Recruiting Customers
What is recruiting customers?
Recruiting customers is the process of finding and scheduling customers to participate in interviews and research activities. For continuous discovery, teams need to automate this process so that customer interviews automatically appear on their calendar without manual work each week.
The goal is simple but powerful: imagine waking up Monday morning and seeing customer interviews already scheduled on your calendar without you having done anything to make it happen. This automation transforms recruiting from a time-consuming task into a sustainable system.
What are common approaches to recruiting customers?
Teams typically try multiple methods before finding what works for their context:
In-app intercepts like Ethn.io or Orbital pop up a screener question directly in the product, asking if users are available for a conversation in exchange for an incentive. This works particularly well for consumer products.
Insider connections help enterprise teams tap into existing customer relationships to identify potential interview participants.
Customer support triggers involve asking support teams to flag specific scenarios and route those customers to the product team for interviews.
Paid recruiting services can supplement other methods, though automation is preferred for sustainability.
The key is experimentation—what works for one company or product might not work for another. Teams should try multiple approaches until they find a method they can automate.
How can teams automate their recruiting?
Successful automation involves several elements:
Targeting ensures you recruit the right users at the right time—for example, waiting until users have spent enough time with the product to have meaningful feedback.
Screening questions qualify people in or out based on specific criteria relevant to your current discovery work.
Reminders via email and SMS reduce no-shows and keep interviews on participants' radar.
Personalization like including the interviewer's name and role helps users understand they'll be speaking with a real person from the product team.
Teams can adapt their recruiting approach as they learn from discovery, refining targeting, screening, and messaging based on what they discover.
Learn more:
- Product Discovery Basics: Everything You Need to Know
- 3 Best Practices for Adopting Continuous Product Discovery
Related terms:
- Customer Interviewing
- Continuous Discovery
- Product Trio
Last Updated: October 25, 2025