding over selling, you avoid framing the conversation around your interests rather than the customer's. While it's okay to keep your solution in mind, the primary task is to identify the customers problems and how significant they are. If these aspects don't align with your solution, you may need to explore alternative paths.

Testing jobs, pains, and gains before presenting a solution is crucial. Jumping straight to the solution risks misunderstanding the customer's answer. If the customer rejects the solution, it's unclear whether it's due to a non-satisfying solution or a misalignment with their actual problems i.e. the solution doesn’t tackle a major problem and therefore is not seen as bringing value by the customer. Generating evidence around customer priorities first ensures a more informed approach to problem-solving.

Try to get facts and not only opinions

When interviewing a customer about a specific challenge, focusing solely on opinions rather than also seeking factual information can diminish the value of the insights obtained. Relying solely on opinions for implementing new ideas can be risky, as they may not accurately reflect reality. Investigating facts, on the other hand, reduces this risk significantly. Therefore, it's important to distinguish between opinions and facts.

Questions should aim to uncover factual information. For instance, instead of asking, "Do you find this task problematic?" ask about measurable impacts, such as, "How much time or money do you estimate is lost when dealing with this problem?"

In cases where quantifying metrics is challenging, explore how the customer defines success or failure. For example, ask, "What's the minimum improvement that would still be considered successful?"

Without quantifiable measures of success and failure, it's difficult to assess the value of a solution to customers. Therefore, understanding how customers measure success and failure is essential for evaluating the effectiveness of a solution.