Process
Customer discovery interviews in seven steps
A seven-step process for customer discovery interviews, the conversations founders and product teams use to check that a problem is real before building a solution. It runs from writing down assumptions and defining a precise segment, through recruiting 15 to 20 people and listening more than you talk, to finding patterns and re-testing. Use it to plan your first round. Koji can run the interviews as AI-moderated voice or text conversations and group the themes across all of them.
Where this appears
What's in this process
- Write down your assumptions: Who the customer is, the problem, how bad it is and what they do about it today.
- Define the segment precisely: A focused segment gives clear signal. A broad one gives contradictions.
- Recruit 15 to 20 people: Enough to reach saturation for most early-stage discovery.
- Prepare a short guide: 5 to 7 open-ended questions, each one inviting a story.
- Listen more than you talk: Speak less than 20% of the time and keep your solution out of the first half.
- Look for patterns across interviews: Problems that show up in more than half your interviews are likely real.
- Update and re-test: Each round updates your hypotheses, until you have conviction or a reason to pivot.
Use this image
Free to use in your docs, decks and posts under CC BY 4.0, as long as you credit Koji with a link to this page. To embed it, paste this into your page:
html
<a href="https://www.koji.so/visuals/customer-discovery-interview-process-seven-steps"><img src="https://www.koji.so/visuals/customer-discovery-interview-process-seven-steps/customer-discovery-interview-process-seven-steps.png" alt="Process of seven steps for customer discovery interviews, from writing down assumptions and recruiting 15 to 20 people to finding patterns and re-testing." width="1080" height="1080" /></a>
<p>Source: <a href="https://www.koji.so/visuals/customer-discovery-interview-process-seven-steps">Customer discovery interviews in seven steps</a>, Koji</p>
