As Vikram Goyal points out when you look for feedback about your product, “data will tell you what happened. The customer will tell you why it happened.” You certainly need to look at data about how customers use your products, but you also need to understand why, and that’s where customer interviews come into play.
Customer interviews: tips, do’s, and don’ts. One of the key ways that entrepreneurs uncover what works is through customer interviews. Many entrepreneurs think they already know what questions to ask and what information to listen for. Conducting ineffective interviews, however, and then launching a product or service that no one really wants or needs can create a lot of pain and wasted effort. To help you avoid that pain and wasted effort, the folks at Venturewell shared some simple tips, do’s, and don’ts for conducting customer interviews.
(via @venturewell)
What they really think about you: How to structure and conduct customer interviews. The best way to gain buyer insights is by conducting customer interviews. That’s certainly easier said than done. Tien-Anh Nguyen shows you how to design a comprehensive customer interview guide that will help you conduct interviews as smoothly — and productively — as possible.
(via @openviewventure)
How to conduct a user interview that actually uncovers valuable insights. User interviews are a tool that can help you understand who will use your new product. When an interview is conducted properly, it can give you an in-depth knowledge of your users—their goals, perceptions, and experiences. Poor interviews, on the other hand, can give you inaccurate information that can take your design in the wrong direction. You need to take into account a lot of different factors to conduct an interview properly. Nick Babich explains how to address those factors in order to conduct strong user interviews.
(via @shopify)
How product managers can conduct insightful customer interviews. Your ability to deliver value largely depends on how well you understand your customers. Unless you understand your customers you can’t deliver value to them. The best way to understand customers is to talk to them. The key to unlocking value from customer interviews is to plan properly, follow a general structure, and adhere to a certain code of conduct. Vikram Goyal takes a look at each of these aspects and explains how you can use them to have insightful customer interviews.
(via @uxdesigncc)
10 Techniques for collecting voice of the customer data. Voice of the Customer (VoC) is a research method you can use to better understand your customers. It helps you get to know your customers’ behavior, struggles, preferences, and needs on a deeper level, enabling you to better serve and communicate with them. You can tap into VoC research to identify customer needs, perceived product value, and gaps between the two. Kiera Abbamonte describes ten ways you can collect VoC data to inform your product decisions.
(via @kieraabbamonte)
Customer Interview Frameworks. Product managers should spend an unbalanced amount of time in the problem space. You are the one in the organization who has the opportunity to do so and you owe it to your team to do it well. Knowing what your customer needs is squarely in the problem space. To wholly understand the problem space you must know your customers’ needs better than they know them. Which is why customer interviews are so important. To help you decide the best way to conduct customer interviews, Tyler Wince describes six frameworks you can use to interview your customers.
(via @tylerwince)
