How you can use customer interviews to improve the way you sell your product.

Jacob Miller

Published in

headwayio

5 min readAug 27, 2018

Great interviews are conducted by great listeners. Approach customer interviews with zero assumptions.

Resources you gain by asking the right questions

New and impactful testimonials

Testimonials are a powerful way to get external affirmation that your product works while gaining the trust of new customers. Word of mouth is a valuable asset you need to embrace. The key is to not just get any testimonial, but statements that speak to a problem a customer had and how your product helped them solve it.

Learn better ways to talk to your customers

When you hear customers talk about the struggles they had before using your product, you can leverage that information for writing ideas. It will enable you to emotionally connect to new customers by talking about problems and feelings they relate to. We’ll help you find ways to communicate how your product enables people to have a better life.

Use feedback to enhance the features and benefits of your product

Through strategic questions, we’ll guide you to discover the answers you need from your customers so you can make better product decisions. This information is crucial for both customer retention and growth.

The most valuable asset for any product is its customers and their thoughts on your product matter. They can tell you how they use it, when they use it, and what they wish they could do with it. As you talk to your customers, you will learn that it becomes less about what the app can do and how it enables them to become more productive in their lives.

Yes, we actually took this photo, but you can use it too! Grab it **here** on Unsplash!

Who to talk to and how to make it happen

It can be intimidating thinking about finding people to talk to about your product. Right? Don’t worry, we’ve got a plan for you to make sure you find the right people and do it as effectively as possible.

You’ll learn about different types of customers, what you can learn from them, and how many you’ll need to interview to reach your goal. We’ll show you where you can find customers to talk to, effective ways to contact them, and provide sample content when initially messaging them.

Ideal customers to interview

Customers that have found success with your product

These are usually people that publicly share how much they love using your product. They might tag you on social media or simply state the name of your company online, possibly in the form of a blog post. These loyalists can be essential to helping gain trust of new customers. They are self-proclaimed brand ambassadors that want to help you because you helped them through your product.

Customers that experience problems with your product

These people may love your product, but are sharing the struggles with your application. This is a great opportunity to show you care, get them the solution they need, and learn how you can make your product better. Helping a customer in a time of stress can also help build the loyalty that your product needs.

People that don’t use your product, but could benefit from it

Finding these people can be more difficult than the others, but will also prove just as valuable. Since they have no experience using your product, they may be able to give you a unique perspective to enhance your onboarding experience or help you understand how they perceive your product as a first time user. Are you overpriced? Do they understand how it could help them? Or, do you have to over- explain in order for them to reach the “ah ha” moment?

We took this photo too! It’s all yours though. You can grab it from Unsplash **here**.

Finding customers to interview

Your current user email list

If your users login with accounts via email, this is the best place to start. You can send out a formal email to ask them if they are interested in sharing their thoughts on your product. If you have access to data to see which users are more active or less active, it’s a great way to reach out to certain types of users in a more personalized way. Power users will have more thoughts on how they use it to enhance their life, but less active users will give insight to why they don’t use it often, if ever. Two different, but equally valuable conversations.

Your customer support team

If you offer any type of customer support, you could have access to a curated list of people that had a problem using your application or found success through the help of your support team. This is even more helpful if you want to focus on a specific problem because you’ll know exactly who to talk to.

Social networks

You can easily find out if people are talking about your product through the search engines on social networks. Simply search for your brand or product and you can find out what people are saying. Take the time to reach out to them and ask them if they would be open to talking with you in a private setting.

Word of mouth

Use your network to ask if anyone uses your product and would want to have a short conversation about it. Offer up to meet them for lunch, a coffee, or even a beer. People are more likely to help somebody they know than an anonymous brand.

Contacting customers, conducting interviews, analyzing feedback, and more…

I hope this article has given you a great place to start so you can start finding better ways to talk about your product. You can find more helpful information like this and other free resources such as interview question templates, survey templates, a customer feedback analysis worksheet, and action items checklist in our free startup guide. All the resources in the guide will help you with implementing everything you learned from your customers into your marketing efforts so you can start gaining more traction with your product.

The information from this article was originally published in our free startup guide by the design team at Headway.io.

Did you like this article?

You can get more articles like this one about business & product strategy, design, and development right into your inbox through The Manifest.