How to get more user interviews and use them well
If you are a product manager , founder and UX researcher the following blog will help you make your user interview process more efficient.
I conducted over 70+ interviews in the “insurance claims space” in under 2 months which is just insane and so hard. This is because, this space is heavily gated and the decision makers are too big to come on call to talk about problems with your startup team. And I became friends with these people - something that helped me go from getting 1 response in a week, to 1 day or lesser from these folks.
Following are the learnings from my experience while conducting user interviews and I find them helpful to get more user interviews and also how to build a personal connection.
Mindset that you have to have before starting this journey is to understand that you need to have utmost sincerity in terms of connecting to people and asking their time to understand the current processes. Even if it is 15 minutes its a cost to them and they might be having a lot of things to handle children , job and so on. So being proactive helps in every step is important.
Personalized note is very important tool when it comes to out bound . Make note personalize and custom for profile the bare minimum that you can do it add name
Should start with catchy phrase that might draw attention , I use any tags I can (reputed university name, company I worked at) in India and profession related line for forgein country.
Should end with call to action "A short 15 minutes meet would be really really helpful"
I like personally like adding emoji that gives more human touch 🤗
When you get a reply to your connection request and personal note most of the time it can be just "Sure" , "yes" . This are prompted linkedin answers. The best reply to this can be
"Thank you for accepting my request, Tuesday 6pm works best for me , you can suggest time. Also you can see all available timing on calendly link and convey what time suits you."
Also along with this ask them if you could send them the invite on the email address that you could find in their contact info in LinkedIn. You can expect ignorance , yes or a different time as a reply and its super frictionless for them now. Even after if you get ignored make a point to write a followup message after 2 days just as gentle reminder.Sending the reminder message for the meet in the morning or 2 hours prior to the meet helps because people might not remember about the meet and hence one of the precious user interview can be saved.
Developing a personal connect is really important , some people are open to it and then it acts as one of the good ice breaker and the interview becomes more valuable and people are more comfortable sharing information .It can be started with simlple
Building a strong communication channel like a WA group for keeping them posted and for you to test adjacent hypothesis in future would really help and it is better that you ask about in meet itself as it is difficult for people to deny 🤐. (Fun Fact : I never got no for this)
Accountability :- being accountable to your interviewee who were very helpful you can send them weekly/ monthly updates that will make them feel good and people want to feel good .Moving forward if they find something related to what you are doing they will take extra step and share it with you and would be more than willing to help .(Special Mention to Neel Balar)
Conclusion
Just being sincere and showing eagerness to learn and executes makes people more than willing to help you and I have found this generally people want to help . It all depends how frictionless you can make for them to help you , how you can be more humane rather than just being somone who just want information makes all the difference.
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