Planning simple customer interviews

Your value proposition is a guess. The cheapest way to test it is to talk to people in your customer segment before you spend money. This lesson shows you how to plan those conversations.

What you will learn

• The difference between open, closed and leading questions
• Why questions about past behaviour are more useful than opinions about the future
• How to write a simple 5-question interview plan
• How to record and count what you hear, and what small numbers can and cannot tell you

Explanation

A customer interview is a short, structured conversation (often 10–20 minutes) with someone in your segment. The goal is to learn about their situation, not to sell.

An open question cannot be answered with yes or no. It starts with words like "how", "what", "tell me about". Example: "How do you get your coffee on workday mornings?"

A closed question has a short fixed answer, such as yes/no. It is fine for facts ("Do you change trains here?") but gives little detail.

A leading question pushes the person towards the answer you hope for. Example: "Wouldn't it be great to have a faster coffee cart?" Most people say yes to be polite, so the answer tells you very little.

Questions about past behaviour ("Tell me about the last time…") give more reliable information than questions about the future ("Would you buy…?"). People are often poor at predicting what they will do.

Worked example

Rheinblick Coffee Cart (fictional) wants to test the problem "commuters don't have enough time to buy coffee between trains".

Assumptions: the founder speaks to 8 commuters on three mornings; each talk lasts about 10 minutes; nobody is paid or offered a gift.

The 5-question plan:

1. "Tell me about your journey on a normal workday morning." (context)
2. "What did you do the last time you wanted a coffee on the way to work?" (past behaviour)
3. "What, if anything, was difficult about that?" (problem, without suggesting one)
4. "What have you tried to make that easier?" (current alternatives)
5. "Is there anything else about your morning I should have asked?" (open ending)

Recording results: after each talk, the founder writes down the main points in a simple table and then counts how many people mentioned each topic.

Interpretation: time pressure came up more often than price in this small group. That is a signal worth exploring, not proof.

Limitations: 8 people is a very small, non-random sample. The percentages only describe these 8 conversations and cannot be applied to all commuters. One person can also mention several topics, so the shares do not add up to 100%.

Common mistake

Practice activity

On paper, rewrite each of these leading or closed questions as an open, non-leading question:

1. "Don't you hate how expensive candles are in shops?"
2. "Would you buy a handmade candle as a gift?"
3. "Do you find gift shopping stressful?"

Then write your own 5-question plan for your business idea using the same structure: context → past behaviour → problem → alternatives → open ending.

Key takeaways

• Use open questions and avoid leading ones.
• Ask about past behaviour ("the last time…"), not future intentions.
• A 5-question plan keeps interviews short and comparable.
• Count what you hear, but remember small samples show signals, not proof.

Next step

In the next lesson, you will learn the three numbers every business owner must keep apart: revenue, profit and cash flow.