PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT
Five Questions to Ask Your Customers
Learn what to ask customers about during customer interviews
Depending on the objectives of the conversation, there are multiple things founders can ask the interviewee about. The best questions to ask depend on the stage of the startup. In this article, I will focus mainly on questions to ask early on while still searching for product-market fit, but many of the questions could also be applied at later stages when you are trying to figure out what features to build or how to improve the product further.
Customers can also help founders understand how to solve the problem at hand. Talking to customers isn’t just a way to validate that the problem exists and understand how to solve it, but also a way to raise awareness for your company and acquire your first customers.
What should you ask about?
Y Combinator (YC), one of the best startup accelerators in the world, tell their companies to build their product and talk to customers. When talking to customers, there are a few things you should keep on top of your mind, according to YC partner Eric Migicovsky. First, always talk specifics, talk about things that have already occurred in the interviewee’s life. Don’t ask, if we built this, would you use it?
People are typically not great at figuring out what they want in a solution, but they have an impressive ability to talk and think about what they have already tried. This should be taken advantage of during the interviews; try to get as much information about the path that led to the problem as possible.
It is also important to ask whether the people you are interviewing have tried to solve the problem themselves. If a person has a problem and hasn’t tried to solve it, then the problem isn’t a problem worth solving. On the other hand, if they have tried to solve it, you should use the opportunity to ask about how they tried to solve it. What worked well, and what did not work well? What is the best solution today?
Founders should also ask about when the problem occurs. Problems that happen often are easier to build startups around because people are trying to solve or wishing they had a solution to the problem more often. It is also easier to get feedback from customers because they most likely use the product more often and therefore are more familiar with it.
While doing customer interviews it is important to listen as much as possible and don’t talk more than necessary. You are doing it to learn as much as possible about the customers and the way he or she thinks about the problem, not to talk about your amazing solution.
Make sure to take notes during the conversation, it is easy to forget important details when you are on a busy schedule. You could also consider asking the interviewee if you could record the interview. Most people tend to agree to this, and given that they have already agreed to let you have some of their time, they probably want you to learn as much as possible. Try to be careful with people’s time and keep it casual.
5 questions to ask
With this in mind, YC has 5 questions that they recommend founders to ask in order to learn more about the problem they are trying to solve. These 5 questions are:
1. What is the hardest part about [doing this thing]?
2. Tell me about the last time you encountered the problem.
3. Why was this hard?
4. What, if anything, have you done to solve the problem?
5. What don’t you love about the solutions you have tried?
The first 3 questions are asked to learn more about the problem and help you understand where the root cause of the problem lies, while the 2 last ones are asked to help you understand what you are competing against and what features are important.
[1] Eric Migicovsky. “How to Talk to Users” (July 2019).
