Partner with a customer research guide to confidently talk to your customers and get clarity for your business. Using Jobs-To-Be-Done approach.
You're an indie founder or maybe you have a tiny team. But you're used to wearing many hats. Doing all the things. You've done customer interviews before and know the value of it. You've been thinking about kicking off a round of customer research because
- you'd like to investigate your positioning and find customers for whom your product is essential, or
- improve your messaging to attract more of the right customers, or
- investigate some unexpected churn you've noticed, or
- understand why growth has stalled a bit over the last months, or
- you're feeling a little stuck on what direction to take the product in and don't want to just guess and make assumptions, or
- maybe you want to do some explorative customer interviews to understand why your happy customers and happy.
You believe that doing customer research is super valuable but you also know that it's a non-trivial amount of time commitment. So you want to do it right. And maybe you've thought about getting some help.
You've watched some videos from YC titled "how to talk to customers" and maybe you've read books like The Mom Test. So you already know that you're not suppose to talk about your idea/feature/product and you're not suppose to ask hypothetical questions about the future like "would you pay more for this feature if we built it". In fact, you're not suppose to talk much actually but rather just listen.
OK. That sounds great, in theory. But how do you do that in practice? Get someone to talk at length and tell you all of the details about what they are trying to do, what they have tried in the past and share their perspective on their situation including the emotions and struggles. Plus you may have other tactical questions like...
- how do I decide which type of customers to talk to?
- how do I recruit potential customers if I don't already have a database with customer emails?
- how do I keep the conversation going for more than 10 minutes? what about awkward silence?
- what should I be listening for? what are good follow-up questions?
- how do I take notes? ensure I don't insert my bias? should I do video calls, audio only calls? should be recording?
- how many interviews do I do? how do I efficiently synthesize my notes and extract insights and make plan of action?
There are books and articles and talks and podcasts that answer all of the above questions. More specifically, there is an approach called Jobs-To-Be-Done (JTBD) that is all about how to focus the customer conversation to learn the most relevant insights.
If you know all about Jobs-To-Be-Done, great! (We can geek out about it together)
And if you're like jobs to be what?! and haven't had a chance to consume everything there is to consume on the Internet about it. Not to worry, I have and I live to share what I know.
Now you're thinking this sounds great! I am done guessing and assuming. I'm pumped about talking to customers and unlocking insights and hiring someone to help with the research. (Perhaps this Internet stranger, whose webpage I'm reading).
And at the same time, you also feel hesitant. As an indie founder, you feel you're suppose to do it all on your own. I could never 'outsource' talking to customers. You know you're suppose to be in touch with the customer at every stage of the business but lately you haven't been able to.
Wouldn't it be nice to partner with someone who can help ensure that your business gets the most out of the time you invest in customer interviews. You would be involved in every call and even learn new tips and techniques to apply in the future.
If this resonates with you, get in touch here and let's see if it's a good fit. Or you can send me a ZipMessage here. Please include answers to the following:
- What is your product/service? Briefly explain your value proposition.
- What is motivating you to do customer research right now? Share open questions or decisions you are working through.
I'm excited to hear from you!
FAQ
What specifically can you help with?
-- Planning and deciding who to interview, recruiting participants, leading the actual customer call, capturing JTBD notes, reviewing recordings, synthesizing insights and patterns from across a round of interviews.
How exactly will we work together?
-- Few options. And tradeoff you can make based on your time, budget, and comfort level with interviews. I can provide async feedback on interview recordings done by you, all the way to lead the entire customer research project and lead the interview conversations (while you observe) and teach you how to do it yourself in the future.
If that sounds good or if you have more question, you can get in touch in one of two ways: