Customer Discovery Interviews

Overview

Customer Discovery Interviews are a fundamental research tool to help you understand your users and how to solve their needs.

In GLIDR, each interview can be stored as Evidence - Interview and then connected to other data as needed. The platform enables tracking of interview subjects with their contact information and attachments for transcriptions or audio/video files.

In Brief

"Customer discovery interviews are conducted with potential customers to gain insight into their perspective, pain points, purchasing habits, and so forth." These conversations also build empathy between customer and entrepreneur while narrowing the target market and providing deep understanding of market needs and customer psychology.

Helps Answer

• Who is our customer?
• What are their pains?
• Where can we find our customer?

Tags

• B2C
• B2B
• Qualitative
• Customer
• Channel

Time Commitment and Resources

Most customer discovery rounds require at least five separate interviews, though some entrepreneurs conduct as many as 100 before drawing conclusions.

Time per interview ranges from 15 minutes for consumer products to 2 hours for B2B sales conversations. Recruiting interviewees represents the largest time investment—from a quick local coffeeshop visit to lengthy LinkedIn outreach for specialized verticals.

Costs are typically minimal or zero. Interview subjects are often offered gift certificates ranging from $5 to $50 USD.

How To

Plan the Interview

1. Define the learning goal for the interviews.
2. Define key assumptions about the customer persona.
3. Create a screener survey with simple questions identifying whether potential interviewees match your target customer persona.
4. Make an interview guide. Note that it should not be a strictly followed script.

Sample questions:

• What's the hardest part about [problem context]?
• Can you tell me about the last time that happened?
• Why was that hard?
• What, if anything, have you done to solve that problem?
• What don't you love about the solutions you've tried?

5. Prepare a handy template for notes or check tools for recording your interview (first verify legal restrictions on recordings).
6. Prepare thank you gifts, e.g., gift cards.

Conduct the Interview

1. Frame: Summarize the interview's purpose with the customer.
2. Qualify: Ask a screener question to determine customer relevance to your persona.
3. Open: Warm up questions get the customer comfortable talking.
4. Listen: Let the customer talk and follow up with "what" and "how" questions.
5. Close: Wrap up the interview and ask for referrals or follow-up interviews.

Debrief the Interview

• Make notes promptly; video or audio recording can be helpful.

Interpreting Results

Record data based on the following framework:

• Job: What activities are making the customer run into the problem?
• Obstacle: What is preventing the customer from solving their problem?
• Goal: If they solve their problem, then ______?
• Current solution: How are they solving their problem?
• Decision trigger: Were there pivotal moments where the customer made key decisions about a problem?
• Interest trigger: Which questions did the customer express interest in?
• Persons: Are there any other people involved with the problem or solution?
• Emotions: Is there anything specific that causes the customer to express different emotions?
• Measurement: How is the customer measuring the cost of their problem?

Potential Biases

• Confirmation bias: The interviewer can be prompted to sell their vision if the interviewee's differs. The interviewee feels compelled by sympathy to adjust answers to the interviewer's expectations.
• Order bias: Question order can affect answers. Try running questions in different orders across interviews.

Adapted from The Real Startup Book, edited by Tristan Kromer and published by Kromatic, under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.