Customer Research Interview Guidelines and Pitfalls

Talking to customers to uncover unmet needs is the most critical part of product strategy. The key to growth is a deep understanding of your target customers. Simply relying on internal ideas is not enough, nor is it enough to just look at google analytics and product usage data. You actually have to talk to the market.

Read my article The Complete Guide to Customer Interviews That Drive Product-Market Fit. When you get to the customer interview, take heed of these crucial guidelines! 

CUSTOMER RESEARCH INTERVIEW ​GUIDELINES

• Keep it informal and friendly.
• Be humble, you are there to learn from the interviewee
• Don't give a formal presentation or demo, but do bring stimulus material like screenshots that you can point to informally from time-to-time in the conversation.
• Lots of asking "why?". If it feels important, don't assume!
• Lots of taking notes.
• Stay in the problem space, don't jump into solutioning
• Be ready to deviate from the script to follow the interviewee's passion
• Don't get defensive. Criticism is good feedback, keeping asking why they feel that way.

 
CUSTOMER RESEARCH INTERVIEW PITFALLS TO AVOID

• Not understanding the market enough to have a meaningful interview with a customer in that space
• Assuming you already know what the customer wants or is going to say
• Not bringing "stimulus" material to get the conversation going, or bringing stimulus material that is too narrow and specific (becomes a product demo meeting)
• "Order taking" - customer says they want a feature (a solution) rather than exploring a problem
• Taking the customer's words at face value without challenging/gathering evidence ("they said they would pay $1M if we just add this feature")
• Being too rigid in the interview, forcing the customer into a script 
• Not getting to the root problem. It can be uncomfortable to keep probing ('why do you say that?') to get to the real problem.  
• Getting defensive if a customer criticizes some aspect of your product or business, or says something positive about a competitor
• Jumping into evangelizing/selling mode instead of listening and learning
• Introducing bias into the discussion by asking leading questions, or even leading with non-verbal tone and gestures