| Interviewer | Customer | Date |
|---|---|---|
| [name] | [name] | [DD/MM/YYYY 00:00am] |
These interviews are about the customers and their problems. Do your best to keep the conversation focused there.
No hypotheticals, no projections, no guesses. Never ask a question with the word “would” in it like:
- “If we built a product that solved X problem, would you use it?”
- “How much would you pay for something that did X?”
- “Would you like your existing solution better if it did X?”
When you use the word “would”, you’re making a thinly veiled attempt to validate your product…not their problem. Don’t do that.
This helps build rapport with the customer and leads to better/easier communication.
Statements that demonstrate empathy include:
- “I’ve experienced exactly the same problems myself”
- “You’re not alone there. I’ve talked to several other people who have said the same thing.”
- “That makes sense”
- “I can see why that’d be hard”
Make a little small talk, it’ll help make everyone (including you) more comfortable.
Examples:
I heard the weather there is [Google the weather in their location - insert here]. How’s that been?
Did you catch the [insert a sports team in their location] game?
How’s your week been so far?
Tell me a little more about what you do...
Before beginning it is important to start with some background information and outline the purpose of the conversion in addition to acknowledging and addressing any concerns people may have about privacy etc.
An example introduction that can be used/adapted is:
Firstly thank you so much for taking the time to talk today - we really appreciate you taking the time out of your busy schedule - we're hoping this will only take around 30 mins of your time at most but don't feel like you need to rush.
We're doing some market research and talking to a number of individuals such as yourself to help us understand what problems you may face as a [Customer Role].
Any notes we take or information we collect will ONLY ever be accessible/used by our small team and NEVER shared with or published for people outside of our organisation.
Lastly, if there are questions you don't want to answer we'll also respect that.
Do you have any questions first before we dive in?
We'll start with some of the generic demographic questions. If customers are not comfortable answering all or some of them that is fine - simply make a note and move on. It is important to be conscious of peoples privacy concerns with these ones.
Example introduction for these questions:
To start we're going to ask some really basic questions covering generic demographics such as age. Again, if you don't want to answer any please just let us know. Here we go...
| Ask | Guide | Response |
|---|---|---|
| Age | Bands: 13-29, 30-39, 40-49, 50-59, 60-69, 70+ | |
| Gender Identity | Use your judgement on whether to ask this one - politely ask if necessary | |
| Location | Country, State etc. if not already known | |
| Education | Bachelor's degree etc. | |
| Income | Bands: < 30k, 30-50k, 50-100k, >100k | |
| Marital Status | Single, Married, Divorced etc. | |
| Job/Role | Entrepreneur, Founder etc. |
Some quick questions to help us understand and validate our hypotheses around customer technology usage.
Example introduction for these questions:
Next up we're going to ask some quick questions to help us get some insight into your technology usage.
| Ask | Response |
|---|---|
| Mac or PC? | |
| Desktop or Laptop? | |
| Apple or Android? | |
| Do you own/use a tablet? | |
| What social media platforms do you use? | |
| Are you the type of person that eagerly awaits and updates to the latest technology as soon as it comes out or someone that waits? | |
| Do you have any experience writing/editing HTML or CSS? | |
| Do you know any programming languages? |
This is the most important part of the interview and aims to help us learn about the customer’s problems, if they’re worth solving and just maybe...how to solve them.
Key points:
- Involves iterating through 6 key questions.
- It is ok to rephrase them or to ask follow up questions if there is a train of thought worth exploring.
- Using follow up questions like "and why is that important to you?" will help identify benefits / what customers value.
Example introduction.
Awesome, thanks so much for answering all of those. We now have a series of questions that will hopefully help us understand a little more about the sorts of problems/challenges people in your situation/position/industry regularly face. It's these sorts of problems/challenges that we're looking to help people solve.
- The words they use to describe the problem.
- If they try to deflect or avoid the question keep exploring it with them, rephrasing if necessary.
- Remember to empathise.
- The real problem they're trying to solve.
- Emotions you can evoke in your marketing copy.
- May just be answered as part of the natural flow of question 1.
- As you talk with the customer, you can keep asking them, “Why?" or "And why is that important?" until it doesn’t lead to any new answers. This is a useful technique in helping to determining benefits ladders (Refer to 5 Why's / Benefits Ladders in LPP - pg 41 / 5 Whys - Game Storming.
- Opportunities to clarify - this is your chance to ask "dumb" questions.
- Phrases and jargon you can turn into marketing copy.
- Have they tried to solve it in the last 6-12 months?
- If not, it can't be that important to them - start over asking about a different challenge.
- Even if they have simply reached out to a support channel or asked on twitter - the act of searching can give us some indication of how deep the problem is.
- If we have to bring the problem up and they’re not taking steps to solve it, it's reasonable to assume they won't use our solution. If they've never looked for a solution the problem is probably not a big enough concern for this customer to find it, pay for it, learn it, or use it.
- The channels you can use to find other customers like this one.
- Why they settled on a specific solution? Their values i.e. was it because it had specific level of support, was it cheaper than other solutions etc.
- Another good opportunity to explore why some things are important/valuable to them.
- How to differentiate your solution from the competition.
- Again this is another good opportunity to explore why some things are important/valuable to them.
If our hypothesised problem doesn’t get mentioned, start again with question 1 and iteration #2.
BUT rephrase to be:
What's the biggest challenge you're facing as a [Customer Role] with respect to [Context/Problem] ?
This is an ideal time once talking through problems to raise any additional questions that may be relevant to our hypothetical problem.
Other follow up questions may be:
- How much are you spending to solve this problem now?
We're actually exploring a solution to [insert problem] problem/s. Can we contact you if we find a viable solution?
- Contact Information
- Depending on responses and the customer, they may fit into a couple of the problems we are looking at.
Do you know 1 or 2 other people who are struggling with [insert the problem] that you think might talk with us?
- More customers to interview.
Thank them for their time etc.
Example that can be adapted:
This has been incredibly helpful, thank you so much for taking the time to talk today. If you have any questions later please do not hesitate to get in touch. I hope you have a good rest of the day.