The #1 Rule When Talking To Customers
Your customers will mislead and lie to you unless you follow this cardinal rule.
I’ve been watching New Amsterdam, a medical drama series about a fictional NYC hospital. One of the attending ER physicians, Dr. Vijay Kapoor, is a neurologist who approaches his patients’ needs differently than others.
Instead of working up a diagnosis and treatment based only on his patients’ symptoms, Dr. Kapoor asks them to talk about their lives. Their stories meander from mother-in-law frustrations to family holidays, annoying both the impatient head of the ER and patients alike.
Dr. Kapoor talking with a patient on New Amsterdam
These seemingly pointless rambles ultimately have a purpose. Details that initially seemed irrelevant suddenly connect to form a pattern that Dr. Kapoor stitches into a coherent diagnosis. Even though it’s all fictional, his approach is useful outside of medicine.
As a product manager, your mission is to serve customers in ways that work for the business. This naturally involves talking to customers to understand their needs. But it’s easy to mess up unless you remember the single most important rule:
Ask customers about their past, never about their opinions.
Customer opinions are unreliable. What do you think of this idea? Would you buy it? Answers to these questions are worthless at best and lies at worst. People generally want to be agreeable and will lie to you to make you happy, especially if you’re asking for an opinion on something you seem invested in.
Specific experiences from their past are far more useful because they’re historical fact. When’s the last time you did X? Walk me through what happened. Dig into the reasons behind each of their actions. You will learn more about how their world actually works this way.
It can be tempting to ask customers how they want their world to work. Beware: this is another opinion. It’s your job—not theirs—to figure out what problems exist, why, and which ones are worth solving.
The customer owns the problem. The product manager owns the solution.
Stop looking for validation or direction. Seek to understand the past instead. Let’s be more like Dr. Kapoor.