🧠 Deep dive — 3 ways to level up customer interviews (that most founders 🦆 up)
Over the years, I’ve walked literally thousands of entrepreneurs through the customer interview process. The hardest part? Figuring out what to say to customers once you find them. Let's fix that.
Hey friend 👋
I’ve probably worked with 10k idea-stage founders over the last decade, and the most devastating problem virtually all of them encounter is the one that they don’t expect.
It’s not fundraising, or finding co-founders, or not knowing the right frameworks.
The problem that kills so many startups?
Asking customers crappy questions.
Let’s dive deep 👇
The golden rule of innovation is:
If you don’t know the answer, ask the customer.
Really crushing customer interviews allows you to:
Ensure higher quality responses without wasting time on ineffective questions;
Gather accurate data even if you think you know your customer well;
Get to market sooner with a winning product so that you can outpace the competition.
And best of all: build a product that customers actually want.
Unfortunately… there’s a big “but”.
Over the years, I’ve walked literally thousands of entrepreneurs through the customer interview process, from figuring out what they want to learn, who their right customer is, finding customers cheaply and efficiently, and more.
But the hardest part is figuring out what to say to customers once you find them.
So here are three tips to help you overcome the most difficult customer development challenges, so you can launch sooner and scale faster:
1: Only ask questions that pass the “mom test”.
Asking the right questions, formulated the right way, is crucial for getting valuable insights from your customers. The “mom test” is a simple framework for designing questions that elicit honest and useful feedback. It does just one simple thing:
The mom test ensures you’re not asking leading questions that elicit the answers they think you want to hear, instead of the answers you need to hear.
Why do we need a whole special test for this?
Customers will lie right to your face — and think they’re doing you a favour!
Here’s an parable:
You go to a restaurant. You eat a thoroughly mediocre meal. It’s not bad, but it’s not particularly good. You probably aren’t coming back, at least not for a while, but you’re also not leaving them a bad review on Google, or asking for comps.
At the end of the meal, the waiter comes over and asks, “how was everything?” What do you say?
If you’re like 95% of Americans, you lie:
It was good.
This is strange, indeed! We know the waiter probably doesn’t care, and that they’re only asking because they work on tips, and yet you still won’t tell him the vaguely uncomfortable truth that the food was just… okay.
Because it’s conflict. It’s awkward.
But… when a startup founder asks customers a question, they know she cares. So what are the chances they tell the truth?
Instead, they’re far more likely to tell you what they think you want to hear, instead of what you know you need to hear. The goal of the mom test is to remove the delta between their perception of “want” and “need”, so that what you need to hear is the same as what customers think you want to hear.
So here it is:
To pass the mom test means you ask a question in such that even your own mother would have no choice but to tell you the truth.
E.g.:
You: Hey, mom, what do you think of my startup idea?
Mom: It’s wonderful, honey! You’re going to be so successful. I’m so proud of you.
It’s what she thinks you want to hear, but it’s not what you need to hear.
It feels good, but it’s useless.
If you want actionable data and insight, you have to ask questions that give you the information you need without asking the questions you can’t ask. Get them to confess their wants, needs, and fears.
For example:
How often do you X?
Tell me about a time when you experienced difficulty doing X?
When was the last time that happened? Can you tell me about it? What was that like?
When that happened, what did you try? Why didn’t it work?
etc.
These all pass the mom test because there isn’t a particular answer that they think you’re looking for.
So all that’s left is the truth.
Imagine asking a customer, “Would you use a product like this?” versus, “Can you walk me through how you currently solve this problem?” The first question will lead to polite but unhelpful answers, while the second digs deeper into the customer’s experience.
Put another way? Get customers to tell you stories.
2: Find out what’s not working — as well as what is!
When conducting interviews, it’s essential to understand both the problems your customers face and the solutions they currently use — even the hacky barely-count-this-as-a-solution-in-air-quotes type of alternatives.
For those of you who are tempted to say you have no competition, please rethink that.
Founders often define “competitor” so narrowly as to remove any value: they’re only the competition if they’re a product, and if that product is roughly the same as ours, and is roughly as good as ours.
But if you’re solving a problem worth solving, then the customer is already doing something to try to fix it.
Whatever that something is, it’s not working very well. That represents a gap in the market, and presents opportunities for improvement.
When I first started conducting customer interviews, I focused way too much on validating my product idea and not nearly enough on the what the customer’s real problems were — and how urgently and severely they experienced those problems (see tip # 3 below).
It wasn’t until I started asking about their current challenges that I began to see not just how my product could fit in, but what the right product idea even was in the first place
Not to mention what the highest converting language would be to sell it!
When I conduct interviews now, I focus on asking customers about their day-to-day challenges and the tools they use to address them. I ask about their wants, needs, fears, and jobs-to-be-done.
This approach uncovers unmet needs — and areas where your product can substantively differentiate itself in the market.
I even have a special tool and template for this. It’s called an experience map.
Don’t be afraid to dig deep into the details of your customers’ problems. The goal is to be able to articulate a customer’s problem even better than they can.
One approach that we use in rapid prototyping is asking customers to rate their current solution on a scale of 1 to 10, where “1” is a dental appointment, and “10” is the birth of their first child. When you introduce your value proposition, you’re looking for a 3-point difference between the current solution and your solution.
If they’re “only” at a 5, your solution needs to get to 8.
In other words: it needs to blow them away.
Individual situations may differ, but this method consistently helps identify the presence of real opportunities.
BUT… and this is another big “but”…
Just because there’s an opportunity doesn’t mean that there is nothing about the status quo that’s working fine already.
It is still critical to consider that which the customer doesn’t want to change. So ask customers what about the current solution works well, and dig deep to find out why.
To drop the things they like is unnecessarily disruptive.
3: Assess how urgent the problem is.
It’s counterintuitive, but solving a big, important problem isn’t enough for a startup to succeed.
This is the phenomenon I call slow startup suicide, and I see it all the time.
Here’s a common tale: you identify a problem, get positive traction, and build a solution everyone loves. Yet, no one buys. You tweak your offer, business model, and pricing, but still, no one buys.
Why?
The issue wasn’t the lack of pain; it was the lack of urgency.
Startups often fail because they misjudge the urgency of the problem they’re solving, assuming that because a customer acknowledges a problem, they must be willing to solve it right now. This assumption can lead to developing solutions for problems that don’t have a ready market.
To illustrate this, I use a 2x2 grid to visualise the relationship between problem severity and urgency:
Let’s break it down:
Low Severity, Low Urgency: Commodity products — easily replaceable and price-sensitive. Avoid this space.
Low Severity, High Urgency: Items we need but don’t value, like toilet paper. Proceed with caution.
High Severity, High Urgency: Gold mines. Big problems needing immediate solutions. Focus here!
High Severity, Low Urgency: The startup graveyard. Customers like the solution but prioritise other problems first.
To avoid the slow startup suicide, you have to understand that opportunity is a mix of severity and urgency.
It’s about designing compelling value propositions for big problems that customers urgently want solved.
So ask them!
What are some of the other problems you’re trying to solve?
How does each of those problems rank?
How urgent is it for you to solve this problem?
Don’t overcomplicate things. These straightforward questions can provide clear insights.
You can also look for evidence of buying behaviour — if customers are already spending money or time on temporary solutions, it could be a sign the problem is more urgent.
Following this advice ensures you’re solving problems that customers are eager to fix, leading to quicker market adoption. Prioritizing urgent problems will help you focus your efforts on the most pressing needs, increasing your chances of success.
If a problem isn’t urgent, customers are unlikely to go for your solution.
By ensuring your questions pass the “mom test”, finding out what’s working and what’s not for your customers, and assessing the urgency of their problems, you’ll gather higher quality responses, waste less time, reduce bias, and ultimately get to market sooner with a winning product.
Now stop reading articles, and go ask questions!
And that’s it.
See you next week,
—jdm
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