A personal story about customer interviews

Over the last few emails, I've covered these 4 types of customer interviews. 

• Buyer's Journey

• Churn/Win Back  

• User Interviews  

• Win/Loss Sales Interviews

Here's why we're spending so much time on this topic: 👉 Not talking to your customers, means you're making assumptions about their needs, wants and preferences. These assumptions can be very costly.

Here's a quick personal story.

Back in 1999, my best friend and I raised $3 million from investors to start a streaming media business. The business was selling video production services to stream live content on the Internet.

Our clients included local concert venues, sporting events, and arenas and such. One of my favorite events was streaming a Stone Temple Pilots concert live from an old warehouse building in downtown LA. It was a lot of fun. 

Back in those days, people were dialing into the Internet with a 56K modem, which, compared to today's Internet standards, is extremely slow. This resulted in a very slow frame rate, meaning that one frame of video would show every second or two. This is nothing like watching live television or even live streaming today. The quality of the stream was very difficult to watch. 

Even though we had production-quality cameras, switchers, etc., the end user's experience was horrible. As a result, the business never really took off.

If we had known that our product (live video streaming) was not the right fit for our desired customer at the time, we may have pivoted early or started a different business altogether.

Through this experience, I learned that making business decisions based on assumptions about customers is a mistake. 

The better way to go is by talking to your customers.

Question to ponder:

👉 Where am I making assumptions about our customers' needs, wants, and preferences where I should be talking to them instead?

Frequently Asked Questions

Why does skipping customer conversations lead to costly assumptions?

Because without direct input, decisions get made based on guesses about needs, wants, and preferences, guesses that can be significantly wrong and expensive to correct after the fact.

What happened with the 1999 streaming media business that illustrates this risk?

The business built production-quality live video streaming for events like concerts, but end users on slow 56K modems experienced a horrible, choppy viewing experience. The product itself wasn't the right fit for customers at that moment in internet infrastructure.

Could talking to customers earlier have changed the outcome of that streaming business?

Possibly. Understanding sooner that the product wasn't the right fit for the desired customer at the time might have led to an earlier pivot, rather than continuing to invest in a business that never really took off.

What's the core lesson drawn from that personal experience?

That making business decisions based on assumptions about customers is a mistake. Talking directly to customers is the better path, one that could have surfaced the product-market mismatch much earlier.

What are the four types of customer interviews covered across this series?

Buyer's Journey, Churn/Win Back, User Interviews, and Win/Loss Sales Interviews, each designed to answer a different specific question about how and why customers behave the way they do.