Test your Business Model Canvas: the Customer Interview

Summary

In this video, Steve Morris discusses the importance of conducting customer interviews for testing hypotheses in your business model. He advises entrepreneurs to approach these interviews with an open mind, avoiding confirmation bias, and to ask follow-up questions based on customer responses. Morris recommends doing interviews in two rounds, focusing first on understanding the customer's needs and then assessing how the proposed solution meets those needs. He also emphasizes the value of face-to-face interviews and suggests involving the founding team due to their deeper understanding of the business context.

Takeaways

• 🔍 Customer interviews are crucial for testing hypotheses in the business model canvas and are part of the customer discovery process.
• 🎯 The primary goal of customer interviews is to validate hypotheses about value propositions, customer pain points, and gains, rather than selling a product.
• 🧐 Confirmation bias can skew customer discovery; it's important to remain open-minded and seek feedback that challenges existing beliefs.
• 🗣️ Interviews should not be a fixed list of questions but a dynamic conversation that allows for follow-up questions based on customer responses.
• 👥 Face-to-face interviews are preferred for better understanding and observing body language, but video calls can be a good alternative.
• 📈 Conduct interviews in two rounds: first focusing on customer needs and later on validating if the product or service meets those needs.
• 👥 It's recommended to have a two-person team for interviews, with one person focusing on asking questions and the other on note-taking.
• 👤 Founders are often the best interviewers due to their deep understanding of the business context and the problem they aim to solve.
• 🔢 Interview at least 30 prospective customers to gather a diverse range of feedback and insights.
• 💡 Finding prospective customers requires creativity and getting out of your comfort zone; leverage your team for brainstorming potential sources.
• 📝 Prepare a script to convince potential interviewees that the conversation is not a sales pitch but a request for their insights and time.

Q & A

What is the primary purpose of conducting customer interviews?

The primary purpose of conducting customer interviews is to test key hypotheses in your business model canvas, also known as customer discovery. It helps in understanding the customer's perspective on the job to be done, pain to be avoided, and gain to be realized.

Why is it important to verify the dissatisfaction with current solutions during customer interviews?

Verifying dissatisfaction with current solutions helps to ensure that your solution addresses the job, pain, and gain better than existing solutions, which is crucial for validating the value proposition of your product or service.

What are some hypotheses that customer interviews help in testing?

Customer interviews help in testing hypotheses around value proposition, customer relationships, channels, selling and marketing strategies, and revenue streams, including verifying that customers are willing to pay the expected amount.

Why should the customer interview process not be treated as a sales pitch?

The customer interview process should not be treated as a sales pitch because the goal is to test hypotheses rather than broadcasting a sales message. The focus should be on asking questions to gather information and potentially adjust hypotheses based on customer feedback.

What is confirmation bias and how can it affect customer interviews?

Confirmation bias is the tendency to favor information that confirms one's existing beliefs. In customer interviews, it can lead to overlooking or dismissing feedback that contradicts preconceived notions, which can compromise the accuracy of hypothesis testing.

Why is it recommended to have a two-round interview process?

A two-round interview process is recommended to first understand the customer's perspective on their needs and pain points without the influence of your product. The second round then focuses on verifying if your solution meets those needs, ensuring a more accurate assessment.

What is the significance of face-to-face interviews in customer discovery?

Face-to-face interviews are significant because they allow for probing questions and observing body language, which can provide deeper insights into customer feelings and reactions that might not be conveyed through other mediums.

How many customer interviews are recommended for effective customer discovery?

It is recommended to conduct at least 30 customer interviews for effective customer discovery. More interviews provide a broader range of feedback and insights, which can lead to a better understanding of customer needs.

Why is it suggested to have a two-person team for customer interviews?

Having a two-person team allows one person to focus on asking questions and listening to the customer while the other takes notes. This setup ensures that the interviewer can maintain the flow of conversation without being distracted by note-taking.

How can founders find prospective customers for interviews?

Founders can find prospective customers for interviews by brainstorming as a team, leveraging their network, and getting creative about where to find customers. They may need to get outside their comfort zone and be persistent in seeking out potential interviewees.

What is the recommended approach to convince prospective customers to participate in interviews?

The recommended approach is to clearly communicate that the interaction is not a sales pitch but an opportunity for the customer to help a startup understand their needs better. A well-crafted script can help in getting customers to agree to participate in the interview.

Outlines

00:00

🔍 Customer Interviews for Hypothesis Testing

This paragraph introduces the concept of customer interviews as a critical tool for testing hypotheses within a business model canvas. It emphasizes that these interviews, also known as customer discovery, are not sales pitches but opportunities to challenge and verify assumptions about the value proposition, customer relationships, channels, and revenue streams. The speaker, Steve Morris, advises创业者 to approach interviews with an open mind, aware of confirmation bias, and to ask probing questions rather than just broadcasting their sales message. The importance of face-to-face interviews is highlighted for better understanding of customer needs and reactions, with video calls suggested as a viable alternative during challenging times like a pandemic.

05:00

📝 Structuring Customer Interviews in Two Rounds

Paragraph 2 discusses the strategy of conducting customer interviews in two distinct rounds. The first round focuses on understanding the customer's perspective on their needs, pains, and gains without introducing the product or service. This approach helps to refine the solution based on genuine customer feedback. The second round then verifies if the solution addresses these needs effectively. The paragraph also touches on the importance of starting interviews from the customer's viewpoint to avoid biasing the conversation towards the product. It suggests interviewing at least 30 prospective customers for comprehensive insights and recommends a two-person team approach for interviews, with one person taking notes to allow the interviewer to focus on dialogue.

10:04

👥 Engaging the Right Interviewees and Team Dynamics

This section stresses the importance of involving the founding team in customer interviews due to their deep understanding of the business context. It also advises on finding prospective customers through team brainstorming and getting out of the comfort zone to approach potential interviewees. The paragraph provides tips on how to convince customers to participate in interviews by clarifying that the interaction is not a sales pitch but a request for their insights to help shape a better solution. It also suggests creating a script to secure these interviews and emphasizes the value of persistence in the face of rejections.

15:04

📋 Preparing for Customer Interviews

The final paragraph outlines the preparation process for customer interviews. It suggests listing the hypotheses to be tested, creating starter questions, deciding on the interview teams, and developing a list of prospective customers. The speaker also recommends developing a script to secure interviews and provides a brief overview of upcoming videos that will cover example questions for round one interviews, round two questions, and strategies for understanding customer willingness to pay.

Keywords

💡Customer Interviews

Customer interviews refer to the process of conversing with potential customers to gather insights about their needs, preferences, and pain points. In the video, it is emphasized that these interviews are crucial for testing hypotheses in the business model canvas and are part of customer discovery. The script mentions that interviews should not be sales pitches but rather opportunities to test assumptions about the value proposition and other business model elements.

💡Hypothesis Testing

Hypothesis testing in the context of the video involves using customer interviews to verify assumptions about the business model, such as the value proposition, customer relationships, channels, and revenue streams. The video stresses the importance of approaching interviews with the mindset that current hypotheses may be incorrect and need validation or adjustment based on customer feedback.

💡Value Proposition

The value proposition is a core component of a business model canvas, defining the benefits a product or service offers to customers. The video script uses this term to explain that interviews should aim to confirm whether the product or service correctly addresses the job to be done, pain to be avoided, and gain to be realized from the customer's perspective.

💡Confirmation Bias

Confirmation bias is a cognitive bias where individuals tend to favor information that confirms their existing beliefs. The video warns against this bias during customer interviews, as it can lead to overlooking or dismissing feedback that contradicts preconceived notions. It's crucial to remain open-minded and listen for feedback that challenges current hypotheses.

💡Follow-up Questions

Follow-up questions are inquiries that stem from the initial responses given by interviewees. The video suggests that these questions are essential in customer interviews because they allow for deeper exploration of customer perspectives and can reveal insights that were not initially apparent. They help in probing into areas of uncertainty or contradiction.

💡Face-to-Face Interviews

Face-to-face interviews are a preferred method of conducting customer interviews, as they allow for direct observation of body language and more nuanced communication. The video mentions that while in-person interviews are ideal, video calls can be a good alternative, especially during times when in-person meetings are not feasible.

💡Customer Relationship

Customer relationship refers to how a business interacts with its customers. The video script includes this term as one of the hypotheses to be tested during interviews, aiming to understand how customers expect to engage with the business and what kind of relationship they prefer.

💡Pain Points

Pain points are issues or problems that customers experience and want to be resolved. In the video, understanding pain points is highlighted as a key aspect of customer interviews, as it helps in identifying the problems that a business's product or service aims to solve.

💡Gain

In the context of the video, 'gain' refers to the benefits or advantages customers expect to receive from a product or service. The video emphasizes the importance of verifying through interviews that the proposed solution delivers the desired gain to the customer.

💡Channels

Channels in the video script refer to the various means through which a business communicates with and delivers its offerings to customers. Hypothesis testing around channels aims to understand the most effective ways to reach and engage with customers.

💡Revenue Streams

Revenue streams are the different sources through which a business generates income. The video discusses verifying through customer interviews that the proposed methods and amounts for payment align with what customers are willing to pay.

Highlights

Customer interviews are crucial for testing hypotheses in the business model canvas.

The process is also known as customer discovery.

Interviews help verify understanding of the value proposition from the customer's perspective.

They assess why customers are dissatisfied with current solutions.

Interviews test hypotheses around customer relationships, channels, selling strategies, and revenue streams.

The interview process is not a sales pitch but a way to test hypotheses.

Confirmation bias can be a danger during customer discovery.

Interviews should include a mix of starter questions and follow-up questions based on customer responses.

Face-to-face interviews are preferred for better understanding and observing body language.

During a pandemic, video calls can be a good alternative to in-person interviews.

Interviews should be conducted in two rounds: one focusing on the customer and the other on the solution.

The first round of interviews should be about understanding the job, pain, and gain without discussing the product.

The second round of interviews verifies if the solution addresses the job, pain, and gain.

It's important to interview at least 30 prospective customers for accurate feedback.

Having a two-person team for interviews can help with note-taking and providing a second perspective.

Founders are often the best interviewers due to their deep understanding of the business context.

Finding prospective customers can be challenging and may require getting outside of your comfort zone.

When approaching customers, clarify that the conversation is not a sales pitch but a request for feedback.

Develop a script to convince customers to participate in the interview process.

List out the hypotheses to be tested and create starter questions for the interviews.

The video series will provide example questions and further guidance on conducting customer interviews.

Transcripts

customer interviews or perhaps more accurately we should say interviews of

prospective customers are an incredibly important piece of testing some of the

key hypotheses in your business model canvas this

process is also known as customer discovery and in this video

we'll talk about some tactics that you should think about as

you're planning your customer interview process hi i'm steve morris

and i use this StartupSOS channel to provide practical

how-to advice for first-time entrepreneurs. The customer interview or

prospective customer interview is used to test a number of the hypotheses

in your canvas starting certainly with the value proposition

making sure that you correctly understand from the customer's point of

view what's the job to be done the pain to be

avoided and the gain to be realized and you're verifying that you correctly

understand why they're dissatisfied with solutions

that are in place today or with whatever they're actually doing today

and eventually you'll verify that your solution actually addresses

the job the pain and the gain in a better way

than the current solutions. But it doesn't stop there. You're testing

some of your hypotheses around customer relationship

around channels your selling and marketing strategy

and even revenue streams verifying that customers

really are okay with paying the way that you expect them to pay

and the amount that you expect them to pay that's a lot of very key

assumptions you'll be testing. So a few things to think about as you're planning

your customer interviews first of all this is not a sales pitch the whole idea

here is testing your hypotheses so you're approaching this with the

thought that some of these hypotheses may be wrong so rather than just

broadcasting your message your sales message to the

customer the goal is to ask questions to try to test your

hypotheses and if some of them are wrong you'll

want to try to figure out how you need to tweak them

to make them correct one thing to be aware of as you go through these

customer interviews is confirmation bias people always have

a tendency to hear what confirms the beliefs that they

already have and that clearly is a real danger when

you're doing customer discovery because you are assuming that you could be wrong

about these hypotheses so you want to keep an

open mind you want to listen not just for the feedback that confirms

what you believe but for the feedback that sounds like

maybe it doesn't agree with what you believe

those are the things that you'll especially need to really probe into

and understand what exactly the customer is saying

so beware of confirmation bias it really will work against you

in terms of doing a good test of your hypotheses

the other thing about the customer interview is it's not just a fixed

list of questions you will need a starter list

of questions to to get things rolling but the key is

that you're going to listen to the customer response and

ask follow-up questions the idea is you don't really

know all the right questions to ask because you're probably not

100 percent right about your assumptions about your key hypotheses

about your understanding of of the customer's

job pain gain and and so forth so it's really important that you think of this

not as a fixed list of questions that you

could just post on the on the web and get responses to

but rather it's a process of discussing these these questions

with a customer to get their feedback and to really understand

where they're coming from what they're saying literally what they're thinking

about the job to be done and that's why you'd really like to have

a face-to-face interview to do these customer

interviews because you're going to be probing

you'd like to listen to their response and if there's something that you didn't

understand or that was different than what you thought you'll want to follow

up with some follow-on questions to really probe into those issues and

understand again where the customer is coming from the other advantage of

face-to-face is you can watch body language you can

really get a better idea of what bothers the the customer or what

they like you know just by watching body language so the face-to-face

approach to an interview is definitely the preferred approach and of

course the best way to be face to face is in person if you can just literally

sit down with the prospective customer and and

talk to them i'm recording this in the middle of a

pandemic and face-to-face interviews are a little tough right now well a

second choice certainly is a video call at least then you can still

see the prospective customer get some

reasonable idea for body language and it's not quite as

good as being there but at least it's a close second i also

suggest that you do your customer interviews in two rounds

the first round would focus completely on the customer

on the job to be done on the pain that they're trying to avoid

and the gain that they're trying to realize

and some of the other topics that you'll cover like customer relationship

and so forth not about your product or service not about your solution at all

talk to a lot of customers just to understand

their perspective on the job the pain the gain and what

will happen is there's a very good chance it will

actually change your idea of what the solution is

so get that feedback first think about it analyze it process it see

how it might change the solution that you should be offering

and then go on a second round of interviews where you're asking

about the solution to really verify that you correctly understand

that it does address the job to be done it does deliver the pain relief they

want and it does deliver on the gain that the customer is

is looking for you'll get a better idea of the right

solution if you start with the question about the

job the pain in the game now maybe it's just not

practical to split these into two rounds of interviews and and you want to

combine it all into one interview well if you do that again the

suggestion is at least start the interview with the

job the pain and the gain start it from the customer perspective

to really try to understand the job before you pull out your your

product to see if it actually delivers on the job the pain

and the gain because as soon as you bring out your product it's going to

bias the whole conversation the focus will be on your product your service

its features its capabilities its limitations

and you'll limit your ability to learn about the job itself the customer pain

the customer gain so hold off on that until you really

think you understand the job the pain and the gain

and then bring out your your solution and start to talk about

whether or not it really fits the customer need

who are you interviewing well you're interviewing prospective

customers to practice your interview technique

okay maybe you'll interview some friends and family and other entrepreneurs and

even some advisors and investors but when it comes to the

actual customer interviewing customer discovery

you really want to be talking to prospective customers

friends family advisors other entrepreneurs

honestly their feedback isn't that helpful unless

they're actually in your target population unless they have the problem

that you are addressing with your product or service

so you'll want to go out and find actual prospective

customers to talk to and how many do you need to do uh in in this uh this

customer interview the customer discovery

process well there is no one right answer but more is

absolutely better i would recommend talking to at least

30 prospective customers in your customer interviews

more is absolutely better the national science foundation has

a very well respected program called iCorps where

startups in that program are required to talk to

a hundred customers at least to do their customer uh discovery their customer

interviews and well believe me by the time you talk

to a hundred customers prospective customers you get a very

good feel for the range of customer feedback get a

good feel for you know what's an outlier versus what's

really sort of at the the core of the value proposition you learn a

lot so don't talk to just two or three or four

prospective customers at least 30 is a much better target

and a lot more than that is is certainly better by the way thinking of this

statistically in terms of sort of the accuracy of your

your statistical uh measures 30 even even 100 is is a pretty

small sample from a statistics point of view but

i would still argue that you'll learn a lot and it's

valuable even though statistically speaking

even 100 is indeed a small sample size it's still a very important learning

process and well worth doing so do your customer

interviews and again target at least 30 and more if you can

now i suggest you tackle the interviews as a two-person team one person

being the main interviewer and the second person taking

notes so that the interviewer can really focus on

listening to the customer and asking follow-up questions

without having to pause and sort of break up the the flow by taking notes

have somebody else do that another approach to that of course is

is to record the session and then you can go off and and take your notes and

and think more about it later so that

certainly is an alternative but the other advantage in having a

second team member there is that that person is bringing a

different point of view if you're the interviewer you may miss

some nuance or or some small thing that was in the

customer reply that your your note taker maybe noticed and they

absolutely can uh you know contribute to the conversation with some some

follow-up questions themselves so two points of view is not a bad idea

in the interview process now the other thing i recommend is

the best interviewers are the founding team

the reason for that is you you simply know more about the context

let's say compared to maybe you know bringing in an intern

or some interns to do interviews they simply don't have

as much thought into the business as you do

as much understanding of the underlying strategy and

and and understanding of the solution that you have in mind

or or an understanding of what you believe that the problem is

and and what the customer gain and pain is

the founding team is likely to have a lot more depth of knowledge

in all of those areas so they'll be in a better position

to do these probing interviews to ask those follow-up

questions so my suggestion is founders are the best people to actually

do the interviewing one question that

always comes up is well how do you find prospective

customers and that is a tough one to answer in

general because everybody watching this video is going

to be tackling a different customer segment

maybe it's a business to business play maybe it's

a business to consumer play there's a huge difference

right there but even within businesses and consumers obviously there's a lot of

different segments and different places you're going to go

to find those customers my suggestion is make this a team

brainstorming process another advantage in having a

team instead of being just a one-person company

is you can get together and do some brainstorming figure out

where can you find prospective customers who you would

reasonably expect would be prospects for the kind of service

or product that you're going to be developing

one argument i would make is that if you're going to be successful

it's incredibly important that you do figure out how to go find customers

uh to talk to can't find customers to go talk to that does not

bode well for the success of your business so leverage your team

get creative figure out where to go to find the customers that you need

to talk to and in doing that the other thought is

you will need to get outside of your comfort zone uh you'll need to be a

little bit pushy a little bit aggressive to find

and and then ask these folks to uh to talk to you

it's not always easy and and you'll get a lot of no's

and you have to keep asking additional people to get

in front of enough customers to do the customer discovery the customer

interviews that you need to do so it does take

getting outside of your comfort zone a bit getting a bit

aggressive it will feel a little awkward but after

you do it a few times it'll get a lot more natural and

it won't really feel that strange at all so expect

that you'll need to get outside your comfort zone really get out there

and do what it takes to find the people that you need to talk to

so once you find them how do you convince them to talk to you

well so here are some ideas number one you need to make it really clear

to this prospective customer that you don't want to talk to them to give them

a sales pitch and that's important because it's really what

people are used to if you have a company approaching you asking for your time

you expect to hear a sales pitch you don't want to set that expectation you

want to make sure they realize that we're a startup we don't even have a

product yet we don't have anything to sell but we believe we've identified

a problem that's not being solved well today and we think

we can solve it better but before we invest the time effort money etc

in doing that we want to make sure that we really do understand

the problem why it's a problem and why it's important

right what's the pain involved and what's the gain that's that's being

missed out and we'd really appreciate your help

with just you know 20 or 30 minutes of time to ask you

some questions that's one possible template

you get to create your own template with whether whatever style works best for

you whatever you're comfortable with but you'll need to come up with a script

that you can work on and learn from of course learn what works

what doesn't work to get people to agree to that 20 or 30 minutes

of q a time the good news is a lot of people are willing to help

an entrepreneur who's working on a business idea

but not everybody will so you will get no's you have to just expect that

and again you have to persevere and and keep pushing

to find enough people to talk to so that covers

a number of things to think about as you're planning

for your customer interview process to prepare my suggestion is

first of all list out the hypotheses that you're going to be testing

in the value proposition in the customer relationship

in your channel strategy and in your revenue source

strategy all of those things that you can get feedback

a useful feedback from a customer list out those hypotheses

and create some starter questions about all of those different areas

so that you've got a place to start your interview decide on

who the teams are going to be and start finding those customers start developing

a list of prospective customers to go talk to and of course work on that

ask script that script that you'll use to

get in the door to really get them to uh to talk to you and then you'll be well

on your way to starting with your customer interviews

there are three more videos on the way the first one gives some

example questions starter questions for the round one

set of interviews the interviews that will focus primarily on the job to be

done the pain and the gain as well as some of

the channel questions and the revenue source questions and

then a second video on round two questions

things to think about as you're really trying to understand

does your product or service address the job to be done

the pain to pain to be avoided and the gain to be

realized and then finally a third video on

how to ask the right questions to get a better idea of

what will people be willing to pay what's the value that they'll associate

with your solution that's it for this discussion

of tactics to think about as you prepare for your customer interview process

if this was helpful please click the like and the share and leave a comment

if you haven't subscribed yet please click that button and click the bell so

you get notified of upcoming videos because there's more

coming on this customer interview topic and a link to a playlist of all the

videos in this series will be right below me here that's it

for now thank you very much for watching