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In the world of digital products, user experience is everything.
A report from Forrester revealed that “superior user experience” can increase visit-to-lead conversions by as much as 400%. On the flip side, Toptal found that 88% of users are less likely to return to a site after a bad experience.
That’s a lot.
OK, so user experience is important. The question now is how to improve it.
One of the best ways to improve your user experience is by getting to know your customers. What problems are you solving for them? And which ones leave them banging their heads against a wall even after using your product?
Yes, my friends, I’m talking about customer interviews.
To find out how it’s done, I sat down with product expert, Lior Revivo. Revivo is a three-time VP of Product, currently at OpenWeb — and he also dedicates his time to advising and mentoring other startups.
Here are his five top tips for running highly-effective customer interviews. And if you want to hear more, you can watch the full interview here.
You know that person in your life (probably your mum) who asks a million questions at once? Think about the way they would run a customer interview, and then do totally the opposite.
Your first goal is to put your customer at ease and set clear expectations by covering things like:
According to Revivo, this has two benefits. First, it helps customers focus on your questions without worrying about the next thing in their calendar. And second, it assures them that nothing they say will make them seem stupid.
So, next time you run an interview, take the time to ease your customer into it before diving into your questions.
Less Spanish Inquisition, more tapas and sangria.
I always make sure that the other side understands that there is no right or wrong answer.” — Lior Revivo, VP Product at OpenWeb
There are problems, and then there are problems.
Let me explain. In customer interviews, you’ll go down all kinds of rabbit holes about this problem or that problem and how this or that solution would help.
But when it comes down to it, all of these problems fall into roughly two camps:
Naturally, you should aim to build your product to solve both types of problems. But when it comes to prioritization (more on that in my next tip), Revivo likes to focus on problems no one else can solve.
“Sometimes I can get a lot of feedback on something that is coming back and it’s very important to my customers,” he says. “But I know they have a lot of alternatives to achieve the same goal.”
“What if they’re giving me something very important that they don’t have an alternative for? This is where I want to focus my attention as an opportunity I want to attack.”
Product management thrives on prioritization. You know it, I know it, and even Forbes knows it. But, for some reason, when it comes to customer interviews, prioritization goes out the window.
Revivo says, “I’ve seen many product managers leaving interviews having a lot of information, a lot of insights. And when you ask them, what is the most important thing that they want to focus on? Suddenly they’re silent.”
And the more days that pass after an interview, the worse this problem gets. Gradually, the tonal nuances of each discussion fade from your memory. All you’re left with is a bunch of scribbled problems, insights, and feature requests — all with equal weighting.
So, next time you’re done with all your questions, ask your customer for that one game-changing feature that they’d like to see from your product.
“What if you could stop everything that the engineering team is doing right now and ask us to develop only one thing. What would that be?” — Lior Revivo, VP Product at OpenWeb
It was Oscar Wilde who said, “When you assume, you make an ass of u and me.”
Then, years later, Steven Seagal went a step further in Under Siege 2 with the infamous line, “Assumption is the mother of all f***ups.”
They’re both right.
As product people, our job in interviews is pretty much to shut up and listen. But when the customer is done talking and you’re ready to move on to the next question, take a moment to verify that you’ve understood them correctly.
“I do not compromise on making sure that I truly, truly understand what the need is,” says Revivo. “So I’m telling them, just to make sure that I understand, this is what you were referring to, this is what you’re looking to achieve. And the goal is that, when they’re saying yes, that’s right, that’s correct, now I know that I understand what they’re talking about.”
Do this after every interview question and your user experience will reap the rewards.
Last but not least: the wild card.
You’ve finished your script and asked all your questions. You know which problems your customer is struggling with that no one else can solve, and you know their dream feature.
But what don’t you know? The answer, paradoxically, is that you don’t know.
Wait, what? Stay with me.
Product people are, naturally, very close to their products. This means that we gravitate towards problems and topics that everyone’s talking about inside the company. But what we really want to know is what customers are talking about inside their companies.
To check your blind spots and uncover your unknown unknowns, Revivo recommends ending every customer interview with an open question. “Is there anything that you think it’s important for me to know, or that you want to share that we didn’t cover? Sometimes you’ll be surprised what interesting things come out of that.”
Optimizing your user experience can have a powerful effect on lead generation and revenue. By running customer interviews in the right way, you can discover what users really want and prioritize feature releases that will make the most impact.
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