Interviewing users is a useful way for business owners, product managers, and other workers to learn more about their customers. An effective interview can facilitate a deep exploration of a customer’s wants, needs, goals, and challenges.
Businesses can use this information to figure out who their ideal customers are and come up with new, innovative products or make existing ones better in order to meet market needs and drive future growth.
If you want to start a business, make a new product or service, or improve an old one, listing your customers’ jobs to be done is a great way to learn about them and how you can better serve them.
Conducting customer interviews is a crucial part of developing products and services that truly meet your customers’ needs By taking the time to have in-depth conversations with your customers, you gain invaluable insights into their pain points, desires, and motivation for using your product
However, customer interviews are only as good as the questions you ask You need to ask the right open-ended questions to uncover detailed information about your customers’ experiences
In this article, we’ll explore 10 great questions product managers should ask customers during interviews. We’ll also look at some best practices for getting the most out of your customer interviews.
Why Ask Customers Questions in Interviews?
Before diving into specific questions, let’s look at why customer interviews are so important for product development.
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Gain empathy – Putting yourself in your customers’ shoes through interviews builds understanding of their perspective. This empathy shapes your product vision.
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Identify pain points – Conversations reveal frustrations and challenges customers face. You can then develop features to solve these pain points.
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Validate ideas – Customer feedback provides validation (or rejection) of product ideas before devoting resources to building them.
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Drive innovation – Interviews uncover needs that may not yet have solutions. This knowledge sparks creative thinking and innovation.
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Build trust – Customers feel valued when you seek their input. Interviews make them active partners in product development.
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Mitigate risk – Testing concepts with customers lowers the risk of developing features users don’t want. Their feedback steers your product roadmap.
Clearly, customer interviews generate the qualitative data you need to build successful products. But where do you start?
10 Great Open-Ended Customer Interview Questions
Here are 10 open-ended questions that product managers should ask customers:
1. Why?
This simple but powerful question uncovers your customers’ motivations. Asking “why” peels back the layers to reveal their core needs.
2. How do you do that today?
Learn your customers’ current workflows. This highlights areas where your product could simplify or enhance their processes.
3. How do you know you’ve had a successful year/month/day?
Discover how your customers define success and what milestones they want to achieve. Design features that help them meet their goals.
4. How do you feel about your current solution?
Emotions influence decisions. Gauge emotional connections to identify weaknesses in competitors’ products.
5. What is the most frustrating thing about your current solution?
Pinpoint specific pain points you can alleviate with your product. Reduce customer frustration.
6. What do you wish you could do that you can’t do today?
This golden question sparks ideas for new features that fill gaps in the market. Solve unmet needs.
7. If you could wave a magic wand and change one thing about our product, what would it be?
Cue creative thinking. See your product through your customers’ eyes to improve the user experience.
8. What keeps you up at night?
Discover customers’ deepest worries. Position your product as the solution to their concerns.
9. What else have you looked at to solve this problem?
Learn about competitive solutions. Highlight your product’s advantages over alternatives.
10. Is there anything else I should I have asked?
Leave room for customers to share additional insights you didn’t think to ask about.
Best Practices for Customer Interviews
Beyond asking the right questions, following some best practices will ensure you get the most value from customer interviews:
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Prepare – Plan a structure for the interview but also be flexible based on the conversation flow.
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Set context – Explain the purpose of the interview so the customer provides relevant information.
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Active listening – Don’t just wait for your turn to talk. Listen intently to understand, not to respond.
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Ask follow-up questions – Use “Tell me more” and “Why is that?” to draw out more details.
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Take notes – Capture key points and illuminating quotes to reference later.
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Review notes after – Synthesize learnings soon after the interview while it’s fresh in your mind.
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Share insights – Socialize interview findings with product and marketing teams to inform planning.
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Say thank you – Show customers you value their time and opinions by expressing gratitude.
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Keep engaged – Continue the conversation through surveys and early feature previews.
Conducting excellent customer interviews takes practice. But the insights gained are well worth the effort. Follow these tips to have more meaningful conversations that reveal your customers’ true thoughts and feelings.
Turning Interview Insights into Action
The end goal of customer interviews is not just feel-good conversations. You need to be able to apply users’ feedback to improve your product.
Here are some ways to turn interview insights into concrete actions:
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Map pain points to new features on your product roadmap
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Change messaging to reflect how customers describe their challenges
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Update user personas based on motivations and emotions uncovered
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Re-prioritize roadmap based on which needs users say are most urgent
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Identify areas of friction in the user experience to refine
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Develop new pricing plans if interviews reveal barriers to purchase
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Create onboarding flows that guide users through key milestones
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Launch end-user feedback surveys on specific concepts discussed
The key is analyzing patterns in the feedback to find common themes. What did multiple users identify as a top frustration or need? Which desired features align with your product vision? Then apply what you learned to positively impact the customer experience.
Continuously Learn From Customers
Customer interviews generate actionable insights you can implement in your product experience. But don’t stop there. Continuously engage with customers through:
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Feedback forms – Embed forms to gather user input on new features.
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Advisory Boards – Establish a council of engaged customers who consult on strategy.
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Usability testing – Observe real users interacting with your product UI.
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Support interactions – Mine tickets for common questions and complaints.
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In-app messaging – Prompt for feedback at key moments within your product.
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Public roadmap – Share future plans and gather votes and ideas.
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Product analytics – Monitor usage data to see what people actually do in your product.
No matter which methods you use, keep the customer voice front and center throughout the product lifecycle. Continuously gathering feedback ensures your product evolves to meet users’ changing needs.
Start Building the Product Your Customers Want
Conducting insightful customer interviews takes work, but pays off through building products that truly resonate with users’ needs. Spend time preparing open-ended questions that uncover your customers’ perspectives. Dig deeper with follow-up questions to learn detailed reasons behind responses.
Make interviewing customers an ongoing practice, not a one-off event. The more you talk to users, the better you understand what they want you to build. Developing customer empathy directly drives your ability to create successful products that solve real problems.
So grab your notebook, schedule some customer calls, and start building the product your users want! The insights are waiting to be uncovered.
Questions to Ask During a Customer Interview
Use the following open-ended questions to kickstart your interview. If you want to learn more about the user’s reasons for using your site, ask them follow-up questions. This will help you understand how they make decisions. The point of these talks is to find out what the person hired your service or product to do.
What Other Options Did You Consider When You Made Your Decision?
There are often a variety of possible solutions for a given need. For instance, if someone wants to buy something so they can get to and from work every day without any problems, they might have choices like a car, a bicycle, or public transportation.
People must first choose the mode of transportation that works best for them, like a car. Then they must choose the brand, model, and color of the car they want to buy.
It’s easy to become fixated with competition that’s directly related to your product. Instead of focusing on the fact that the customer chose to buy a sedan over an SUV, for example, look at the other choices they could have made. You might be surprised to learn your product is competing with a solution you hadn’t previously considered.
CUSTOMER SERVICE Interview Questions & Answers! (How to PASS a CUSTOMER SERVICE Job Interview!)
FAQ
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