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What questions do you ask during customer interviews?

Alexey Shashkov

1yr ago

31 replies

Hey, product makers! 🙌🙂 What questions do you ask your customers/prospective customers during customer interviews?

Replies

Carsten Pleiser

2 x Founder • Advisor • Angel Investor

- Tell me about your old solution? - How long have you been doing things that way? - Tell me more about that: - What did you like and didn't you like? - So when do you have the first thought you may need something new? - After that first thought, then what happened? - How did you go about to finding a new solution? - Did you immediately go out to find new solutions? - Who did you ask?

Alexey Shashkov

Inspired product maker

@ckpleiser Howdy, Carsten! I’ve written your question down. Thanks a lot, man! What’s the most challenging part about customer interviews for you?

Music. Pictures. Words.

@ckpleiser thanks for sharing :)

Carsten Pleiser

2 x Founder • Advisor • Angel Investor

@shashcoffe You already asked me this ;) No challenges.

Alexey Shashkov

Inspired product maker

@ckpleiser Sorry =) Thank you again, Carsten.

Carsten Pleiser

2 x Founder • Advisor • Angel Investor

@shashcoffe Mate, actually there is something that sucks. Pulling together list of ICPs to contact based on criteria like: 1. Drove the buying decision, not a champion (who felt the pain and championed the switch from the old solution to the new) 2. Are highly engaged 3. Most financially viable with highest ACV and highest paying plan 4. They "get it" and the problem it solves and how it works, no burden on support 5. Converted long enough ago but not too long ago (3-9 months ago is recommended) At the moment, I do this all manually looking at Stripe, Intercom data & Pipedrive.

Lowcoder and automator.

The questions that have always helped me gain more info were : - do you see the situation as a concern? - what workarounds did you employ to bypass/overcome the situation or problem in hand? - what have you done to solve the issue? The subsequent questions are off shoots from the response to the above.

Alexey Shashkov

Inspired product maker

@krisdhar Hey again, Krish. Thanks for replying here and on Twitter. Much appreciated! What’s the hardest part about conducting customer interviews for you?

Quentin Schueller

Hello! There's a good book on this subject with great examples, on how to speak to your customers. It's "Mom Test" from Rob Fitzpatrick.

ML researcher

@quentin_schueller I don’t like the title of the book “The Mom Test” - which kept me from reading it for a long time - but I think it is hands down the best book for learning about customer interviews. Talking to Humans is a really short book that I also found useful.

Alexey Shashkov

Inspired product maker

@quentin_schueller Hi, Quentin! Yeah, that’s a great book. I've read it twice. What are your favorite questions to ask during customer interviews?

Alexey Shashkov

Inspired product maker

@enderm Howdy, Ender! Thanks for sharing “Talking to Humans.” I’m gonna read it. How many customer interviews have you already conducted this month?

Music. Pictures. Words.

@enderm Talking to Humans - thanks for sharing

Alexey Shashkov

Inspired product maker

@w_j Hey, buddy! Are you conducting customer interviews?

What happened the day you finally decided you needed to solve this specific pain? How did you research solutions? What solutions did you consider? Now that you have a solution, what's the one thing you can do now that you couldn't before? What made you confident that you found/chose the right solution? Who influences you the most in your industry? Where do you spend most of your time online? What the one thing you hate about your industry? Anything else you would like to tell me? Always ask them to elaborate or ask a deeper question after they answer. Surface level answers won't get you what you need.

Alexey Shashkov

Inspired product maker

@dawn_veltri1 Hey, Dawn! I owe you one! I’ve written your questions down. How many customer interviews are you conducting? How many interviews have you already made in Dec?

Music. Pictures. Words.

@dawn_veltri1 Dawn, thanks for sharing.

Lior Galante Cohen (Vaza)

Team Lead @ Amy

- What is your role? - Tell me a bit about your company. - What tools are part of your tech stack nowadays? - What are your main challenges (when it comes to X)? - How are you currently solving problem Y?

Alexey Shashkov

Inspired product maker

@lior_galante_cohen Hi, Lior! You’re the best commenter! I owe you one! Good questions! How many of these interviews do you do a month? How many have you done in December?

I am the Product Owner @ Vidmonials

I ask a mixture of open-ended and close-ended questions during customer interviews. I usually ask these major questions. - What do you think of this product? - Are you satisfied with this product? - If not satisfied, what are the reasons? - Would you please name some alternative products? - What product were you using before this product? - How can we improve this product? - How would you feel if you could no longer use this product? - What other solutions have you considered? - Please rank this product from 1 to 10

Alexey Shashkov

Inspired product maker

@elena_cirera Hi, Elena! Thank you for sharing your list of top questions. I appreciate that! How many customer interviews do you conduct? How many ones have you already had in December?

Building @Wonderpath

I absolutely love the resources on survey design and UX research from Maze. If you haven't checked out the question bank (https://www.producthunt.com/post...) that @ash_oliverrr created, do it! :)

Alexey Shashkov

Inspired product maker

@ash_oliverrr @tanyasharma That’s awesome, Tanya! I owe you one! Do you conduct UX-tests with your users on Zoom calls?

Building @Wonderpath

@shashcoffe - Yes, via zoom calls. We've used Maze as well for usability testing and getting async feedback.

Alexey Shashkov

Inspired product maker

@tanyasharma Tanya, that’s awesome! Thanks for sharing your experience! Can we have a Zoom conversation to chat a little about that?

UX Designer & Design Advocate @ Maze

Thanks for the share and shoutout @tanyasharma!! 💙 love the discussion as well, have heard from lots of teams running Maze + Zoom combination tests 🤘

Building Notesally.com

Things that I try to learn from the customer interviews (in the context of whether my product is useful to them or not): 1. Do they have the problem X? Is solving that their focus? 2. When was the last time they had this problem? 3. What have they tried to solve this problem? (If they have not tried in some way or other, may be it is not that urgent to begin with) I got these questions from Jen Abel of JJellyfish from one of her conference talks. Shameless Plug: Also, I wrote about 5 questions that I removed from my conversations - https://notesally.com/blog/remov...

Alexey Shashkov

Inspired product maker

@vivek_ganesan Hello, Vivek. I really apprecite your reply. Thanks for sharing your questions and your article. That’s really helpful! How many customer interviews do you conduct per month? Haw many ones have you already had in December?