how to not suck at talking to your customers

introduction

i was clueless and intimidated to talk to customers, as a newly minted product manager. the ability of the senior product managers in my team to effortlessly build rapport and extract insights from customers about the “why and what to build” was mythical to me. concepts like customer persona, customer empathy, and voice of the customer were all a little too abstract to be actionable. i wanted to get better at this skill but did not know how to go about it. now, after putting in the reps and making a fair share of mistakes, talking to customers doesn’t make me nervous anymore. but why is this skill of talking to customers important in the first place?

talking to customers is important at every stage of building something that people want: from finding the problem(s) to solve (in the ideation phase), to discovering the ideal customer profile (during the prototyping phase), and figuring out product-market fit (after the launch). by asking good questions, you will be able to extract product insights from your current, prospective, and churned customers. on the flip side, doing a shabby job at customer conversations will give you the false conviction to go all in on building something no one cares about - culminating with the crushing realization of how you wasted your and your team’s time, energy, and money while being convinced you were on the right track all along.

before the conversation

to not suck at customer conversations, talk to them about their life and not your product or feature. the objective of these conversations is to understand their experiences and pain points by asking them good questions (more about asking good questions in the next section). but why should you focus on their problems and not on pitching your idea or showing your product?

“when people tell you what doesn’t work, they’re usually right. when they tell you how to fix it, they’re usually wrong.”
— bill hader

often, customers have good problems but bad solutions. it’s your job to first, discover their problems by talking to them and then solve these problems well by working with your team, without getting these two steps mixed up. the moment you slip into selling/pitching mode, their brains zone out and they stop telling you anything useful. by showing your product too soon, you’re tainting their lens and depriving yourselves of the reality of how they got about their life with all its struggles.

who should you be talking to and how many of these conversations should you have? talk to as many and as frequently as you want but be selective and avoid convenience sampling (coworkers, friends, and family). each person that you choose to talk to, should ideally be at the intersection between the sets of people who’ve the most to gain if you solve this problem well, who face this problem most frequently, and who’ve the capability to buy a solution for this problem.

before walking in for a conversation, think hard about the 3 questions you want to get answers for and jot them down. it will be a lot easier to steer the conversation in the right direction if you’ve a plan (goals and structure of the conversation) beforehand. but remember to have a conversation and not an interview or worse, an interrogation.

during the conversation

remember, to talk less and listen more. the point is to learn what’s already on their mind and to avoid putting stuff there. be on the lookout for non-verbal cues (the annoyance in their eyes when they talk about the last time they faced an issue, the pride in their words when they show you their current solution - one that barely works but they’ve stitched it together somehow, …). you’re here to uncover their behavior and intrinsic motivations and not just listen to what they’re saying. the onus is on you to make them feel safe psychologically, because only then will they share anything important with you. it’s in your best interest to not make them feel the need to sound smart with their answers. let them meander through their responses uninterrupted by asking open-ended questions. encourage them to think out loud without giving them performance anxiety.

you shouldn’t be seeking validation, compliments, or flattery from their answers either. twisting their arm to make them say your idea is great is not a sustainable problem discovery strategy.

“compliments are the fool’s gold of customer learning: shiny, distracting, and entirely worthless.”
— rob fitzpatrick

you’re setting yourself up for failure if you expect them to tell their entire story to you in one go. prompting them with good follow-ups to make them divulge more details is as important as your original question. to get them to spill more beans, you can summarize their responses back to them as, “if i understand correctly… and what happens then?”.

you are not your customer, so question your every assumption. repeatedly ask why (5 whys) to get to the atomic truth and avoid confirmation bias. always ask one question at a time. asking over one question at the same time confuses them. pose open-ended questions over binary yes/no questions.

customers know their past struggles but not what they want in the future. ask specific questions about their past behavior instead of vague, hypothetical questions about the future - the latter will mislead you.

good questions to drive problem discovery conversations:

1. tell me how you do x today?
2. why is it important for you to do x? ¹
3. what is the hardest thing about doing x today?
4. why is it hard? ²
5. what do you not love about your current solution? ³
6. what else have you tried to solve x? ⁴
7. how often do you have to do x?
8. who has the power and budget to fix x? ⁵

be cognizant of the focussing illusion⁶ while being neck-deep into your customers' problems. shreyas doshi’s business adaptation of the focussing illusion:

“nothing in business is as important as it actually is, while you’re talking about it.”

remember, customers have no incentive to say no to a feature (but you only have limited resources and bandwidth). ask them to stack rank their problems/pain points on decreasing order of priority along with their rationale. this exercise will let you prioritize their burning problems (aka problems they’ll pay for) over “good to have” features.

good job, not committing the cardinal sin of talking about your idea or showing your product/feature too soon ⁷. but at this point in your conversation, you need to mention what you’re building to get a commitment from your customer. choose your ask depending on what you need to help yourselves (follow-up conversations, warm introduction to folks they think you need to speak to next, or get them to actually pay, instead of just saying “i would totally pay for that!”.)

after the conversation

record these calls (after getting their consent) so that you’re not caught up taking notes during the conversation. you can also use these recordings to get stakeholder buy-in, for voice of the customer section in your prds, or to even use your customers' words as marketing copy. after each conversation, ask yourself what went well, what could be improved, and did you learn anything surprising. jot them down, update your beliefs, and share the big takeaways with the rest of your team ⁸. after having a handful of these conversations, start looking for patterns and synthesize your learnings to form a hypothesis and build a mvp.