68: Customer Interview Best Practices

In this episode of the How to Succeed in Product Management Podcast, marketing professor Jeff Shulman and The Product Management Center advisory board members Red Russak and  Soumeya Benghanem welcome Jennifer McGill Walker (Pearson) and Chris Hess, Ph.D. (Pearson) as they discuss the best practices in interviewing a customer. Good PMs need to be able to know the best way and approach to reach out to customers to understand their feedback and concerns that can help to improve a product or service.   Disclaimer: All opinions of the speakers are their own.   Support for How to Succeed in Product Management is brought to you by Apptentive, which enables product managers to measure shifts in customer emotion and gather actionable feedback across the mobile customer journey. To learn more, go to Apptentive.com/UW.   What to Listen For: 00:00 Intro 01:45 The importance of discovery 03:22 Interacting with customers will lead back to why you’re doing what you do 04:27 Types of interactions with customers 06:34 The interaction format depends on the goal 08:26 Constantly talk with customers 10:37 Use Zoom for recording 12:50 Check your confirmation bias 14:02 Start a earlier than the actual interview when selecting your sample size 15:24 Work on the art of questioning 17:28 Being representative of the population as a whole & be comfortable with silence 19:04 Bring in other people from your team 21:52 Biggest threat to discovery work is time 26:54 Talk about what you’ve learned & learn from other 29:03 Setting up your work calendar  34:15 How to approach a customer? 35:54 Overcoming suspicion 39:01 Scheduling customer interviews & reaching out manually or automatically 48:13 Final thoughts