Bad Customer Development Questions and How to Avoid My Mistakes Summary: Although Customer Development can give us tremendous insight into market problems, it takes a lot of time – time that’s wasted if we do it incorrectly. Worse yet, poorly worded questions can cause us to reach wrong conclusions about what people want. The best questions don’t require customers to speculate about their behavior. Here I share real examples my bad questions and mistakes and offer some better alternatives. If you’re starting Customer Development you’re getting ready to talk to a lot of potential customers. You started with an an idea, wrote down your key assumptions, and started flipping through contacts to see who you can interview. Awesome! Unfortunately, conducting face-to-face customer development interviews is a skill that takes practice. “Learn Nothing” Questions I call “Learn Nothing” questions those that don’t result in any learning, just wasted time. “What do you think of my idea?” I LOVE talking about startup ideas. “If you could wave a magic wand…”
The Lean Startup Circle Wiki / Customer Interview Templates and Resources Tips for B2B Customer Development Interviews by Sean Murphy 3 Great Steps to Customer Development (Google Spreadsheet) by Ray Wu The Achilles Heel of Customer Development by Ash Maurya Customer Problem Interview Form by Ash Maurya Tips for Customer Development Interviews: Templates and Pressure Points (LSC Forum) by Jaime Pabon Customer Development Interview Template by Jaime Pabon How To Actually Do Customer Development (and not waste your time) by Rob Fitzpatrick 12 Random Customer Development Tips by Tristan Kromer 12 Tips for Early Customer Development Interviews (Revision 3) Note: also see my 11 Customer Development Anti-Patterns post. Each time I give a talk introducing people to qualitative “customer development” conversations, I try to revisit my points. A few months ago, I gave this talk to an entrepreneurship class at Columbia Business School, and once again the list and messages evolved. Below you can find my latest thinking (here is version 1 and 2) 1. Focus groups are a group-think, distraction-filled mess. 2. Have your assumptions and thus learning goals prioritized ahead of time. 3. Decide up front if your focus is going to be on learning a user’s behavior and mindset, and/or getting direct feedback or usability insights on a product or mockup. Put “behavior and mindset” first in your discussion flow. If you want to get feedback on a product, whether on paper or digital, do this after digging into behavior and mindset. 4. If you don’t do this, you might find yourself selling or convincing, or even hearing what you want to hear. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.
Twelve tips for customer development interviews - dancingmango - dancingmango In the past couple of years I’ve had the privilege of mentoring at the Lean Startup Machine in London. Saturday morning is when the teams first ‘get out of the building‘ to do customer development. It is easy to preach that mantra of getting out and talking to customers, but how do you do it? How do you get the most out of customer development interviews? What do you say? Here are twelve tips that I’ve presented. 1. I recently heard this from an agency pitching social media work (take your proposition to social networks where your customers are, rather than assuming they’ll come to you) but the statement holds true for customer development. 2. Be clear who you want to talk to. Once you’ve framed in your mind who you are going to talk to, be clear what you want to learn. For example, probing recent cinema experience may lead you to ask “tell me about the last time you went to the cinema”. 3. So you’ve got a plan and you are out prowling the streets. The opening move is simple. 4. 5. 6.
Tips for Mastering Customer Interviews | Jen Helms So you have a great idea, now what? You have probably heard plenty about the Lean Startup Movement and maybe have read Eric Reis’ book The Lean Startup but putting lean into practice is really hard. You need more information before you build but the problem is that building product is fun and customer interviewing isn’t always so fun. I have spent the last several months making and launching MVPs for a few different ideas that I have had. Surveys fail because they don’t give you the nuance of people’s reactions and they don’t allow you to ask follow up questions. The first tricky part is finding customers to actually interview. B to C Strategies: Community groups to find individuals willing to talkMechanical Turk – there is a great tutorial on Customer Development Labs on getting interviews set up this wayCold approach – ie standing outside of relevant places of business (with permission) and walking up to people, while not very fun, can be effective B to B Strategies: Key assumptions
26 Resources to Help You Master Customer Development Interviews “Get out of the building!” How many times have you heard lean startup evangelists say that? Steve Blank often comments “There are no facts inside your building.” So, you need to get out and talk to customers. This is sound advice, but where do you start? How do you find people to talk to? I’ve compiled a list of resources to help you answer these questions, because effective customer development is vital to product management. Finding Customers to Interview 1. 2. 95 Ways to Find Your First Customers for Customer Development – Looking for some ideas about how to find customers to interview? 3. 4. 5. Interviewing Customers 6. 12 Tips for Early Customer Development Interviews – Want to know what to focus on early in customer interviews? 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 12 Random Customer Development Tips – Tristan Kromer shares 13 tweetable tips for customer development. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. Book Suggestions 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. Happy learning!
How I Interview Customers | Customer Development Labs Interviewing Customers is a Special Kind of Torture Talk to a stranger. Fun.That stranger is immensely busy…and hates being sold things. When I started interviewing customers, the only thing I cared less about than talking about other people’s problems, was asking about them. “Would you use a product that does _____________?” and “How much would you pay for it?” Turns out, those aren’t the most important questions…they’re the most misleading. Let’s Fix That Despite my early misgivings, learning to interview customers has become one of my most indispensable skills. For me, interviewing customers makes customer development…fulfilling. Instead of being stressed about what the customer is going to think about my idea, instead of fumbling over my words and worrying about the perfect way to pitch my product, a customer interview isn’t about me, my product, or my words. Other people’s problems are interesting – when you’re in a position to solve them. How Not to Interview How To Interview 2. 4. 5.
Create products that people love by validating your idea first You’ve done it before. You asked someone this question: What do you think of my idea? Most people will tell you it’s a good idea and then they’ll go on to tell you why it’s good based on their own personal experience. These people are assuming that you want to hear something positive from them. I find myself hearing the question and asking more questions back. Most of the time if you are asking other people about the idea itself, you are at the earliest stages of the idea and haven’t validated it yet. I love this early stage. The possibilites are endless and you need to figure out how to create something people love. If you haven’t already, you’ll soon realize that it’s easy to waste time on ideas that don’t matter. I’ve learned the hard way. Consumer ideas focused on emotion, entertainment and leisure are more difficult to validate compare to products that businesses buy. Businesses directly pay for the products they use. Here is a three step process you can use to validate ideas: The survey
How to Structure (and get the most out of) Customer Development Interviews Running a startup puts a ton of responsibilities on your plate. From marketing to sales, ghetto-HR to accounting, development to project management, you’re wearing a million hats. We all know that Lean Startups methodology and customer development are important, but *actually practicing* it can be hard (if you’re not familiar run to CustDev.com *right now* and get Brant and Patrick‘s book The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ASAP!). As you commit yourself to “getting outside the building” to talk to your customers and truly quest for Product-Market Fit, it’s essential you make the most of those discussions. One of the hardest things for newcomers to customer development is structuring their questions for customer development, so I’d like share how I structure interviews to maximize their effectiveness. I’m writing a book on Building Customer Driven Products. You can sign up for updates, early access to chapters and help shape the topics I cover by signing up here. Like this: