How to conduct effective customer interviews

A step-by-step guide for setting up and conducting verbal experiments.

Customer Interviews Best Practices

Customer interviews aren’t about collecting agreeable nods; they’re about uncovering truths, however harsh they may be. Plan meticulously, execute with disciplined curiosity, and analyze with radical honesty. If you’re not prepared to hear that your product or strategy has serious flaws, you’re doing it wrong. Embrace the discomfort—it’s the fuel for genuine innovation.

Getting raw, uncensored feedback might sting, but in the world of business strategy and innovation, it’s the only way to build products and services that truly resonate.

Preparing Interviews

Don’ts

What to avoid at all costs

Do’s

What you should always do

Just go out of the building:
While the intention might be good, approaching people on the street without considering legal, industry regulations, and ethical guidelines might do more harm than good for your organization.

Follow the jurisdiction, industry regulations, and ethical guidelines:
Ensure your activities follow the constraints so that the data collected can be transformed into actions.

No success criteria defined, missing Value Proposition:
Without a systematic testing approach, you can’t tell if your insights are relevant to the idea or if you are progressing in risk reduction.

Systematical approach in experimentation:
With a complete business model design, prioritized hypothesis, and structured experiment design, you test ideas systematically.

Conduct customer interviews only:
Just sticking with interviews only, without using artifacts, provides very light evidence that your idea might work. Your level of customer understanding may remain limited.

Use different techniques and artifacts:
Gain a deeper understanding of customers and collect stronger evidence by varying interview techniques and using real interaction artifacts.

Loosely defined customer segment:
Without a shared understanding of the customers you are aiming for, you will struggle to qualify them properly.
Example: You are researching a specific disease treatment for dogs. The customer profile is defined as “Dog Owners” (because all dogs can get that disease). You might screen dog owners who have never faced the challenges that might come with that disease.

Customer segment is clearly defined:
A well-defined customer segment will help you screen out those who do not qualify, providing a better insight base.
Example: Customer Profile: “Dog Owners who have experienced disease XY with their dogs.” You will screen dog owners from whom you can collect valuable facts about the challenges brought about by that disease.

Interviewing customer segment representatives:
Avoid talking only with representatives of your targeted customer segment if they do not belong.
Examples: “Managers instead of employees,” “Doctors instead of nurses,” “Internal stakeholders instead of your customers.”

Interview the targeted customer segment directly:
You must collect firsthand evidence and understand their jobs, pains, and gains to learn if your idea will work.

Freestyle interviews:
Not following or using the script might lead to less productive interviews with fewer new insights.

Use interview scripts as a guidance:
They help you stay focused on what you need to learn.

Robotic interviews:
On the other extreme of the spectrum are interviews that follow the script word for word. Here, you might miss insights by not digging deeper.

Flexible use of interview scripts:
Use the script as a guide, but dig deeper if new insights arise to understand your customers’ jobs, pains, and gains better.

Screening Interviewees

Don’ts

What to avoid at all costs

Do’s

What you should always do

Not qualifying at all:
Interviewing people who are not qualified costs you and your interviewee hours. For example, you are looking for people who own a bicycle and are interviewing someone who does not own one.

Vetting interviewees:
It isn’t a failsafe, but it will save you more time than you invest, and you are increasing the reliability and quality of your data.

Not screening B2B customers:
Some organizations avoid screening or disqualifying their B2B customers because they fear upsetting them.

Screen and disqualify, if necessary, your B2B customers:
In the end, you do both you and your customers a favor. Nothing upsets a business customer more than wasting their precious time.

Conducting Interviews

Don’ts

What to avoid at all costs

Do’s

What you should always do

Pitch your solution:
Avoid mentioning your product or solution during the interview. The goal is to learn about the customer, not to sell to them.
Example of what NOT to say: “Our product does X, which might solve your problem. Don’t you think?”

Focus on pains, gains, and jobs:
Adopt a beginner’s mindset and approach the conversation with genuine curiosity. Assume you know nothing about the participant’s needs, even if you think you do.
Example: “Why did you…?”

Talk more than you listen:
If you find yourself dominating the conversation, stop and redirect the focus back to the participant.

Listen more than you talk:
Aim to listen to at least 80% of the conversation. This ensures that participants feel heard and opens the door to richer insights.

Ask only closed-ended questions:
Avoid questions that can be answered with a simple “yes” or “no.”
Example: Don’t ask, “Do you like your current process?”

Ask open-ended questions:
Use “how,” “what,” and “why” questions to prompt more profound responses.
Example: “What is the hardest part of your current process?”

Ask for opinions:
Avoid questions about what participants think they would do.
Example: “How much would you pay for [our solution]?”

Focus on facts:
Encourage participants to share real-life examples rather than general thoughts or opinions.
Example: “When was the last time…? How often…?”

Think about your next question while they’re talking:
While mentally preparing your next question, you might miss essential nuances in their responses.

Actively listen:
This ensures that you pick up on nuances in their response.

Interrupt the participant.

Let them finish:
Sometimes, off-topic comments reveal unexpected insights.

Use leading questions that bias the participant or imply a desired answer:
Example of a leading question: “You find [specific issue] frustrating, right?”

Stick to neutral language and encourage storytelling:
Example: “What has your experience been with this [specific issue]?“

Schedule the interviews back-to-back:
Not wasting time between interviews sounds efficient to most teams. However, you might miss the opportunity to recalibrate, pause, or adapt your interviews or scripts. You could waste much more time rescheduling interviews or retesting the entire experiment.

Schedule 15-Minutes to debrief:
Plan 15 minutes after every interview to quickly debrief with your partner to recap anything that needs to be revised and what you learned.

Synthesizing and Analysing Interviews

Don’ts

What to avoid at all costs

Do’s

What you should always do

Not validating insights against the Customer Profile:
If you can’t identify the top 3 jobs, pains, and gains of your customers based on insights collected from experiments, you might miss the opportunity to create a Value Proposition that effectively addresses your customers’ needs.

Perform a Ranking Analysis:
You want to ensure you have a solid understanding of your customers nailed down at an 80% accuracy rate in ranking the top three jobs, pains, and gains before proceeding to more time-consuming experiments.

Not keeping your Value Proposition Canvas updated:
Different sources of information may lead to confusion and incorrect conclusions.

One single source of truth:
Keep your Value Proposition Canvas updated with your findings to avoid confusion. Expand it with the data from your experiments.

Failing to act on insights:
Some teams persevere even if the data suggest their hypothesis is wrong and the idea might not work.

Conduct learning workshops regularly:
Use Strategyzer’s “Learning Card” to determine proper actions based on the insights from your experiment.

How to conduct effective customer interviews

A step-by-step guide for setting up and conducting verbal experiments.

How to conduct effective customer interviews

How to follow the jurisdiction

How to find and screen interviewees

Customer Interviews Best Practices

Customer Interviews Best Practices

Preparing Interviews

Don’ts

Do’s

Screening Interviewees

Don’ts

Do’s

Conducting Interviews

Don’ts

Do’s

Synthesizing and Analysing Interviews

Don’ts

Do’s