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

68: Customer Interview Best Practices