Cautionary tales
I've lost count of the number of times a customer gave (luke)warm feedback only to never use the product. Most common mistakes:
- Leading questions: "Sounds like X could be better, right?โ Pretty much anything could be better, but most improvements don't matter. More objective phrasing: "It sounds like you've been frustrated with X? [pause, let them respond] How important is solving this compared to all the other problems you have?"
- Focusing illusion: "I wanted to chat about an express reorder flow". If you dive prematurely into a topic early in the customer interview process, you risk creating false positives. There's a saying: โnothing in life is as important as you think it is while you are thinking about it.โ Instead, save the focusing for a later interview or the back half of the interview after establishing context and relative importance
- Making it about yourself: โCan I get your thoughts on an idea Iโm very excited about?โ Cut out the last part re: excitement. Most people don't want to diss a topic you care about, so they'll go along with what you say. Don't pitch and TELL customers what to think, SHOW them your ideas
- More examples along with how to combat this
Another common mistake is that we tend to overcomplicate our solutions for the customer problems we're solving:
This usually stems from a cloudy understanding of the problem, and a tendency to continue adding new features, instead of evaluating the efficacy of the whole. In the coming sections, we'll cover how to build a clearer understanding, and how to scope for focused impact.