This article has been updated with new information and resources. The original article, written by Dr. Agostinho Almeida, was published in September 2016.
Entrepreneur and educator Steve Blank’s Lean Startup approach to entrepreneurship rests on a simple premise: Learn what works before you commit significant time and money to an idea. For entrepreneurs, one of the most reliable ways to do that is to talk directly with potential customers.
Customer interviews can help you understand the people you hope will use your product or service, and the insights you gather can challenge your assumptions and, in time, help you build a stronger solution.
Getting useful insights takes more than asking the right questions. It depends on how you approach the conversation, how you listen, and your willingness to hear something other than what you expected.
The tips below build on that: how to ask, how to listen, and what to do with what you hear.
Getting Started with Customer Interviews
Before conducting customer interviews, there are a few things to consider:
Focus on the problem. Remember, at this point, you’re not selling anything, so focus on the problem first.
Define customer archetypes. Before you start scheduling interviews, get clear on who you need to learn from. Your customer isn’t always the end user—buyers, beneficiaries, and influencers may have different needs and perspectives that are important to understand. Take time to identify customer archetypes and to tailor your questions accordingly. Our handout “Thinking Like an Entrepreneur: Who’s My Customer? How Will I Know?” can help you identify the customer groups connected to your innovation and better understand what motivates them.
Develop an agile mindset. Customer interviews sometimes don’t go as planned, and that’s often when they surface what you actually need to know. Stay focused on what you want to learn, but be willing to follow the conversation toward unexpected needs, perspectives, or opportunities.
Be prepared to listen and learn. Your goal is to gather as much useful information as possible. Record the interview, with permission, so you can stay fully engaged and present instead of splitting your attention between listening and taking notes.
Find the right people to talk to. Get creative—cold outreach emails, warm introductions, and LinkedIn are all fair game. VentureWell accelerator programming participants and alums can tap into the VentureWell network to make connections.
Develop a consistent system for analyzing your interview results. Before you start, decide how you’ll capture and track key insights as you go. Look for recurring needs, challenges, and patterns; that’s what turns individual conversations into clear next steps.
During your customer interviews, it’s important to:
Focus on questions that validate the problem. Who encounters the problem? How do they deal with it?
Develop questions that help you collect specific, concrete data you can later test. Avoid questions that lead to subjective or speculative answers.
Tailor questions to understand customers’ habits, not just their opinions. How someone behaves often tells you more than how they say they feel.
Ask open-ended questions that leave room for what you don’t know. Interviews are opportunities to learn, not to assume. Let the customer fill in the blanks; that’s usually where the real problem surfaces.
Summarize insights during the interview. Phrases like “If I understand you correctly,” “I hear you saying,” and “If I were to summarize” confirm that you’ve understood correctly, and give the customer an opportunity to clarify if you haven’t.
Finish each conversation with: “What did I not ask?” Assume you’re asking the wrong questions, especially in initial interviews. This allows you to catch what you missed. “Who else do you suggest I interview?” The best leads often come from the people you’ve already talked to. You may assume the VP of Business Development is the right person to interview, when the real insight comes from the plant managers.
Follow up and thank them for their time. Networks are built one relationship at a time. Following up also gives you a chance to ask additional questions or to request an introduction to someone they mentioned.
Avoid these types of questions during customer interviews:
“What do you think about our breakthrough technology?” Avoid talking about your technology or solution in the initial conversation.
“Do you think our product is too expensive?” You’re not ready to discuss pricing yet. Focus on the customer’s costs, budget, and day-to-day operations.
“Do you think this problem will exist in X years? Would a product like ours help you in the future?” Avoid questions about the future—focus on the customer’s past experience.
“Would you be willing to sign a non-disclosure agreement (NDA)?” An NDA signals there’s something to protect, which narrows the conversation before it starts. At this stage, you want it wide open and focused on the problem, not the solution.
“Would you mind answering these survey questions?” Avoid closed-ended questions that might lead people toward predefined answers. Instead, ask them to describe their pain points in detail.
Keep These In Mind
Finally, be sure not to commit the four deadly sins of customer interviews:
- Death by PowerPoint. Don’t use interviews to pitch or present your venture. Customer interviews are for listening and learning, not selling.
- Death by demo. Don’t bring your product! A demo or prototype can be distracting. Your focus is to learn as much as possible about the customer and their view of the problem.
- Death by passion blindness. Customer interviews may lead to unanticipated discoveries about your product or field, so be prepared to go where each conversation takes you.
- Death by idea/solution bias. The interviews are only useful if you analyze them honestly. Report the findings as they are, not what you hoped they’d say.