Brian Rhea Brian Rhea

Mastering Customer Interviews: Encouraging Honesty and Embracing Feedback

When you're kicking off customer interviews to collect feedback on a design or prototype, one of the most important things you should say is:

"None of the designers are on the call. You aren't going to hurt anyone's feelings."

Or:

"We're in the very early stages here, so please feel free to shoot down anything you see."

Even if it isn't true!

Nurture Honesty in Customer Interviews

People don't like hurting other peoples' feelings and your customers will lie to you to avoid the sense that they've delivered bad news.

You want to do everything you possibly can to relieve your customer of any sort of pressure or responsibility in the process.

It doesn't matter if I'm the actual designer that created the screens they're seeing and it's my favorite work of all time, or if we're one short sprint away from launching what they're about to see, at the beginning of all the customer interviews, I will say:

"This is very low stakes because we're still early on in this process."

"We're not at all invested in the specifics that you're about to see. But we are invested in getting it right so it's no big deal to us to blow this whole thing up."

"Feel free to be blunt, this isn't my baby. I've not put a lot of time into the prototype up to this point. My job is to poke some holes into what's here now."

Be Willing to Go Back to Square One

That whole thing about being willing to start back from scratch? You need to mean it.

A lot of the time, customer research folks will argue that you shouldn't show customers a prototype or a mock-up because it will prime their expectation and you'll be refined to a local maximum.

That's definitely true.

But in my experience, the greater risk is not that your customers will be primed or polluted by the prototype, but that you will!

Mock-ups are subject to the Lindy effect. Each time they're posted to Slack, someone will become attached to a certain element or offer an anecdote for why a potentially meaningless feature is an absolute must-have.

The longer mock-ups exist prior to customer research, the more likely they are to exist regardless of the results of customer research.

You have to be willing to trash your favorite screen, your favorite micro-interaction, your favorite anything if what you learn is that, in fact, it's not useful.

Neutrality is Easier When You're Early

You're going to get attached to your thing. Either because it becomes your Precious or because the inertia created by seeing it day-in-day-out lets you get used to it.

If you want to be able to mean it when you say, "Yeah, we're in the early stages here so be honest. You're not going to hurt any feelings," then have those conversations when that's actually true.

In building new things, the quote to always keep in mind is this gem by the founder of LinkedIn, Reid Hoffman:

"If you're not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you've launched too late."

Take that approach to your wireframes, mock-ups, prototypes, and your MVP.

What often happens is that founders and teams wait until they've fixed all the things that they think are wrong before showing it to anyone else. This puts you into diminishing returns way too early as you fine-tune all your own specific preferences, when in fact, there are massive gains to be made from just five customer interviews.

In short:

  • Talk to customers
  • Talk to them early
  • Let them know that they won't hurt anyone's feelings
  • Believe that to be true

FREE Resource to Accelerate your Research!

In this guide, I share highly effective prompts for:

  • Defining the AI's role
  • JTBD statements
  • Forces of Progress
  • JTBD Timeline
  • Job Map
  • JTBD Canvas

    We respect your privacy. Unsubscribe at anytime.

    I've helped business leaders in Product, Design, Engineering, Sales, and Operations acheive their goals.

    “Hire Brian Rhea. The dude is seriously creative.”

    Brad Feld
    Managing Director, Foundry Group

    “Working with Brian has been a gamechanger for us! He takes the guesswork out of innovation research!"”

    Sabine Müller
    Research & Insights Lead, LEGO Ventures

    “Brian is the most gifted product strategist I've worked with in my career, and the things he taught us greatly impacted how I think about venture building today. He's extremely professional, very pleasant, and reliable.”

    Anders Søndergaard
    CEO, Coana

    “Brian is a genius. The thoughtfulness and creative leadership he brings to a team is unparalleled.”

    Andy Stone
    Director of Digital Experience, NetApp

    “Brian's skills and ability to innovate on the fly repeatedly pushed our projects farther than I thought was possible.”

    Brett Wagner
    Founder, Sidecar

    “Brian is one of the most creative thinkers and doers that I know. His ability to generate a concept and then follow through with the execution is admirable. If Brian is on a project, you can trust in the quality and delivery of his participation.”

    Brian Dodds
    VP Sales, Dash Solutions

    “Brian is a superstar. He is wicked smart, compassionate, able to distill complexity into manageable parts and to lead us through JTBD in ways our team could understand.”

    Ed Kacic
    President, Irvine Health Foundation

    “Brian is one of the most discriminating product professionals I know. He's developed a methodical framework for evaluating what features should belong in a product and what features should be killed.”

    Jason Hall
    Managing Partner, S&H Captial

    “Brian is a true visionary with a passion for excellence, knowing and communicating current and cutting edge technology and driving exceptional business results for clients. His exuberance and passion for creating and collaborating with his clients is outstanding!”

    Jeff Hughes
    Creative Design Director, United Airlines

    “Brian is the master of taking a fresh idea, distilling it to its core, and packaging it perfectly for users.”

    Jeff Stephens
    Director of Engineering, ONEHOPE Wine

    “I have always been impressed by the quality of Brian's work, the personal relationship he fosters, the value, punctuality and creativity he brings to every project.”

    Mark Stone
    Founder, The Info Group

    “Brian is a leader among leaders, a brilliant product thinker, and a genuinely good man. I hope you have the chance to interact or collaborate with Brian - you will be better for it.”

    Mike Taylor
    Head of Client Experience, Real Kinetic

    “Brian is the most gifted JTBD expert with whom I have had the opportunity to work. He brings a deep and intuitive appreciation for the outcomes that a user is trying to achieve. Brian's methodical and thoughtful approach to developing applications is rare and incredibly valuable.”

    Ryan Hunter
    Chief Revenue Officer, Spherex

    Ready to level up your product?