“Would you use this?” is an easy question to ask and a difficult answer to trust. The person may want to encourage you. They may like the idea in principle. They may be imagining a future version with features, pricing and timing you have never offered.
A better customer conversation begins before your solution enters the room. Ask about the situation in which the problem already appears. You are looking for a usable account of events, including the inconvenient parts your idea may not address.
GOV.UK's interview guidance recommends open, neutral questions and attention to real examples. For a founder or independent professional, that gives the conversation a more useful center of gravity: the customer's experience.
Recruit around a situation, not a flattering label
“Ambitious entrepreneurs” describes an identity. “Owners who hired their first employee in the past six months” describes a situation with events you can discuss. The second makes it easier to find relevant participants and compare what happened.
Write down why each participant fits the question you are exploring. Friends can help rehearse an interview, but their enthusiasm is not automatically evidence about your intended market. Include people whose experience may challenge your preferred story.
Explain the purpose and obtain consent for notes or recording. Avoid collecting details you do not need. If someone shares customer or employee information, redirect toward the process rather than inviting identifiable private material.
Follow one recent episode
Begin with an event the person remembers. For a fictional service helping new managers, the conversation might start with a recent difficult delegation rather than a general question about leadership.
Use a sequence like this:
- What was happening when you first noticed the problem?
- What did you do next?
- What did you try before that?
- Who else became involved?
- What required the most effort or uncertainty?
- How did the situation end?
- Is there anything about that experience I have misunderstood?
You do not need to read every question mechanically. Follow the account, ask for clarification and leave space for something you did not predict. A discussion guide supports listening; it should not prevent it.
Look for tradeoffs already being made
A workaround can teach you more than a compliment. Perhaps the manager spends Friday evenings rewriting instructions. Perhaps they ask a colleague to review every assignment. Perhaps they leave the problem alone because another priority matters more.
Do not automatically interpret every workaround as a sales opportunity. It may be cheap, effective and preferred. Ask what makes the current approach acceptable and what would need to change before the person would consider another one.
Distinguish the user from the buyer. The person feeling the frustration may not control the budget or approval process. That difference belongs in your notes before you design an offer around instant purchase.
Keep evidence and interpretation in different columns
After the interview, make a short record:
| Evidence from the conversation | Our interpretation or next question |
|---|---|
| Participant described rewriting a task brief twice. | Is the difficulty defining the result or communicating it? |
| A colleague reviewed the final version. | What support already exists, and how useful is it? |
| No budget discussion occurred. | We do not yet know how this kind of help would be purchased. |
Preserve relevant wording with permission, but do not turn a single person's experience into a market statistic. Look for differences between participants as well as repeated themes.
End with a decision about what to learn next
The output of an interview is not necessarily a new feature. It might be a narrower audience, a different problem, an offer that needs a different buyer, or a reason to stop.
Choose the next evidence appropriate to the uncertainty. You might observe a workflow, show a rough explanation, or offer a clearly described paid pilot. Each step answers a different question. A person understanding the offer does not establish that they will buy it.
Before your next interview, remove the sentence that asks the participant to predict their future enthusiasm. Replace it with a request for a recent episode. You may hear less encouragement, but you will have more material with which to build something useful.
Then use the offer-page exercise to turn what you learn into a clearer proposition.
Questions worth asking
Should I explain my product during a customer interview?
First understand the person’s experience without framing it through your solution. If you later discuss an offer, label that as a separate part and avoid treating positive reactions as purchase evidence.
How many interviews prove demand?
No fixed small number proves demand. Interviews reveal situations and questions; commercial demand needs additional evidence, such as appropriate paid commitments and repeated use.
