Ask Teresa: How Do You Select Customers for Customer Interviews?

Teresa Torres argues that frequent, consistent customer interviews are a keystone habit of continuous discovery, since they make other discovery habits easier to adopt. She addresses who to interview: early on, anyone willing to talk; over time, deliberately varying participants by behavior, demographics and engagement, guided by the team's outcome (e.g., prospects for acquisition, current and churned customers for retention). She dismisses worries about annoying customers by using story-based interviewing that centers the customer rather than the product, and rejects the idea of a statistically representative sample in favor of seeking variation. For B2B customers, she suggests reframing invitations around the customer's problem and offering incentives that suit corporate policies, and encourages creative scheduling to meet busy customers where they are.

01Key takeaways

• Interview customers frequently and consistently, since this habit tends to unlock other continuous discovery practices.
• Start with whoever is easiest to reach, then deliberately increase variation in behavior, demographics and engagement over time.
• Choose participant types based on your outcome: prospects for acquisition, current and churned customers for retention.
• Use story-based interviews that center the customer's experience so participants find the sessions valuable rather than tiring.
• Think in terms of variation rather than statistically representative samples when doing qualitative interviews.
• Reframe B2B invitations around the customer's problem and offer incentives that fit corporate gift policies.

02Key sections

Why frequent customer touchpoints matter

Regular interviews are a keystone habit that tends to pull teams into rapid prototyping, more frequent experiments and tighter links between research and decisions.

Who to interview and how to vary the pool

Start with whoever is easiest to reach, then deliberately widen the mix across usage levels, segments and demographics, choosing participant types to match the team's outcome.

Avoiding customer fatigue

Story-based interviews that focus on the customer's experience rather than the product keep participants willing to return, and opt-in recruiting lets them set their own frequency.

Variation instead of representative samples

Because qualitative research cannot be statistically representative, the goal is to uncover as much variation in experience as possible, not to predict population behavior.

Recruiting B2B customers and finding time

Framing invitations around a real pain point usually removes the need for cash incentives, and teams can find small pockets of downtime in busy customers' days.

03From the post

“Welcome to the next installment of Ask Teresa, the column where I address common questions about continuous discovery. If you’d like to see the other posts in this series, you can find them here. Creating frequent touch points with customers is one of the core tenets of continuous discovery.”

04Frameworks mentioned

Summary and takeaways written by PM Atlas; quotes are short excerpts. © the original author.