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?