Customer Interviews

Customer Discovery Interviews

Overview

Customer discovery interviews are the bedrock of evidence-based product management. This skill turns casual user conversations into structured discovery — helping you uncover real problems, avoid solution bias, and build products people actually need. Rooted in The Mom Test by Rob Fitzpatrick and Continuous Discovery Habits by Teresa Torres.

When to Use

• You're entering a new problem space with unvalidated assumptions
• You need to understand why users behave a certain way
• You want to test an opportunity before exploring solutions
• You're preparing for a product discovery sprint
• Don't use for: usability testing (use validation-interview instead), market research surveys (too structured), or customer satisfaction calls

Instructions

Phase 1: Plan the Interviews

1. Define your learning goals — What 3-5 things do you want to learn? Frame as open-ended questions about past behavior, not future intent.
2. Write the interview guide — Start with broad context, narrow to specifics. Never ask "Would you use X?" — ask "Tell me about the last time you dealt with Y."
3. Recruit participants — Aim for 5-8 per segment. Use customer discovery criteria: they should have the problem, not necessarily use your product.
4. Avoid bias — Do not mention your solution idea. Do not pitch. Do not lead.

Phase 2: Conduct the Interview

1. Build rapport — Thank them, explain the goal is to learn, not sell. Ask permission to record.
2. Ask about specific moments — "Walk me through the last time you..." beats "How often do you..."
3. Listen for emotion — Strong frustration, workarounds, and surprising effort signal real problems.
4. Use the Mom Test principles:

• Talk about their life, not your idea
• Ask about specifics from the past, not hypotheticals about the future
• Listen for commitments (time, introductions, money) — compliments are cheap

1. Dig deeper — When they mention something interesting: "Tell me more about that." "Why did you do it that way?" "What happened next?"

Phase 3: Synthesize

1. Debrief immediately — Within 30 minutes of each interview, capture top 3 takeaways
2. Create an affinity map — Group observations by theme, problem, behavior
3. Update your opportunity map — Which opportunities grew stronger? Which got disproven?
4. Identify patterns — 3+ interviews with the same signal = real finding

Templates

Interview Guide Template

## Opening (2 min)
- Thanks for your time
- Goal: learn about [topic], not pitch anything
- OK to record?

## Context (5 min)
- Tell me about your role/team
- What does a typical [relevant activity] look like for you?

## Problem Exploration (20 min)
- Walk me through the last time you [relevant scenario]
- What was frustrating about that?
- What did you try? What happened?
- What would ideal look like?
- How are you handling this today?

## Closing (3 min)
- Anything else I should know?
- Would you be open to a follow-up?
- Can you introduce me to others like you?

Sample Output

After 6 customer interviews for a project management tool, a synthesis might reveal:

• Strong signal: Teams spend 4+ hours/week in status meetings trying to figure out what's actually done
• Workaround: People use physical sticky notes + Slack DMs as a "real" tracker
• Emotion: Frustration around "fake updates" — people say green when they're really yellow
• Opportunity: A lightweight async status mechanism that doesn't require another meeting

Common Pitfalls

1. Pitching, not listening — If you've said more than 20% of the words, you're pitching
2. Confirmation bias — Leading questions ("You'd find that useful, right?") produce garbage data
3. Too few interviews — Patterns don't emerge until 5-8 per segment. One interview is an anecdote
4. Recording without asking — Always ask permission. Some participants clam up
5. Skipping synthesis — Raw transcripts rot. Debrief immediately or lose the insight

Verification Checklist

• [ ] Interview guide avoids leading questions and solution pitches
• [ ] Recruited 5-8 participants matching the target segment
• [ ] Each interview produced specific past-behavior stories
• [ ] Synthesis identified 3-5 opportunity areas (not feature requests)
• [ ] Assumptions updated based on what was learned

Source & license

This open-source skill is cataloged on AgentStack and links to its original source — we do not rehost the code.

• Author: uthumany
• Source: uthumany/uthy-legacy-os
• License: MIT
• Homepage: https://uthumany.github.io/uthy-legacy-os/

Install and usage instructions live in the source repository linked above.