Customer interviews are the foundation of good product discovery.
Customer interviews are the foundation of modern product discovery. Learn how you can enhance your interviewing skills to gain more valuable insights from these conversations.
Wondering why it’s so important to do customer interviews in the first place? Start here:
- Ignore the Competition, Talk to Your Customers Instead
- How to Talk to Your Customers (Despite Henry Ford and Steve Jobs)
To interview well, you need to be a good active listener. Most of us think we’re good listeners, but the reality is that most of us are not. Luckily, there are tangible steps you can take to improve your listening skills.
- Familiarize yourself with the essentials and practice the skills of active listening: How to Develop Your Active Listening Skills.
- Learn why people give the answers they do (and how to better understand their motivation): The “Why” Behind Product Feedback.
- A big part of listening is having empathy for the person you’re speaking with: 5 Steps for How to Develop Empathy.
Are you interviewing the right people? And do you have the right people involved in the customer interviewing process? Read these two posts to find out:
- Why You Are Probably Interviewing the Wrong People (And How to Fix It)
- Why Product Trios Should Interview Customers Together
Once you have all the basics down, you can focus on refining your customer interviewing technique. Check out:
- The Ladder of Evidence: Get More Value from Your Customer Interviews and Product Experiments
- Ask About the Past Rather Than the Future
- Why You Are Asking the Wrong Customer Interview Questions
- How to Take Notes During Customer Research Interviews
Are you wondering how these techniques play out in real life? Check out this case study from Product Talk client Arity:
Finally, customer interviewing takes practice. That’s why I created a 4-week course where students get hands-on practice with customer interviewing. You can read about it here:
- This Keystone Habit Will Fuel the Rest of Your Continuous Discovery Habits
- The Results Are In! Feedback from the First Continuous Interviewing Cohort
The Continuous Interviewing course is designed to help you get deliberate practice with all the skills you’ll need to get more out of each interview: asking the right questions, getting actionable insights, improving your active listening skills, taking better notes, synthesizing what you learn, and automating the recruiting process.
