Customer Interview Guide
A discovery interview script with probing questions and the traps to avoid, built for validating that a problem exists before anyone builds a solution for it.
Customer interviews go wrong in consistent ways: leading questions, pitching instead of listening, and asking people to predict their own future behavior.
This guide provides an opening, a sequence of past-behavior questions, follow-up probes, and explicit examples of the phrasings to avoid and what to substitute.
It also includes a short debrief template to complete within an hour of the conversation, while the language the customer used is still fresh.
Discovery interview script and probing questions for validating problems. This tool is part of the InnoLead Tools library — a set of editable templates drawn from what our members use to run innovation functions inside large organizations.
- Download the document and drop in your organization's name, logo, and terminology.
- Delete the prompts you don't need; the structure matters more than the boilerplate.
- Circulate a draft to two or three stakeholders before you socialize it broadly.
