Tactics for Better Customer Interviews

I often interview customers (mobile game developers, marketers, executives, etc.) to gather product feedback and better understand their needs. This customer-centric focus was the primary driver of our latest pivot and continued success at PlayHaven. It would be cliche to state how important it is to listen to customers, but you shouldn’t listen to everything they say.

People don’t do what they say they do. People don’t do what we think they do. People don’t do what they think they do.

- IDEO

Here are a few tactics we use to help identify customer pains and needs:


Ask for a Stack Ranked Priority List

When you ask how important a particular feature is, you’ll find everything’s “#1 priority”. In isolation, it’s difficult for people to recognize or communicate how important something really is without a comparison. Asking for a stack rank priority list forces customers to choose favorites. Alternatively, you can ask them to choose between two “high priority” features.

Now don’t take their feature request as the gospel - customers often don’t really know what they want. You must still understand the underlying pain their suggestion is intended to solve. There may be several other (better, easier) solutions.


Let Them “Sleep On It”

Far too often I speak with a customer and received a stack rank priority list only to find a week later, their priorities change. Priorities often shift from top-down executive/board meetings, changes in the market, and competitive pressures.

Customer interviews have a shelf life. Eventually they become stale and expire.

Customers often give higher priority to their most recently experienced pain. Give customers a few days after the meeting to compile their stack ranked priority list. This gives customers time to reflect and think more deeply about their needs. It’s also important to keep customers in the loop before and during development of new features to give them an opportunity to communicate changes and provide “higher fidelity” feedback.


Avoid Common Interview Mistakes

You’re better off to not talking to customers than conducting a bad interview. Bad interviews can lead to misunderstanding and misguided product direction. Avoid leading the customer, being stubborn with your own ideas/assumptions, talking too much, asking yes/no questions, pitching, and sticking to the “script”. There are severalgreatarticles on this topic.


Get Multiple Perspectives

We’re often unaware of other’s needs and naturally tend to prioritize our own. Focusing on one individual may lead you to solve their particular pain, not the company’s.

Take into account the role of the customer you’re interviewing - a QA Engineer will likely have a different perspective than a Marketing Manager. Interviews are also more effective when done one-on-one to give the customer the freedom to speak their mind independent of the rest of their teammates; however, unless your product is built solely for one audience, always gather feedback from multiple people in different roles.


Find the Major Pain

Customers will tell you what pains them, the tricky part is identifying minor vs. major pain. Focusing on minor pains is dangerous. Solving minor pains creates the illusion that you’re building a desired product when in reality, customers barely care. Focus on major pain.

Major pains can be identified more easily by the level of excitement they express as they describe their problem (meeting face-to-face makes this much easier), if they’ve attempted to hack together their own solution, or if they can quantify the cost of the pain.


What techniques do you use when interviewing customers? Let me know in the comments or tweet at me.