Don’t think too much. Just go talk to customers. Here’s how:

Meeting Prep

• Plan. Write your questions down ahead of time. List the hypotheses you want to test. Share them with your team to get feedback.
• Tag team. Get a note-taker so that you can focus on leading the conversation. Choose someone with a different role on the same project to build a common understanding of the user.
• Do your homework. Does the customer have open support issues? Prior feature requests? They’ll want an update before talking about new features.

Asking Questions

• Frame the discussion: “I’m going to ask you about your role, I’m going to ask you to describe some recent sales, and I’m going to ask you to describe a marketing campaign. Lets start with your role.”
• Avoid leading questions. Don’t ask “Would this be useful for you?” Ask “How would you do your job differently if…”
• Don’t ask why. Your job is to find out “why”, but you can’t do this by just asking. People either don’t know or misunderstand why they do things. Ask who, what, where, when, and how.
• Avoid yes/no questions. “Do you use a CRM?” could be rephrased as “How do you track customer interactions?” You might be surprised.
• Ask for examples. Don’t ask “What do you typically do during a meeting?” Say “Tell me about your last customer meeting.”
• Don’t ask two-part questions. Stop in between. “How do you track visitors to your website?” … “Which metrics do you report to the CEO?”
• Don’t talk about design. Don’t ask “how would you expect to see this presented?” Design test that later.
• Be direct: Don’t say “I was wondering, could you please tell me a bit more about…” Say “Tell me about…”
• Ask uncomfortable questions. If you get nervous laughter or the interviewee feels a bit uncomfortable, that’s where you need to dive in. It’s a sore spot. “You said sales are slow this quarter. What happened?”

Responding

• Love silence. Relish the long, awkward pauses. They almost always precede the very best answers.
• Redirect feature questions. If the user asks “Will you be able to export all the data,” ask “How would you do your job differently if you had the data?”
• Redirect design questions: If a user asks “What happens if I tap this button,” ask “What would you expect?”
• Disregard hearsay. When someone in Marketing says “Sales would love it if…” ask for an introduction to someone in Sales. The same goes for managers talking about what employees want.
• Don’t agree/disagree. “I couldn’t agree more!” is super tempting. It’s even more tempting to explain yourself or apologize after getting criticism. Just say: “That’s great feedback, thank you.”

Ending Strong

• Don’t discuss feature plans. Don’t dive into features & dates. Redirect with “We’re doing user interviews like this one before deciding on features and timeline.”
• Ask for an investment: time, money, or reputation. Time: “would you be willing participate in usability testing once we have some designs?” Money: “If we solved this problem for you, would you consider doing a pilot project?” Reputation: “Would you be willing to introduce to me to ____ so that I can make sure our solution works for them?”