Up Your Customer Discovery Game With Talking To Humans

Written By Elyse Ball

Customer discovery is the building block of everything we do at UARF. From our online pre-accelerator Starting Line to our 20-team I-Corps cohorts to every startup I’ve ever sat on the board of, we wholeheartedly believe that interacting directly with customers on a regular basis is the best way to make sure that a product, service or business idea is actually worth pursuing.

Like any skill, customer discovery takes time and practice to master. Luckily there are some resources to help you level up your customer discovery capabilities. My favorite is Giff Constable and Frank Rimalovski’s excellent book, Talking to Humans. 

Why do I love this book so much? It’s short – only 87 pages. It’s concise. And it’s free for students and educators to download at talkingtohumans.com. I have read it about 10 times. Every time I read it, I learn something new. Here are a few of my favorite takeaways:​

Keep it human. Customer discovery is all about human interaction. Have real conversations with your customers. This means having 3 to 5 questions prepared ahead of time, so that you have guidelines for your interview, but aren’t doing a rapid fire survey. Take a genuine interest in what your customers care about, which can be a strong indicator of the problems they are most desperate to solve. Be proactive about asking follow up questions to gain a deeper understanding of the jobs your customer does, what the most painful part of these processes are, and where you can create gains for your customer.

Don’t just listen to customer discovery. Use all your senses. Talking to Humans is a big advocate for walking in your customers’ shoes. Up your customer discovery game by visiting your customers in their natural settings, whether that is a store, office, home or lab. Ask if you can shadow your customer as they go through the tasks you are trying to improve. Even better, do the process yourself, so you can experience what your customer is doing first hand.

Collect hard data. Customer discovery is not surveying, so many people assume that they can’t quantify the data they’re getting. That’s not true. By setting pass/fail tests for your hypotheses, you can get a quantitative sense of customer trends. For example, 70% of corrosion engineers struggle with Step A of the process, or Step B of the process takes 50% of the overall process time to complete. Every 10 interviews or so, sit down with your team and literally score how each customer aligned with each hypothesis. Is the hypotheses absolutely true for one customer, but mostly false for another? How should you adjust your hypothesis based on this data? What level of response is “good enough” for you to feel like the hypothesis is proven?

To collect even more tactical guidance on how to be a customer discovery guru, download Talking to Humans from talkingtohumans.com. You’ll be glad you did. Also, check out UARF’s Instagram for four more small books that make a big impact @uakronuarf.