Customer Development Interviews

A new book by Cindy Alvarez about customer interviews reminded me that it is often important to review the basics of our tradecraft.

There are a number of important points to consider when reaching out to potential customers. In the Lean Methodology, it is essential to complete customer interviews before building your first minimally viable product. Ongoing interviews with clients also helps you to stay in touch and cement relationships with clients as well.

It is best to interview someone face-to-face. Clearly, that is more time consuming approach, yet more effective than Skype, telephone, or online interviews. A key component of these interviews is the observation of body language. That observation is lost with anything less than face-to-face meeting. Video conversations only capture part of the picture, and the nuances of observation cannot be completely captured.

The second important issue is to help the interviewee get past the politeness factor. No one wants to deliver bad news. Your goal is to make them feel comfortable. There are two ways past the politeness factor. The first is to change the way questions are asked. Asking, “What do you dislike about the product?” makes it difficult to yield honest results. Instead, asking “How would you improve this product?” frames the question as a respectful call for assistance. Everyone wants to help. No one wants to be impolite.

Cindy Alvarez starts just about every interview with four basic questions:

Tell me about how you do __________ today?

Do you use any other tools or have any specific tips or tricks you use to help?

Is there anything specific that you always do before or after you do _______?

If you could have a magic wand and be able to do anything else that you can’t do today, what would it be? (Forget about whether or not it’s possible, just anything.)

These questions are open-ended and allow for understanding customer behavior and activity. It is also crucial that there is not a single mention of your product.

Here are a number of other tips to use during customer interviews:

  • Try to have two people attend
  • Work from an outline of 3 – 5 questions
  • Focus on real behavior not hypothetical
  • Shut up
  • Probe
  • Don’t overstay your welcome
  • Debrief the same day
  • FOLLOW UP!
  • Work to their Schedule
  • Disarm the politeness training
  • Ask open ended questions
  • Don’t influence
  • Ask the Right Questions
  • Frame the Questions Correctly
  • Parrott back
  • Get Psyched to hear things you don’t want to hear
  • Ask for Introductions

The goal of your interviews is to position the interviewee as the expert. A good interview avoids yes/no answers, and gives potential clients an opportunity to tell a story – one that may cause them to think of related problems they’re having, or may trigger more questions for you to ask later.

Remember, your goal is to determine how your customer is currently dealing with specific tasks.  What do they like about their current solution or process? Is there some other approach that they have taken in the past that was better or worse?

Attempt to discover what they wish they could do that currently isn’t possible or practical. How would that make their lives better? Who their organization is directly involved with addressing such approaches? How long does it take to make a decision?

Your interviewees’ feelings and state of mind are also important. How do they feel when they are performing this task?  How busy/hurried/stressed/bored/frustrated? You can learn this by watching their facial expressions and listening to their voice as they answer your questions. What are they doing immediately before and after their current task? How much time or money would they be willing to invest in a solution that made their lives easier?

There is a lot more to being good at customer interviews. Like most anything else, practice is crucial to getting better.

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6 thoughts on “Customer Development Interviews

  1. Because we need to observe the expression, body language, and other subtle activities of interviewers to better grasp the idea and perspective of the interviewees, it is important to make a face-face interview. And we also need pay attention to some of the interview process should have some issues of courtesy. In this paper, the author also emphasizes some of the problems we need to pay attention to during the interview. If we can get these skills, we can do better job during an interview. It can make us get our goal easier.

  2. When conducting interviews and surveys on potential customers, it is important that we keep in mind the information we are seeking when asking our questions. If we worry too much about asking customers what their pains on directly, we can miss essential feedback about certain features that we are trying to implement. Two of the most important things that we can get from a potential customer thru an interview is their feelings and reactions to situations, and their why. How does a customer feel and react when they are happy? Why? How does a customer feel when they are bored? Why? Understanding the ‘why’ is essential to be able to develop a business model that can truly benefit a customer. Once you have conducted interviews on the public to find out their ‘whys,’ you can begin creating your minimum viable product.

  3. This is one of several articles I have read that details tips on how to professionally conduct interviews for startups and for the most part it seems to reiterate other central ideas I have seen. For instance, conducting interviews in-person seems to be the best way to ensure a quality interview can take place. It is also important to be a good listener and to generally do more listening than talking other than to steer the conversation from topic to topic. In my experience with interviewing up to this point, these tips have been very useful and my interviewees seem to be very receptive to my questions. I plan on modifying my approach to future interviews based on this article.

  4. Costumer development interviews require face to face meeting. Other forms of meetings will make it hard to fully communicate with your interviewees. Achieving costumer honest opinion requires understanding of the person. Simply asking questions and answers is not the key to understanding. We need to observe the interviewees body language and face expressions to better understand their point of view. This will help the interviewer to adjust what questions to ask, when to ask them, and how to use this knowledge to improve the product. Therefore, face to face costumer development meetings are essential to get an honest feedback.

    • That is very true. Face to face meetings is always the best method for interviews. However, in many instances not always possible. The techniques and wording of questions can also be quite effective to elicit a good response. No matter the method, just get your potential customer to keep talking about the context of their situation and decision-making process about getting the job done.

      • In difficult times, such as during COVID, face to t=face interviews are not always feasible. Yes, in-person interviews are always best. However, when not possible an interview over internet software and telephone is still better than no interview at all. In addition, how you frame questions can provide better responses as well as asking about behaviors and actions that will also elicit a good response.

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