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Research · Diagnose, Explore

Customer interview programme

Eight to twelve conversations, properly designed, will change more minds in a leadership team than any amount of desk research. The design is what separates useful from confirmatory.

The printable canvas and the handoff into Claude Code are part of a paid plan. See what a plan includes. It needs the Claude desktop app on this machine, and your team and the prompt library already installed in that project — we cannot see your disk, so open it there.

Stage
01 Diagnose, 02 Explore
Works at
Business, Department
Maturity
Any
Time
Two weeks: a day to design, a week to run, a day to synthesise

What it is

A small number of structured conversations, designed to test specific beliefs rather than to gather general feedback. Eight to twelve well-designed interviews change leadership minds more reliably than any volume of desk research.

Hypotheses
The three beliefs being tested, written before recruitment, with what a falsifying answer would sound like.
Recruitment
Who you speak to. Must include lost, lapsed and competitor-choosing customers — a programme of happy customers confirms rather than tests.
Discussion guide
Open questions about past behaviour rather than future intention. Stated preference is the least reliable data in commerce.
Interviewer discipline
No selling, no defending. If that is a risk, use someone from outside the team.
Coding
Tagging all transcripts before drawing conclusions, so the most articulate interviewee does not become the finding.
Verdict per hypothesis
Supported, contradicted, or still unclear. Named explicitly for each of the three.
The mistake people makeTwelve interviews cannot give you statistical confidence and should never be presented as though they can. They give you mechanism and language — why people do what they do, in words you can use.
What it’s forYour strategy rests on beliefs about customers that nobody has actually checked with a customer.
What it’s not forYou need statistical confidence across a large population. That is a survey, not an interview programme.

How you run it

  1. Write down what you believe firstInterviews without a hypothesis produce anecdotes. Write the three beliefs you are testing, and what an answer that falsifies each would sound like.
  2. Recruit for disconfirmationInclude lost customers, lapsed ones, and people who chose a competitor. A programme of happy customers tells you nothing you did not already believe.
  3. Ask about behaviour, not opinion"What did you do last time?" beats "what would you do?". Stated preference is the least reliable data in business.
  4. Do not sell, and do not defendThe moment the interviewer defends the product, the data stops. If that is a risk, use someone from outside the team.
  5. Code before you concludeGo through all of them and tag themes before drawing conclusions, or the most articulate interviewee becomes the finding.

The prompt

Two ways to run it

Run this tool in your own Claude

The short prompt starts your partner against the library on your disk. The long one carries everything with it and needs nothing installed.

🔒 Prompt locked

Everything above is free — what this tool is, what it is for, what it is not for, and how to run it as a workshop. Three tool prompts a month are free with an account; beyond three, and for the printable canvas, it is the paid part.

See plans — from £19 a month

Your playbook

It lands in the earliest stage this tool suits. Move it on the Playbook page.

You’ll need

  • The specific beliefs you want to test
  • Access to customers — and ideally to lost and lapsed ones
  • Someone who can run a conversation without leading it

You’ll end up with

  • A discussion guide that does not lead
  • Eight to twelve conversations, recorded and coded
  • The two beliefs that survived and the ones that did not

Runs well with

Acquisition screen and synergy thesisAdjacency mapAI opportunity mapAnsoff matrix