DIGITAL TELEPATHY
Have You Talked
to Your Customers
Lately?
A 7-Step Guide to Enterprise
Customer Interviews.
Table of Contents
00.
I N TRO D U CTI O N
01.
BU I LD YO U R TE AM
02.
CR E ATE A R E SE ARCH PLAN
03.
N AR ROW YO U R FO CU S
04.
R ECR U I T PARTI CI PAN TS
05.
CO N D U CT I N TE RVI E WS
06.
SYN TH E SI ZE R E SU LTS
07.
SH AR E I N SI G H TS
00.
Introduction
Talking to your customers is the best
possible way to validate your assumptions.
The primary difference between a customer and a user is
that a customer gives you money. If youre interested in gaining
powerful insights about purchase triggers then read on!
Customer interviews are a powerful tool for discovering what
buyers need to make a purchase decision. These can pair well
with user interviews that may inform your product roadmap.
Consider sharing this eBook with others to ensure a
high-level of involvement from your core project team.
01.
Build The
Right Team
Cross-functional representation is
essential to your success.
Bring in team members from Product Marketing,
Product Management, Design, and Development.
Including the right people early on will keep
your project on track and increase buy-in to the
recommendations that come from the interviews.
Since your hopeful team members are likely to
be very busy and have other responsibilities,
be sure to communicate the time commitment
when recruiting for this project.
Hypothesis:
Assumption
s:
02.
Write a
Research
Plan
Agreement on goals will ensure a
smooth process and improve results.
A research plan will help your team communicate the
purpose of the interviews to outside stakeholders and
keep you on track during the process.
If youve previously created
proto-personas then you probably already
have many assumptions documented.
But you know what ass
VALIDATING ASSUMPTIONS SHOULD ALWAYS BE
A PRIMARY GOAL OF CUSTOMER INTERVIEWS.
uming does, right?
03.
Narrow
Your Focus
Goals
Refine your research plan so you
arent asking impossible questions
or undertaking a project with no
real value.
How do you intend on applying your research? Is the
output a new release of features, an updated persona
list, or a revised editorial calendar?
?
?
Be honest. Your goals and questions must
facilitate your intended output.
KEEP YOUR RESEARCH FOCUSED BY MAPPING
INTERVIEW QUESTIONS TO GOALS.
04.
Recruit Participants
Proper screening will reduce wasted time and increase interview quality.
You are spending considerable human capital to
Whether or not you have an existing database of
conduct these interviews, and you may even be
customers, you should still screen participants to
paying participants.
find people who best match the use-case youre
trying to validate.
04.
Recruit Participants
1
Write a screener
Distribute your screener
Confirm and schedule interviews
Every question in your screener
You may need to distribute
These discussions may require a
must have a single purpose: to
your screener to dozens
Non-Disclosure Agreement or other
screen out participants you dont
(even hundreds) of people to
forms of legal protection for your
want. Put the questions that are
find a sample size of willing
company or the participants. Take
most likely to screen people out
and qualified participants.
care of legalities first. Then
at the start of the survey and
Aim for 5 or 6 people per
schedule interviews in-person,
work your way down.
round of interviews.
online, or however.
W RI T E YO U R OW N SC R E E N E R USI N G
T H IS T E M P LAT E F RO M G O O G LE
V EN T U R E S M IC H A E L M A RG O LI S.
K E E P TH I S MAN TR A: I F I
I N TE RVI E WE D AN OTH E R
PE R SO N , WO U LD I LE AR N
SO ME TH I N G D I F F E R E N T?
A REM INDER P HONE CA LL THE
DAY B EFORE WILL HELP
REDUCE NO SHOWS .
05.
Talk to Your
Customers
DOs
Start off easy by asking questions about
their background to build a rapport.
Get specific on events and scenarios.
Ask open-ended questions about
goals and experiences.
Mix methods: listen and watch.
Allow for tangential discussion.
Customer interviews should be a
dialogue not an interrogation.
Have a conversation, dont follow a script.
Facilitate a conversation by creating a discussion
guide that includes the types of questions youll
ask along with the topics you hope to cover.
DONTs
Ask leading questions.
Ask about the future.
Correct what participants say. You
want to learn their story, not how
well they conform to yours.
Disclose your hypothesis or what
you need to learn to do your job.
Let people design the product... thats
your job. If you get a feature suggestion,
simply ask How would that help you?
to understand the underlying need.
06.
Synthesize
the Results
This is the time for reflection,
summarization, and comparison.
The goal is to identify common traits and behaviors
among the customers you interviewed, and plot
your customers along a spectrum line. For example:
technical/non-technical, novice/expert,
non-funded/funded, lazy/ambitious.
This exercise will uncover patterns. Some
individuals will be clustered together across multiple
spectrums congratulations you have a persona!
07.
Share Your
Insights
Give Customer X a face and name.
Visualize the results of your customer research in a
deck or a poster. A well-designed document can help
to rally your entire organization behind a customers
needs and wants.
Approaching business challenges with the
customers perspective in mind will help you
make decisions that are better for business.
Wed Love to Help You
If you share our passion for design, wed love to include you in the
growing list of companies we work with and consider friends.
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