Interviews are hard
- Customers propose features even when I try to learn about their challenges
- Users told me something during the interview, but they behave differently afterwards
- It’s hard to find and schedule interviews on a regular basis
- My Interviewee talks about stuff that’s irrelevant for my current challenge
- I don’t have time to do interviews with customers
Sounds familiar?
What most companies get wrong with customer interviews
- Just doing it during the sales cycle – Often interviews are only conducted with potential customers. This has two problems: Your, or your company’s, focus is to close the deal and secondly your customers will talk in hypotheticals. Both lead to bad outcomes.
- Only specific persons have access to customers – Companies where there are dedicated customer facing teams with sole access to customers find that the information gathered is focused on specific cases. These insights can’t be used be the entire company.
Same goes for product teams where only one person (product manager or UX researcher) has direct customer exposure. - Sticking to a script – It’s a necessary requirement, that you know what you want to learn from an interview. But quite often this turns into an endless list of questions. This is neither pleasant for the interviewee nor will it deliver good results for your discovery.
- Focusing on usability questions – Many companies only test the usability of their ideas, when talking to users or customers. But there is so much more to learn from them.
These are common problems, when doing interviews. But there are many more.
Introducing
The Product Investigation Course
What you’ll get, when you sign up
6 video modules
The content is structured, so that each lesson supports you in your day-to-day.
Every module consists of up to 8 video lessons.
Proven tactics
The methods taught in this course are based on practical experiences I collected first hand or have gathered from experts in the field of interviewing.
Hands-on material
You get additional documents – like checklists, templates that help you putting the lessons learned into immediate practice.
Monthly live Q&A
Every month I host an online Q&A session, where you can ask questions and raise their learnings and challenges from conducting product investigations.
Continuously updated
I will incorporate new insights and materials into the course.
Direct access to me
You’ll get the chance to submit recordings of you for me to give feedback on.
What you’re going to learn
The course is structured, so that no matter your experience level or current processes within your company/team you can get benefits from day one.
Therefore each module can be watched standalone. Here is how it all breaks down:
Module 1: Preparation & Planning
- Align interviews with your product strategy
- When to use which type of interview
- Where and for how long should you schedule time
Module 2: Recruiting
- Learn what to look out for, when segmenting your customer & user base
- Tips on how to get started quickly
- Ways to automate the recruiting process
Module 3: Setting the stage
- Build rapport quickly
- Avoid mistakes that will close down your interviewee
Module 4: The interview
- What Questions to ask when
- Learn techniques that will help you to get to their story
- Avoid questions, that lead nowhere or even worst to bad insights
- Tips & Tricks to get a tight-lipped person going on
Module 5: How to overcome challenges
- Identify common mistakes interviewees make unintentionally
- How not to lead your witness
Module 6: Documentation & Usage
- Tips & Tricks on note-talking
- How to process the interview
- What formats are best, so that the insights can be used by everyone
- How to use the insights in your daily practice
FAQ
Yes, because for you it’s also paramount to know what the biggest problems of your colleagues are.
I find that in these situations your users even more think they are experts in how to design/develop your product. You need to get to the desires of all your users and then develop a solution that wows everybody.
No it’s not only for product managers. If you want to improve your skills on interviewing customers this course will help you.
Yes, you might be able to avoid mistakes that most teams do, when they start with customer interviews.
In my opinion there is always everyone can learn. If you are an expert on customer interviewing you might know some of the material already.
But there is a money-back guarantee – if it does not help you I don’t want your money.
As long as the course exists, you’ll have access to all the material and all the continuous updates.
No, the course is purposefully structured in a way that each and every video will help you directly.
Yes. You will directly get access to the entire modules and materials. Pick the topic that helps you the most first and go through it in a way that helps you improve.
About your teacher
My Name is Lars Haßler, I’ve been building digital products for over 14+ years as a founder of a SaaS, as contractor for different companies as well as Head of Product.
I learned the hard way how interviews done bad will lead to wrong decisions and a waste of time and money.
But I love to teach the stuff I learned, both within my leadership roles as well as lecturer for project & product management at the Fresenius University.
Why should you start now
There is no right time – ever.
But interviewing is a hard skill to master. So regardless if you just going to start with product investigations or if you are listening to customers already on a regular basis you’re spending quite a bit of time.
Do you want to get the most of the time? Then this course helps you to get to the deep desires of your users and customers.