Don't do customer interviews, unless...

The right way to do customer discovery and interviews

Hi PMs

By now you have read 100s of articles and books and blogs about the power of customer discovery and talking to customers.

If you are a startup, you are advised to do early discovery and even solicit early customers before you actually have a product.

If you are in a mature product team, then you are told to talk to customers and build a product and capabilities that will actually deliver value.

You are getting bombarded.

I wrote about the customer discovery process for startups here.

What if you are in a mature product team or even a growing product team. You have an existing product used by many customers and your product has been in operations for at least a couple of years. You have a sales and success team to work with customers. You are continuing to add capabilities, build new features, new products and find new segments.


And you have something that is a treasure trove. You have existing customers to tap into and talk to.


But….Do not talk to customers.

Not yet….

I mean do not talk to them for the sake of it. Especially, if you have :

- no plan on what to ask
- no plan on who to talk to
- no process to capture feedback
- no strategy to learn and take action
- no means to give back value to customers

If you meet the above conditions, then do not entertain the idea of customer discovery or interviews.

Why?

Because you will frustrate the customers and your customer facing teams like sales and success.

If you randomly talk to customers with no well defined outcomes, then you will hear something like these :

"I gave them our needs, and I have not heard a thing"

"We had a discussion but the topics were haphazard"

"I have no idea when our core needs will be addressed"

And your sales team will get frustrated, because the customers will be complaining to them first. And they will have no clue how to respond. Imagine a customer telling a sales account manager in their QBR that they spoke to a PM about a specific set of issues they are having, and they have not heard back.

While some customers want their pet feature to be implemented asap, for the most part they just want to be heard and want clarity on the product direction. After all, they are also investing their time and effort (subscription $) to implement your product.

And as a PM it is your responsibility to help the customer and provide them the clarity.

Why do customer interviews in the first place?

There are numerous reasons for what you would do the with that customer feedback. And it goes beyond improving your product.

Read my other article on how to leverage the feedback and create action plans.

So what is the right way?

If you do want to talk to customers, do it with intent.

First, start with a purpose. Why do you want to talk to customers?

• Is it to test a feature?

• Is it to validate new idea?

• Is it learn about how they are using your product?

• Is it understand their industry point of view for your roadmap?

Next, decide the agenda. Now that you have a purpose, decide what are the best outcomes of these discussions. If you come out of these interviews and say that was a great meeting, think what would make it great.

A great meeting is you get what you wanted from the customer. But if you don’t know what you want, then you will never know. So have the agenda and desired outcome mapped out.

Then create a set of questions and discussion topics.

Finally, you need to actually find the right customers to talk to. You will need to work with your sales and success teams to help you find the best customers.

Based on your purpose, decide what profile of customers you want. For example, let’s say I am validating a new add on product then I should talk to only those customers who have used the core product for at least a year and also they are not at risk of churning.

Ideally, you want to talk to customers who have been using for more than 1 year and are not at risk of churn. These customers have used the product long enough to derive value and are in a position to share their product experience. Look for customers who have had either very good usage or poor usage of features. Make sure you target customers who will provide the relevant information you are trying to seek.

For example, if you are trying to learn more about how customers are using a product in a particular use case, then seek out those customers who are using it accordingly. Check product usage to determine that.

How do you start?

Now that you have decided to do customer interviews as a team, how do you get started.

Here is a template to get you started.

In this Customer Interview template, you will find:

- starting questions
- which customers to solicit
- format to capture the feedback

Finally, the most important step

Remember, I started by saying don’t do interviews if you don’t know how will action the input. This is the part you cannot skip.

You have to take all that feedback and create an action plan on that.

For example :

• adding items to the roadmap

• informing support to handle specific cases

• create new training materials or videos

Create a running document on where you capture all the customer feedback with a plan of action against each.

Do you need to inform customers on your action plan?

You have to be judicious. If they specifically ask about roadmap or feature requests, then be truthful and let them know when they may expect it. No need to give dates.

If you resolved something then absolutely tell them.

At the very least, acknowledge the feedback they have given and let them know how you are planning to take action.

Every quarter, send them an email with an update on what you discussed and any next steps.

These topics will also come up in the account reviews that your sales reps will have with customers on a quarterly or monthly. So let them know what your plan of action is on the items discussed in the customer interview.

An unintended consequence is your customers feel appreciated and will likely retain in the long run. Make them feel they are collaborative partners in your products evolution.

Happy interviewing.

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Let’s start with a 30 min “discovery” call.

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