How to gain the most from your customer interviews

Written By Rachel Wasik

One of the most critical steps in any entrepreneurial journey is finding and understanding your customer. While completing customer interviews can seem like a daunting task, by implementing the following tips, an entrepreneur can extract a ton of useful information.

Avoid mentioning your technology
Many entrepreneurs are very passionate about their discoveries. As a result, they tend to fall into the habit of explaining to their interviewees how their new product or service will benefit them. You end up selling your product to the customer, instead of learning from their experiences. Additionally, this can put your interviewee into a situation where they just agree with you, to avoid conflict. How do you know if this is really the best market for your product, if your interviewee is agreeing out of politeness? Structure your questions to learn more about the habits and experiences of your potential customers and avoid discussing your own solution. This way, your customer can share their thoughts without bias.

Start wide, then narrow
As you structure your questions, start wide and then narrow your questions as you gain a better understanding of your interviewee. This helps you gather context related to the customer’s overall experience of the problem. You need to aim to understand the consumer’s current process before you can understand their struggles. From there you can better quantify the situation. How much time or money is wasted in this process? As you interact with your potential customers, always ask open-ended questions. Leading questions restrict your interviewee from speaking freely, which goes against your overarching goal for a candid interview.

Seek out bad news
A good interview can always shed light on the longevity of your start-up. Are there other competitive products or concerns that could prevent you from taking your product to market? The sooner you understand what kind of “bad news” your product might encounter, the better you will be able to steer the direction of your start-up and future interview questions. Being proactive in this way saves your most valuable resource- your time.

Drill Down
After each interview, review your questions and answers. Was there a certain question that taught you a lot about the customer’s problem or viewpoint? How could you have pushed your interviewee to learn more? Brainstorm with your team on more follow-up questions you could ask next time to find out more information.


Putting in the time and effort to improve your interview techniques not only benefits your company in the “start-up stage”, but throughout the entirety of your career. Customer discovery is a life-long learning experience, a highly revered professional skillset, and the foundation to your business’s success.

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