First potential customer interview, what to ask?
by John JoubertI have my first customer interview for PTOBot scheduled this week.
I’m hoping to learn more about the pain points for users and what they would need to be able to better coordinate and manage their teams time off in a remote setting.
I’ve also got a WIP of the sales landing page up and running at: ptobot.com
What are some good questions to ask in the customer interview?
Also if you manage a remote team would you be willing to do a 15 minute call? I’d love to talk to you too! Feel free to reach out to me :)
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I’ve done over 100 customer discovery interviews in the past two months. It gets easier the more you do it. The Mom Test is definitely the resource to look into. My tips:
- let them talk! Phrases like “Mmhmm”, “tell me more”, “interesting... what else” are your friend.
- sometimes I would just repeat almost verbatim what they just said and then they’ll say “yup, oh and also....”
Example:
Me: “gotcha, so you said that you manage PTO for your team with a big excel spreadsheet and that updating it is time consuming...”
Interviewee: “yeah, it really is, like I carve out time every Monday morning to go over it...”- don’t preempt the convo with your ideas/solutions. Just talk about the problem, you want to find out how they solve it and what their pain points are. Only after the conversation should you alone start to think of solutions.
Good luck! The interviews are fun! Sometimes you don’t get much out of people, that’s ok. There’s always more people to talk to!
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Wow, this is super helpful. Thank you for sharing this insight. I will make sure I try to let folks talk and see where the conversations go... I really appreciate you taking the time to share your thoughts here...means a lot.
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Do not lead them in anyway to your solution!
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Gotcha, will do!
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From Startup School https://youtu.be/MT4Ig2uqjTc
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Will give it a watch!
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If you haven't already, read "The Mom Test" or watch this for a general gist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0LwbFZkyRKk
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Thanks, I'll check it out!
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