Ask differently, see more - a quick guide to high value, achievable customer learning chats
“How well do we really understand customers in their terms? How central is the viewpoint from customers’ lives to what we’re doing to improve the experience every day?”
I asked myself these questions a lot as an operator. And the conclusion I came to echoes what I hear a lot now from leaders of companies…
“We need to be closer to customers (I wish we’d done so sooner). The feedback we get from day-to-day contact through typical channels, while important, isn’t likely to spur the fresh ideas we need to make big new jumps… or to not miss big shifts happening right under our nose”.
To change that trajectory I took some inspiration from the Jobs-to-be-done (JTBD) school of thought and started getting on the phone with customers, in a different kind of dialogue than I was used to. The result? A whole new learning terrain rich with clues for everything from acquisition to retention and the product roadmap.
Multiple 100’s of conversations later, I’m here to tell you the juice from this sort of inquiry is so worth the squeeze. And you/your team can get started right away in as little as an hour or two per week.
But you need a different kind of discussion than the one you (or your customer) is naturally inclined to have.
Here’s how to jump in:
Step 1: get a quick primer on JTBD overall - At its core Jobs to Be Done theory argues that if you figure out the job customers hire your product to do, the progress they’re turning to your product to help them make in their life, you’ll uncover powerful direction for how to support that progress better and grow faster.
There’s tons of great stuff out there on JTBD from Clayton Christensen’s Competing Against Luck to myriad online takes and tools, some very detailed and in-depth.
All good info to take in over time, but for a short and practical primer, hard to beat this e-book from the company Intercom which has adopted JTBD in a big way in building their own offering. Their translation is from a BtoB perspective but hits the core concept bases really well, whoever your customer is.
Step 2: draft a simple conversation outline focused on the story before they bought from you - This graphic from Intercom’s e-book does a great job of showing the big shift that needs to happen in your customer discussions to really get at the job customers need your help doing.
Most typical conversations - like support back and forth, sat surveys, “how we doing?” calls - focus on today’s product experience because that’s what’s top of mind for many of us in a company. Customers too will show up to the conversation prepared for and thinking you want to cover this “What’s working right now, what’s not?” agenda as well.
But to understand why they turned to you in the first place, you have to go back to… well, when they first started thinking about turning to you in the first place. And that’s typically well before they hit your radar or funnel, or even went into active purchase mode at all.
As your curiosity sherpa, my recommendation is to keep it simple for your conversation outline at the start. You can always evolve your game as you get more comfortable. Google “JTBD interview” and you’ll see lots of options. But getting started and learning is the most important thing.
This 5 question starter set has worked well in 100’s of consumer conversations ranging from 20 minutes (yep, you can get a ton of value in under a half hour) to over an hour.
“How’d you first come across us?” - this is primarily a warm up question to get the conversation going a little, provide a starting point to work backward from. Folks can usually recall without too much difficulty how they first heard of you. And often this first encounter story includes other helpful threads about who/what/where that you can pull on with a few follow on questions. Key is to keep it pretty short and warm up focused. Tempting as it is to go deep on the purchase moment and beyond, the run-up is where the gold is. (10% of total time)
“Ok, let’s rewind the clock a little, if you think back to the first time you thought “maybe I need a _______[product like yours]”, what was happening?” - in a lot of the best conversations this ends up being really meaty territory, where you’re learning about all the factors that contributed to someone eventually turning your way. Usually takes some follow on nudges but once the curiosity’s flowing, additional queries like these will flow too.
“What else was going on in your life at that time?“
“Huh, what was that experience like?”
“Was that a change from your typical pattern?”
“What was your approach before you started thinking about tackling the problem this way?”
And you can get good fodder on how they arrived at a consideration set of options and made a choice with a closer on this thread like, “After you first thought you needed this sort of thing, how’d you go about figuring out your options?”. Who’d they talk to, what resources did they consult, any hurdles they remember, things they were anxious about, other things they tried, options they ruled out from the jump? (25% of total time)
“What’s been your typical routine using the product, any start/stop/continue feedback to share?” - Notice we’re at question #3 and approaching the 2nd half of the interview before getting to the typical content of garden variety customer calls. That’s the point. This is first about understanding the job they need to do, the progress goal that existed before they knew you did.
Still, any conversation with a customer is a chance to demonstrate you value the current experience feedback conversation they likely expected to have. Usually folks have been quite engaged by the previous discussion, have found ways to get anything burning off their chest earlier, or can tick through their list relatively quickly.
And in particular, discussions about their routine with your product in their daily lives tend to be very revealing about those daily lives, what’s important, what’s stressful, etc. Again, more clues about the life you’re fitting into. (30% of total time)
“Of the various areas of value you’ve talked about, how would you rank the most important ones?” - By now you’ve covered some good conversational ground, likely turned up a number of dimensions of value. Time to get a sense for which ones they retrieve, what order they put them in, what they say about each. And like with any question, you can always end with a “what else”? You’ll be surprised at how one more look in the well sometimes uncovers an interesting thing that for whatever reason didn’t surface the first time round. (20%)
“If I gave you the roadmap of this product, you own, and could bring about anything you want, what would you do? Be selfish… don’t worry about constraints, whether you think it’s doable or that we could afford it… what do you bring out that’s most helpful for you/your company? In “It would be incredible if __________” territory. - This is another way to come back around to ideas for future value. Basically you’re going fishing for the unexpected. So don’t be surprised to sometimes come up with an empty hook and crickets on the other end of the line. But when you do land an idea from the customer, it can often provide an unexpected window into what he/she really wants. A waaaay out there target to shoot for where only getting part of the way there with your experience would still be a huge win. (15% of total time)
Lots of good closers too if you go faster through an earlier zone and have some time.
“We’ve talked about changes, new things… what should they NEVER change?”
“Anything I didn’t ask that you wished I had?”
“If you were talking shop with a peer, and they asked you what’s that company about, how do they compare to the field?, what would you say?”
Step 3: line up some calls and get to gabbing - if there’s anything I can impress upon you it’s to jump into it. Nothing builds your inquiry muscle memory faster than live chats with real people. Yes, calls you make down the road will be better than the early ones. But you’ll gather good intel from the outset and scale the learning curve faster with live fire. And don’t be put off by starting with shorter slots like 20-30 minutes. You can get a lot of good stuff in a half hour conversation and scheduling will be easier.
Step 4: listen (cringe a little:-) and adjust - One of the many benefits of recording calls is how good of a training tool they can be. Go back for a listen to capture all the richness of the original discussion and you’ll be in a safe space to critique your interview game. Maybe there are some spots where you moved on too quickly, or you could trim your question setup or try a new angle. Yes, you’ll definitely have some “#$@&%*!, how did I miss that obvious spot for a question on ______?” moments. But you’ll also give yourself some high fives for good moments. And in any event you’ll be developing a finer ear for discovery that’ll make your next conversation more revealing.
Step 5: recap and SHARE - the beauty of JTBD interviews is how much actionable input pours out of them. It’s also easy to get overwhelmed by the volume of info, so I typically step back and synthesize about every 10 or so interviews.
Patterns - common threads, trends in behavior, ways customers think about the problem… golden nuggets like these with powerful implications across the business often start to appear in as few as 5-10 conversations. Given their potential to make sense of a lot of the detail you find, I capture these as soon as they start to emerge, then revise and refine as learning improves.
Counter-dots - just as it’s vital to watch for patterns, be on the lookout for outlier bits of learning, ones that don’t fit or make sense, that seem to stand out from the rest. Those can often lead you to really interesting discoveries. But our natural tendency, particularly when we get a larger theory going, is to dismiss them. So paying attention to the discordant notes in what you’re hearing is a critical companion to looking for the common threads.
Specific findings - even with a relatively small portion of the conversation explicitly focused on today’s product, you’ll still find these conversations rich with specific details for the growth and experience improvement agenda. Among my favorites… competitive insights, clues for targeting customers you can serve well, real life use cases that can reframe how you think about a feature, etc.
I don’t think format/shape of recaps matter as much as regular stepping back to look in your inquiry net and see what you’ve caught. I’ve tended to two primary forms… a simple Gdoc/Word capture of the above synthesis items, and then targeted Gslides/PPT presentations on specific elements of the findings for various groups.
A few final thoughts in response to common questions I hear:
Don’t sleep on cancels - yes, the beauty of the above approach is that you can easily apply it to talking to customers you’ve lost, a vital and often overlooked group. Question #2 becomes about the “first time you thought of canceling”, and “what happened from that first thought to completing the cancellation”… how long, what steps, other options tried, how hard, etc.
1-2 a week will tell you a lot - sure, sometimes you’ll have a specific learning need you want to accomplish with a bigger chunk of interviews, trained on a specific subset of your customers, in a short period of time. This approach works well for that. But don’t overlook the potential of starting small or carrying on a regular practice of as few as 1-2 interviews a week over a longer period of time with folks across your customer community. Actionable learning will flow from both paths. And the more people across your org that can have these conversations, the better off they and you will be.
To borrow from Mark Twain (he is reputed to have said it of whiskey, wise fellow), “too much is never enough” when it comes to talking to people you serve, have served before and lost, or hope to serve someday.
The learning about critical stuff will show up fast. Why do people buy? Who or what am I actually competing with? Why do they switch? Where does the experience need to improve for better retention?
The key is to dive in (the water’s fine). I hope this post gives you at least a nudge and some ideas for getting going. I’ll wager you’ll be happy you did.