What are The Right Questions to Ask When Talking to Users and Getting Feedback?

Is there a strategy behind eliciting the best and most useful responses?
Ignore complements - they worth nothing. People like to say things like "this is a great idea" for different reasons.

1. They wish to support you.
2. They are polite.
3. You are too pitchy on your idea, so complementing you is the only way to get out of this conversation.

Keep it casual - don't announce that you are going to do an interview. Just manage a casual conversation, ask him about his work and life, people like talking about themselves, and may feel uncomfortable with an official "customer interview."

Be ready to hear the truth - Some people can tell you that the problem does not exist for them. Be prepared to accept that, and make the right decision.

How can you make sure they're giving you honest feedback?
Ask for commitment - you probably think what commitment can you get if you still have no product. People can pay you with their time, network connections, and reputation. If a customer is ready to meet with you once a week to give you feedback, it means he is interested in the solution. Does he ready to recommend you to his other businessmen friends?

Is there a baseline set of questions that one should ask regardless of what the product is?
Ask about the present - the most valuable information is what your user is doing today to solve his problems. Does he hire any solution today? Does he manage to use SaaS products to solve his problems at all? Did he try Google the solutions? What products have they tried already?

How many questions are too much? - For those of us who need restraint :)
Always have five questions, and just see how the conversation goes.

What shouldn't you ask or say when talking to users?
Don't ask hypothetical questions -

1. "do you like my idea?",
2. "would you pay for that?",
3. "How much would you pay?"
4. "what if I add this feature?"

And so on. It just doesn't work. People don't know what will they do in the future, they know what they do today and need today. They will say you "Yes" and it will mean nothing to you.

I would recommend you to read The Mom Test - the best book ever on customer interview

Is there a strategy behind eliciting the best and most useful responses?

Two valuable goals user outreach helps with are (the order matters):

1. finding product/market fit
2. calibrating a product with good product/market fit to optimize conversions

Product/market fit

Say you've just launched an MVP. There's a good chance your product needs some work before it optimally addresses the demands of whatever market it's targeting. Talking to your early users can help to clarify this; tools like Google Analytics give you a satellite view, but only by actually talking to users (and/or using the product yourself) can you adequately gauge how effectively the product meets people's needs.

Conversion optimization

Now say you've found product/market fit, to the best of your judgment — plenty of people find your product and seem to really get a lot of value out of it. But they don't convert, whatever that means for your product (for most it means enter their payment info, but it could also mean simply enter their email addresses into a newsletter form).

Why is this happening?

You can read a lot of high-level data, and maybe that will give you some useful insights. But usually it's better to hear it from the horse's mouth. If you talk to users on Twitter, message boards, and email threads, you get a much richer picture.

How can you make sure they're giving you honest feedback?

You can't. But if 5 out of 10 customers say they hate the obtrusive popup on your site or that $50/mo is too expensive, you should err on the side of gullibility or find a different market where the average user is more trustworthy.

Is there a baseline set of questions that one should ask regardless of what the product is?

Almost certainly not. It's possible a given company will have a single point in its sales funnel where 90% of prospective users bail. This hypothetical company would probably do well to focus all its customer questions around that particular chokepoint.

How many questions is too much? - for those of us who need restraint :)

This comes down to instinct and empathy. How do you feel when confronted by online feedback forms with a dozen questions? I would err on the side of minimalism and ask the most pressing questions first, before slowly adding more. Experiment, note user reactions, adjust.

What shouldn't you ask or say when talking to users?

Probably the same things you shouldn't ask or say in everyday conversation. For small indie hacker-sized companies, I've noticed users tend to be very open to casual, informal conversations with founders. At least when it comes to B2C companies. I'm sure this is less applicable in the B2B space.

Channing did a good job answering the questions, but will add my 2 cents

Is there a baseline set of questions that one should ask regardless of what the product is?

Is the product solving their problem?

People pay money to fix issues or pains that they have. If your product fixes those pains, they'll likely stick around.

It's also useful to know how they solved the problem before adopting your product and how they compare.