Recipe

Stage 2: Validate your assumptions about customer’s needs

1-2 weeks

1-3 people per group in a group is ideal, but no more than 4.

Everyone knows that products or services that succeed in the market solve real customer problems.

Your idea would have been based on your assumptions about their problems, so now is the point to validate those assumptions with customers themselves.

This stage helps you to think through deciding what to focus on when you talk with them, and how to make the most of your customer interviews.

YOUR GOALS

What you need before starting:

  • A completed Customer Canvas
  • Clearly defined customer segments

Your instructions

1

Decide what to talk about in customer interviews

Since your time with customers is so precious and valuable, use the time wisely! To do this, spend a little time prioritising what you want to discuss with them.

This tool helps you to come up with the key questions you will ask, and also gets you to think about how you open and close the conversation. All set!

2

Go do your customer interviews!!

Now it’s time to get out there and put your hard work into practice, and actually go and have conversations with customers.

You need to find customers to talk to (which is why we give this stage a good chunk of time), so if you haven’t started doing this, then start now! You are aiming for at least 5 interviews.

3

Make the most of your interview

Any time you get with your customers is valuable, so you need to make the most of it. Use this opportunity to put a simple technique into practice during your interviews, to make sure you understand the underlying motivations behind things your customers do.

4

Extract data from your customer interviews

Make sure you go back over your transcripts or recordings and capture the key data from it. The evidence you pull out is needed in later stages.