MVPverse — How to conduct customer feedback interviews.

or MVPCF interview, what does MVPCF mean? — here you go MVP Customer Feedback.

As I have mentioned in the article, understanding users, their pain points and their aspirations is one of the most important aspects of MVP success. Hence, starting user research early is paramount.

One of the most effective and low-tech solutions to getting feedback is conducting interviews with your early evangelists.

Soliciting feedback in your target market can drive you in the right direction and likely build a high-quality product that achieves product/market fit. Having said that interview is just one of the techniques you can get feedback, As per Steve Portigal, interviewing isn’t the right approach for every problem. It favours depth over sample size, it’s not a source for statistically significant data, but it is one the best ways to get closer to users,develop empathy, and increase user centricity in the product team.

What is an MVPCF interview?

The user interview is a commonly used method in user research. A one-on-one interview session can provide valuable insights into users’ behaviours and hidden business problems.

When to conduct the MVPCF interview?

A user interview can be helpful during any stage of the product software development process:

• Before building MVP, the interview helps to get a better understanding of your potential users, their wants, and needs.
• During the product development process, it provides the early adopters with an early concept model, defines whether your product is viable, and collects their feedback to improve your MVP.
• After shipping your MVP to the market, it helps to examine the user experience, test the product’s usability, and understand your customers better to develop a full-fledged product that suits their needs.

MVPCF interview best practices

It's best to break the entire process into three phases: before, during, and after the interview.

1. Before the interview

• Set a goal for the interview — A goal needs to need to be realistic and to the point, addressing a particular aspect of the user experience.
• Ensure you are talking to the right set of users, that can be done by going back to your goal and then matching the users that may derive the largest amount of value to it.
• Design the questions properly — To maximise the learning the questions or the interview need to be structured properly. One example of interview structure could be Greetings > Problem qualification > Telling the compelling story > Solution Exploration and Demo > Closing. I believe I need to dig a bit deeper into this topic, hence will write a bit more in the coming articles.
• If you can do a mock interview with a colleague.

2. During the interview

• Build a rapport with the interviewees — Developing rapport with respondents is the next step in a user interview, enabling them to feel comfortable and relaxed. The interviewer should be the one that actively shows greater friendliness and breaks the ice with the participant.
• Explain the purpose of the interview — Describe your goals and explain how you intend to use the outcomes. This allows participants to understand more about context, their roles, why you want to talk with them, what kinds of questions they might be asked so that they don’t feel confused throughout the interview.
• Don’t judge or educate your interviewees — It can make them feel disrespectful and unpleasant, resulting in eliciting the information ineffectively and leaving bad impressions.
• Use the design that you created in previous step to take them through the journey.

3. After the interview

• Structure the information — This can be done either via proper research report, mind maps, personas, or an informal call with your product team.
• Conduct retrospective — Ideally, once you’ve finished your interviews, take a step back, assess your performance, and develop a plan to manage what you learned. Revisit your screening criteria and filter out whether their responses help you reach the initial goals you set.
• Get ready to repeat interviews to continue developing your MVP into a full-fledged product and make a more customer-centric way of doing things.