Elezea by Rian van der Merwe - RSS Feed https://elezea.com/2019/05/how-to-talk-to-customers/ A personal blog about product, technology, and interesting things that are worth sharing. Thu, 02 Apr 2026 17:43:52 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9.4 How to talk to customers: lessons from a journalist https://elezea.com/2019/05/how-to-talk-to-customers/ Fri, 31 May 2019 04:07:00 +0000 Rian van der Merwe https://elezea.com/?p=7124 I usually stay away from article titles like these, but I thoroughly enjoyed Chris Cannon’s What a Journalist Can Teach Lean Startups about Customer Interviews. If you talk to customers at all as part of your work, in any context, this is a goldmine of good advice:

Problems are stories — it’s a dull tale that has no conflict to resolve. The customer on the other side of that table is the protagonist in their own adventure. We’ve selected them as a persona that might be interested in casting us as their hero (or even in a supporting role that lets them be the hero of their own story).

So be accommodating: Engage the customer on their terms. Be perceptive: Listen for gaps in the customer’s story that might be worth investigating further. Be a listener: Only talk to make the customer comfortable or to dig for details. And then shut up.

Amen to that.



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