 Hello, everyone. Thank you very much for joining today's session, The Art of Conducting Customer Interviews. To introduce myself, I'm Neerau Patel, work with Microsoft as product lead for last more than six years, have over 20 years of industry experience, managing and developing and implementing enterprise-grade B2B as well as B2C products. Over the years, I worked with customers across the geographies, and that helped me leveraging and receiving a lot of experiences, conducting customer interviews as well as understanding their behavior. So let's get into today's session. Let's see what are the topics today. So today, we will start with understanding the types of customer interviews, then we will understand how to identify right audience for our interviews. The next topic is how you balance what and how sides in the interviews. Then we will move to the untold stories of customers. Following that, we will cover some tips, the to-dos to conduct successful interviews. We will look at don'ts to avoid failure, and then we will get into a quick framework that you can leverage to conduct interviews in future. That's the framework that I developed based on my learning. I call it diaper. Don't laugh. Okay, so let's get into it. To start with types of customer interviews, and the first type of interview would be during market research and analysis. So when you are doing market analysis at the start of the product initial phase, that's when you go to customer to conduct the interviews. This is the time when most of the time you will find customer little confused. So why? Because they may not know the product, they may not know the feature, or they might not know what to respond and how to respond. So prepare your questionnaire accordingly. The second type of interviews could be possible right after the pilot of your product, or right after the soft launch of your product. This is the time when customer would have received part of the product, might not be very happy because there might be some defects, they might be expecting more. So prepare your questionnaire accordingly. The third type of interviews might be possible during the regular run and growth phase of your product. Now, this is the phase when most of the time customer stakeholders might be busy with their day-to-day work. Many may not be interested even to sit with you and answer you, right? So prepare your questionnaire accordingly, keep it simple, quick, right? And then let's go to the next part of the interview. The another kind of interviews could be possible when in future you may want to launch or you may want to analyze a large new upcoming feature. This is something when you reach out to customer with, they might be really exciting to discuss about it, but the important thing is that you reach out to right customer stakeholders who might be interested in that kind of features, yeah? So these are the types of interviews to prepare accordingly. Next topic is how you identify right audience for your interviews. And we will talk about the types of users or customers possible. You have to ensure that you select or focus on right type of users for your interview. So let's see what all kinds of users might be possible. The regular users or end users, subject matter expert, SME level users, managerial users or leadership level users. So when you approach regular users, if you want to talk about operational cases, simple regular use cases or when you want to talk about efficiency related points, these are the right topics when you reach out to regular end user customers. In case you want to discuss and learn about special scenarios and how to handle them, if you want to explore more options to do the same type of work in a different way, these are the topics and candidates when you reach out to subject matter expert level users. If you want to focus more about the productivity, cost or time improvements, or if you want to focus about the aspects of product that focuses on the quality improvement, these are the topics when managerial users are more interested. So for this topic, plan to go to managerial users. And if you have some features that might impact higher level employee morale or it impacts directly on the competition or the long term goals, these are the specific topics when you may want to approach leadership level or senior leadership level users, because they are really interested to talk about this kind of topics. Moving to next topic, again, part of the identifying ride audience, but here we will talk about the known user audience and stranger. What I mean by that known is the user about whom you know, the skill set of the user that you know, or you might have good working relationship with the person. So when you know the user, you know the skill set of the user, you have working relationship with the user. These are the kind of users who when you approach them, keep your questions very precise because you know the person, you know how they might respond, or you might have good tuning. You can bring a very detailed questionnaire to them because you can leverage your relationship there. And you can have a recurring questionnaire as well with them on ongoing basis to further detail out your questions in future. So leverage your relationship and your knowledge of particular user when those are known. In case the users are stranger, you are planning to approach them for the first time. In this kind of scenarios, keep your possible interviews brief and try to cover more wider topics, but still keep them brief. Also possibly go to them one time because you don't know, they might change their mindset in the second round. So possibly keep it one time. Moving to the next topic, this is about what and how. So you might be thinking what is what and how here, right? So this is about when you are building the product or when you are planning to launch new features, the thoughts or ideas related to what side of the product, what I mean that, what you want to build, what new features you want to build, what validations you want to add. Those kind of thoughts should come from your side based on your market research. But how do you want to implement? That side should be focused in the interviews. Let's take example, you want to add recommendation inside your product. Now, you have already decided the what side of it, that you want to add recommendations. But how you should implement? That's the part that should come based on customer interviews. What I mean by that, for example, where should you display the recommendations? On the right-hand side, bottom, during the product browsing, or after the order is placed, or when user logins, right? All those kind of stuff you can cover in your interviews with customer, capture their thoughts, and then you can decide how part of that, how you will implement particular feature later on. Yeah, I'm pretty sure this will help. Please be very careful about how you select your questioner. It should focus to find out how side of your products and features. Moving to next topic, how you identify or recognize some of the untold stories. When you interact with customers, there will be number of things that they may not speak up, but you may still want to find it out. So let's check a couple of points here. You may want to find out what motivates your customer to use that particular product or feature. They may not speak out, but plan your questions accordingly to find that out. Another part could be that does your product or feature cover the basic jobs to be done for the customer? You might focus on just particular functionality or activity, but until and unless you figure out that how it covers overall jobs to be done for the customer, they may not speak up, but it's your job to find out, and you may want to build in the missing functionalities in future. Another part is you may want to find out the kind of problems that customer face on day-to-day basis while using the particular product or while doing their work. You may want to learn about their struggling moments. That is very important because that will give you very good insight into what you should be build and how you should be building. Another point is that you should focus on learning how particular functionalities might be used differently or how the same functionality can be achieved differently via different routes. This will help you to find out the simple most route and how or when you should be prioritizing that particular route. Another part is that is learning about customer habits. This is also very important. Many times customer do not speak about how they use the particular feature or at times they don't recognize, they fail to talk about how they use. So it is a good idea to see how customer does particular type of work or functionality. Maybe sit with them and see them. You may want to find out the buying barriers. At times the barriers could be budget constraints or they might have some another product from market and the licenses that is going to expire after six months. So this is the frame when they may not want to buy your product. So you may want to indirectly find out if there are any barriers to use your product or buy your product. Another item could be any barriers from seasonality front or some product might not be that will help useful around end of the year or start of the year or middle of the year or in particular weather specific season or something else. So try to find it out. That will definitely help you. So moving next, in this topic we will take and talk about some tips in terms of how you can make your interview successful to do. The first topic is roughly how many customers you should interview. I'm pretty sure many of you might be thinking about it. So I would say that generally you should be interviewing five to six customers in each category or persona. That is a good number. Do not go more than 10 because my experience says that after 10 most probably you will fetch repetitive outcome. So roughly five to six max 10. Another important point during conducting interviews is that you must try hard and work hard to bring the consistency in conducting interviews for the same topic. This is very, very important. Why? Because it always helps you to stay focused on your desired outcome while driving the interviews efficiently. There is another benefit. It will also help you to uncover some of the specific user patents or trends if that exists. So make it consistent when you meet multiple users for same category or same persona. Some more tips on to do. So another thing is how you approach your interviews to make it successful. Let's see a couple of points. Start with easy and fact-based questions in your interviews. Keep your interviews casual and relaxed. Don't make it tense and stressed. Yes, always make it face to face. That's the way to go. If not possible in this COVID days, make it video call. Include some broader questions. That always helps you to identify some patents and understand user behavior well. Yes, this is some different topic you might not have think of. So ensure that you have genuine interest to understand what customer explains. Your goal is to understand the particular point from user's point of view. So show genuine interest when you take the interviews. And yes, ask probing questions. Because it helps you to refine the thoughts and it helps you to fetch better insights of particular topic. Let us look at a couple of points in terms of what helps you to make the interviews more effective. There are a couple of points here. So there are times when you might not know the users and I think that's one of the minor drawbacks. So what I suggest is that set up your interviews in advance and then by the time you get into the interview ensure that you build some rapport with customer in advance. It always helps. So work upon building rapport before you go and meet customer in the interview. Practice effective listening. What is effective listening? Well, that's the technique that helps you to isolate the noise during the conversation because your goal is to stay focused about the learning of your particular topic. Another important point is that focus on the questions that you prepared well in advance and your goal is to validate your understanding using that particular question for the same problem statement that you had it in your mind before coming inside interview. So stay focused on your questions and what you want to understand. One more point is keep cross-checking your understanding as a part of the interview process because there is a very much possibility of creating some confusion or understanding something incorrectly. It also helps you to be on the same page when you practice reflective listening and you cross-checking your understanding with customer. So we covered some good points on to-dos. Now also look at something what you should not be doing or to avoid any failures in the interviews. So a thumb rule or no presentations or no product demos. Do not bundle the large presentations or practical demos of your product in your interviews. Don't ask leading questions. What that means is that you should not be asking the questions such as you put the answer in customer's mouth. So no leading questions, please. Another tip is don't get into why when customer responds something because as soon as you get into why side of it, it triggers rational mindset when customer might stop sharing his or her thought process and they will hesitate further to share their thoughts with you down the line in the interview. So no wise place. Don't keep asking a lot of questions. Your goal is to ask some questions and listen customer in detail. Your goal is to understand their side of it. So instead of asking a lot of questions, flooding a lot of questions, focus on understanding customer. Another tip is that do not demonstrate strong reactions to what customer responds. This is also very important. Otherwise it will trigger customer in particular direction. No positive reactions, no negative reactions, no serious reactions. So control it. Another tip, don't reflect negativity in your tone. So there are times when you might know that for particular topic customer might be negative, but do not reflect it in the question that you prepare for your interview. Or don't give hint of negativity in your question itself. Another part is don't be defensive when customer comes back with the negative response about something that you ask. That is also very important because if you be defensive, customer will stop sharing his or her thought process. So those were a couple of good points that you must practice to avoid some of that negativity or say failure in your response. Failure in your interviews. Well, over the years, I gain all of these experiences and try to put it into some framework. Well, the name is funny diaper. It is just to remember how you remember it. So I came across this small simple framework that you may want to use it to prepare for your future interviews and to conduct your interviews. Let's go. Let's check it. So it's a six phase framework, define, identify, arrange, prepare, execute and review. So for interviews, you start with defining your interview scope and desired outcome. Once you have defined scope, you need to identify the right customer audience to conduct your interviews. Once you identified your audience, you need to arrange the interviews and then start building rapport with the customer. Then once the interview is set up, you need to start preparing for your interviews that how you will conduct it. So that is the part when you prepare for what side of it as well as questioner that will be used to conduct your interviews in future. The next phase is to execute the interview as per the plan and the questioner that you prepared earlier. Stay result oriented. And once you conduct the interview, the next part is or the final phase is to review the interview outcome. Here you also go and clarify some of the answers that you captured from customer as well as you go ahead and consolidate the interview outcome. Based on multiple interviews, you might have conducted for same category or same persona. So it's a quick, simple framework. Define, identify, arrange, prepare, execute and review. To remember it quickly, you can call it diaper the way I said. I hope it helps you out. Okay, so that's what we had for today's session. If you have any specific questions for this topic, please put it in the chat window or you can send it to me via email as well. My email is listed on the last slide. Yeah, and I'll try to reply back as soon as possible. Well, I also look forward to some of your feedback. You can, it will just take a minute or so. Here is the link and here is the QR code in case you want to scan it quickly. But please take a minute to share your feedback for this session. I also want you to prepare for your future customer interviews using the points that we have covered today. So use this framework and then try to practice your interview before you get into actual interview. Feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn if you want to. The LinkedIn details is also available on the last slide. Yeah, so let's go to my contact. So here is my contact, my LinkedIn email as well as the profile details on the product school. So thank you very much for attending today's session. It has been a pleasure to talk to you and I am, I hope that today's session help you to conduct your future user or customer interviews in a successful way. Thank you very much and have a great day. Bye-bye.