Learning How to Interview Customers: A Conversation with Jonathan Markwell
Michele chats with Jonathan Markwell, business consultant and host of the new Empathy Deployed podcast.
Listen to Empathy Deployed! https://empathydeployed.com/
Follow Jonathan! https://twitter.com/jot
This episode of Software Social is brought to you by TranslateCI. Translate CI is a tool for developers that helps you localize applications with high quality, human translations. It supports over 70 language pairs.
Follow Jonathan! https://twitter.com/jot
This episode of Software Social is brought to you by TranslateCI. Translate CI is a tool for developers that helps you localize applications with high quality, human translations. It supports over 70 language pairs.
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AUTOMATED TRANSCRIPT
Michele Hansen 0:01
Hey, everyone, I am super excited to have a guest with me today. Jonathan Mark Well, he is a strategy consultant, and also the host of empathy deployed a new podcast about customer interviews, or rather, I should say of customer interviews. So he's doing example, customer interviews, so you get to be along for the ride as he improves his customer interviewing skill. He is also a longtime listener of this show, and was one of the people I interviewed about my book when I was drafting it. So you could sort of say this is a new episode. It's like longtime listener first time caller, sort of episode. So welcome, Jonathan.
Jonathan Markwell 1:49
Thank you, Michelle. It's great to be on. Yep. It's wonderful to, to join you after, after listening for so long.
Michele Hansen 1:58
I'm really excited to have you. And, you know, so one thing that we have talked about a lot, and it was a very big focus for you is the podcast that you're doing. But I think if you if you could kind of pull us back to like, how did you even get interested in the concept of customer interviewing? And like, like, how did you start working with that in your work with with your clients?
Jonathan Markwell 2:28
Um, I think, you know, I've been aware of interviewing customers for many, many years, maybe 15. I actually did a postgraduate degree I didn't finish, but it was in human centered computer systems. And so an element of the user or customer research would have been customer interviews, or the star I think was quite different from, from from, from your style. And, and so it's kind of in the back of my mind, but it's not, it's nothing, something I've been particularly comfortable with. So admittedly just avoided it a lot. But then, as I've worked with more and more software businesses, I found actually some of the the biggest aha moments for us. In the end, the biggest chunks of progression that those businesses have made are actually as a result of what we're effectively customer interviews, although accidental ones. And so the more I realized that actually, maybe if we were doing this more formal and more systematically, like I probably know, we should have been doing all along, we might have, you know, made may progress significantly faster, and spent a lot less money, figuring out how to make these different businesses work.
Michele Hansen 3:53
Yeah, it sounds like you sort of had these moments where things kind of sort of unexpectedly learned things that were helpful to you. And you kind of became hungry to get more of that.
Jonathan Markwell 4:08
Yeah, yeah, hungry. But then still not. Not enough to get into the habit of really doing it. Every every time the opportunity came up, where it's like, you know, maybe if we did lots of customer interviews here, we might get us past this, this problem that we that we currently have. And I you know, I guess it's sort of only from listening to the, this, this podcast, and subsequently reading drafts of your, your book that I'm like, you know, it really, it's not that hard. I just need to get into the habit of doing it. I mean, not to say it's not hard. It's just that come on, John, you need to do Just get in the habit of doing it and learn this stuff. Because all the materials that you've got no excuse now, it's all laid out in front of yours is the is the how you can do it. And, and by doing it often, maybe I'll be more comfortable doing it when I need to do it.
Michele Hansen 5:19
So I'm curious, so when. So So you started listening to the podcast, you sort of heard me extolling the virtues of talking to customers as I am wanting to do. And so from that point where you started reading the newsletter in the draft, like, like, at what point did you start interviewing people again?
Jonathan Markwell 5:44
I'm not sure I know, I, it was definitely earlier this year, I need to look at my calendar. I didn't do very many. But I did a few here and there, using the the some of the early interview scripts that that you shared. And, and there were people that I already knew, but I really wanted to dig into some of the their approaches to solving their problems, which are customer interviews, things be very simple to fit fit well, with, they weren't my customers, they're people that I was interested in, if there was a product, maybe for them that I could help them with. So it's kind of like I used it, use it there. And then it wasn't until I had one client where that I started working with earlier this year, to May, June time where it was like, you know, to really understand what's happening here with this, you know, pretty successful, profitable product, but there's not growing so well, we need to need to really understand customers and start talking to them more. So then we got a bit more rigorous. And, and we interviewed over the course of a month, I think six or seven people.
Michele Hansen 7:04
So what were some learnings that came out of those interviews.
Jonathan Markwell 7:11
The I think the main thing, I did most of these interviews with the founder of that product on the call with me, so he was observing. And the best part of it was really him hearing firsthand just how happy his customers were with, with the product. And so you know, not having much of that feedback loop. Because it's a developer tool that he provides great support for, and as a lot of conversation with people via chat, and email, but very rarely. voice or video communication. And so hearing that those those people read it get a lot of value out of that it was a great product, I knew it to be as well, because I happened to be a customer of his in in the past. That was as pretty wonderful. And then hearing how they described the situation that they were in without the tool before and the experience that they went through to, to come to the conclusion that they needed his product and the you know, in settled on it long, long term.
Michele Hansen 8:33
You know, I think when you're like when you have a product like this can be one of the most sort of rewarding parts about doing interviews is you know, you get a lot of support requests every day, you're used to hearing about bugs, you're used to hearing what feature requests and all these kinds of things. And rarely do you get an email and sometimes it had does happen but rarely do you get an email from someone that's simply just them effusively praising the product and talking about what they use before and how this is so much better than what they were doing before. And, and I think for us, who are you know, founders who were, you know, wearing a lot of hats ourselves, it can just be just so motivating, to too, and rewarding to hear wow, like, we really are helping people and they, what they were doing before does sound terrible. And now this is easy for them. And they're grateful to us. And then it kind of takes you out of that mindset of just sort of, you know, seeing an endless parade of, you know, help tickets or GitHub issues or whatever that is. It's being like, hey, like, No, we're really making a difference for people.
Jonathan Markwell 9:45
Definitely. Yeah, and I, you know, I know and I, people that have worked in businesses that are much closer to people. My agencies are where there's a high touch, sell. So much of the energy that they speak People get is from that interaction with with customers and feeling that that loop. And it's yeah, it's strange that so many of us that are more working in very low touch sales or self service situations where often the customers don't want to get on the phone that you miss out on that, that whole back and forth. And, and don't get that benefit.
Michele Hansen 10:27
Absolutely. So let's fast forward a little bit to your podcast because I'm really curious about, you know, sort of the caveat of your, or another caveat with the conceit of your podcast, rather, is that you are learning alongside the listener, which I love. And, and so I'm curious. So you so you've done about, you've done it, you've done a handful of episodes at this point. And I'm curious what you feel like you have learned and what you've noticed, in how you do interviews in that time?
Jonathan Markwell 11:06
Um, good question. All right, it's, yes, it's good to take an opportunity to reflect on that, I guess. portion of the people I've interviewed I know quite well. So I started off with people that I knew quite well. And and so I found it really insightful learning things about that. I've known them for years, and yet I learned about how they making some of their decisions, and they're quite different from what I what I had guessed, or I expected to learn from them by going so deep into one particular topic and, and really listening. The there's also a bit of a strangeness around these, this particular approach to customer interviews, I feel quite different always. Because I know that there's going to be other people listening and the other the other people involved do so I'm not quite as relaxed. As, as I am, or I have been in other customer interviews that are just being recorded for, for me, and people know, well, to listen to take notes on afterwards. But yeah, I just, I love the fact that I just, I'm learning new things about people that I wasn't expecting to learn from, from each episode. And as I listen more critically, to my, to myself, I guess in these when I'm listening back, so I do, I'm doing all the editing myself, and I'm listening back, I'm very lightly editing really, I've had to take my dog out a few times who goes berserk. No one's at the door. But I guess I'm listening just as much more so to my approach to interviewing with these ones than I have with previous customer interviews. And so I'm kind of more kicking myself about things that I didn't ask. And hopefully, you're getting better at remembering some of the things to add in later. Also, realizing that I I'm using maybe some things as a bit of a crutch. And I've had I've had some feedback from people that maybe I I'm using the same response very often and it might not be helpful, helping people open up as much as, as, as they as they might if I tried a little bit harder with my responses or made them feel a bit more natural.
Michele Hansen 13:52
What is that response that you tend to fall back on?
Jonathan Markwell 13:57
I think it's, um, that makes sense.
Michele Hansen 14:00
I mean, it's one of my books. That's sort of a Yeah.
Jonathan Markwell 14:06
Yeah, so I, but I've had a specific as far as you know, if you said this in that situation, then you might, they might have opened up a little bit more. And I've actually, I've printed out I don't have them here now. But the I have a sort of crib sheet for each episode where I've sort of made a very big font, a lot of the affirmation or responses that you suggested in their in the book, and that one is the top of the list and his biggest because it's the shortest phrase, I think. So it's so easy to go to is like, say that to keep the conversation going. And, you know, the the conversation does continue and they've you know, I'm yet to hit the the the challenge that I know clean spoke about a lot where the conversation just just feels like it's ended after, after 10 minutes, I've experienced that once with a with a customer where it wasn't really set up so well as a customer interview. But I've, I've not experienced it on the podcast yet fortunately.
Michele Hansen 15:16
I think it's interesting. I mean, you're doing this in public, which, you know, is so vulnerable of you to do that, and opening yourself up to other people saying, Hey, you keep repeating that. But I think it's so valuable, because, you know, when I was learning to interview I had, you know, people I was working with, who were very experienced in this, to give me that nudge to have like, hey, like, maybe tried to say this instead, next time, like, it's so valuable to have that. And you're kind of turning that on its head a little bit by having an audience that is telling you like, hey, so you said, that makes sense. So can we turn to this other thing? Maybe you should have said, Yeah, I can see why you would do that that way. And then let it hang. Right. Like, you're still getting those nudges, but you're kind of getting it publicly. And and I think it's really interesting, because because I, I wonder if you're helping listeners realize what phrases they might say, often, when they're talking to people, and maybe as you said earlier, you know, you're kind of a little bit more nervous, because it's in public. And so you're just kind of jumping to that first, easiest, sort of most convenient phrase, when otherwise you might be a bit more natural.
Jonathan Markwell 16:39
I'd say. Definitely, like, I, one of the reasons that I really felt that I need to make this podcast and I made it happen is that every time I thought about it, it's like, it's a podcast, I wish I was I've been listening to for the last 10 years, and I wish I'd been recording for the last two. And I just know that, you know, even if no one listened to it, I would, you know, I have more insight. And I'd be better at doing this thing that I find quite, quite awkward. And you know, 10 years ago, me or 15 years ago, me if I had this to listen to I would have you know, hopefully, yeah, gain gained from it both in terms of understanding good and bad ways of, of interviewing customers, but also having lots of insights into some real situations, which maybe I could kind of build products for, or explored more deeply.
Michele Hansen 17:34
Now worst case scenario, you have an audience of one person, which is yourself, and you're getting something out of it no matter what. Yeah. I'm curious have you interviewed your own customers or your because your clients customers? Because Because you work with a probably like a handful of different small companies, right, like in this sort of indie SAS business kind of space? Like, have you interviewed their customers? Since you started the podcast?
Jonathan Markwell 18:06
Yes, I've interviewed the good to my clients, I've done it we've so one I've already mentioned. And another, less formally, so it's more that we've got an opportunity to talk to someone who may become a customer who is a customer, and I tried to make it more of a customer interview than a sales conversation, because I think there's more to gain from it. And everyone's happy to sort of have me lead in and do that for most of the conversation, which has been helpful to, to understand. You know, what, what they're what they're looking for. Yeah, and I haven't someone asked me this recently. It's interesting, because the sixth episode of my podcast, I'm being interviewed by someone who's interested in my experience of interviewing people, so it's a very meta episode. So this came up a little bit in, in that episode, which is that I realize I've not yet not yet formally customer interviewed my clients, or members of my co working space, which is a sort of side business that I run into is a co working community in Brighton, but I've not actually used it in those two situations. Yet, I have more informal conversations with them and, and I work so closely with the clients in particular that I'm not it might be a bit awkward. I mean, yeah, I don't, but maybe I should do that and, and put myself through that situation even though it's a bit too from, from what I've usually use customer interviews for, in the past, I should say two or three of the people I've interviewed are actually members of the co working space. It's just I've been interviewing them about their use of other products rather than them. Their use of the of the co working space.
Michele Hansen 20:17
In the hardly 20 minutes, we've been talking, I feel like I've heard you mentioned in different ways three or four different times this fear of something being awkward. And it sounds like that's pretty front of mind for you, when when you're having these conversations, or whether it's an interview or even something else.
Jonathan Markwell 20:42
Yeah, it's not my preference to talk to people, I guess. And I, I kind of,
I like burying my head in code. Like, I will spend days at a time doing that. And you know, making conversations happen on a one to one basis with people I just, for some reason, struggle with, and I've heard other people say, say similar things. And it may be an element of my own neurodiversity, or divergence, which is, it makes me feel that way. Or it might be the weird experience of the last couple of years. But I'm, I'm, I, a lot of people say that I'm someone that has quite a wide network. And I'm known by lots of people. And so therefore I must communicate and talk to lots of people and be able to feel very comfortable doing that. But I've, I've compact my way to doing it by organizing events or, or running a co working space. And that means that mostly people come to me asking me questions, and that starts a conversation. And, you know, it's always easier if it's over a few drinks or something like that, that can take the edge off of a more relaxed conversation. But when it's when it's for mine is picking up the phone, or organising a zoom call with someone, it's just not something that that comes naturally to me or something that I look forward to doing. I'm even guilty of that with family. To be honest. I'm very bad at speaking to family regularly. Yeah, usually the conversations are started by them, rather than me going, going out to them.
Michele Hansen 22:35
I think it's very normal, you know, to feel this awkwardness. And, you know, I'm just thinking back how, you know, it takes inertia to start interviewing customers, it feels it to everybody, regardless of how much they like talking to people, it feels like strange and very different. At first, because it's not really a conversation, and you really have to be convinced that like, it's something that's worth doing. And I'm all the more struck by, you know, now more deeply understanding your sort of
your perspective on on having conversations with people in general, that is, it's really quite remarkable that it must, it must have taken so much inertia have been those insights you got from those accidental interviews that you did, those must have been so compelling, in order for you to take on this effort of learning how to interview them and dealing with that awkwardness like that the the risk reward ratio there like it must have been like the, the reward of it right like must have been that great that you were willing to deal with all that and then now on top of all of that, you have a podcast about doing this and I'm just sitting here kind of like amazed and in awe of the transformation that you have gone through and how much you have stepped outside of your comfort zone and and really pushed you're pushed yourself to do this despite it feeling so against your sort of, you know, normal habits and perspective on talking to other people. It's just it's, it's remarkable and I don't know if you have stopped to really appreciate yourself for, for that transformation that you've gone through.
Jonathan Markwell 24:51
I mean, it's very, it's very kind to say I mean, you know, the probably quite selfish forces. Well, here I've, I've, we talk about the pull towards doing it. Like, I've tried other approaches to research, and I guess maybe I'm not as good as other people at detecting strong signals of sort of a willingness for, for someone, you know, a demand for a product or service from, from, from reading, research or, or doing all the other work that is required to really understand an audience that way. I mean, I've learned from people that are absolutely brilliant at this, like Alex Hillman, and ABI and taking their course was a huge, you know, leap for me, in my understanding of how people understanding how people view the world, and how they may become customers have a product or want a product, or you have a willingness to pay for something. And that actually really helped were identify a problem, and one of the businesses I worked with, but it was ultimately a customer interview. So it's the combination of the two that actually brought out because the audience that we were working with, we didn't really find them hanging out online and, and talking about this problem online. And it was when we went into an office of a few customers of a CRM that we had built, and talk to them about it, and really listen not to the people that we'd sold to, but the people that were being asked to use this tool that they told us, you know, we really want the reports that come out the other end, we don't want to do all the the building of you know, creating this, doing this whole workflow in the CRM to get there. And that's the the quick reflection, it took a bit more to really under understand that. But that turned a business that had 10 customers that were hardly using the product, and was probably going to churn soon. And we're really hard to onboard into a business that now has 1800 customers paying between $99.04 $199 a month. So you know, pretty solid business with 1010 employees as well, high profit, high margin, you know, the self service, wonderful SAS that any indie hacker would love, love to have. And so that there's, that's a pool, for me is the, you know, if you, if you can understand a problem that an audience are having, and really find that, you know, have those moments where you can see, that's actually what their problem is, it's not what you thought it was, that can just be so transformational, and can be very financially rewarding. And also, you actually just get to help out to people in a way they want to be helped, rather than trying to give them something you think they they want.
Michele Hansen 28:03
You know, sort of it's sort of ironic, right? Because you said that business is a self serve SAS with over 1000 customers. And, you know, I think that is the indie hacker dream. And, but the irony of that dream is that in order to build a business that people intuitively understand, they sign up for it without talking to you, they have minimal support requests, they just pay you every month, right? You actually need to get out and really talk to some customers, and it doesn't have to be all of them. But in order to build that kind of a business where people can just use it and pay you and not need to talk to you. Right? Like, you really need to understand what is it they're trying to do, and especially in those early days figuring out like, what are the friction points? And what do they really want to do? And and so you need to make this investment and, and, and talking to people. But you can still have a business later on where you don't have to talk to them all that much.
Jonathan Markwell 29:10
Yeah, yep, definitely. It's yeah. So it's an in pursuit of the dream of having the wonderful kind of product business that, that I think many people listening to this podcast would want. That, you know, doing some of that talking thing and the high touch stuff, which is what you don't want to be doing long time is the way to get there. Yeah.
Michele Hansen 29:34
So I'm curious, we've talked a lot about your podcast and your journey with customer interviewing. What questions do you have for me?
Jonathan Markwell 29:43
So very hopeful that I could get get more of your impression on the on the podcast and my approach to to interviewing and I'm trying to phrase this right. Because I know that you you don't want to be The police have of how people do customer interviews. But why
Michele Hansen 30:05
did you the police? Roll? I'm going,
Jonathan Markwell 30:09
but But I'm curious as to how, you know, there's some standout moments in some of the episodes that you listened to so far where you would have you would have done it differently, or you would suggest I could try it differently next time. In a similar situation.
Michele Hansen 30:27
I think I mean, there's always so many different directions you can go in, right. And I think you're the I think about your podcast is that you're not really interviewing anyone with an agenda, right? So you know, you interviewed someone about? They were like, they're a customer of a VPN service. Is that right? remember which one? And you know, if I'm thinking about creating a VPN, or I already run that company, that's the one he uses, right, like my perspective on what I want out of that interview, and the questions I'm going to ask are going to be very different. And how you steer that conversation. And so I wouldn't say that you've done anything wrong. And, you know, there's a lot of cases where you ask the question that I really wanted to know the answer to, and it's so it's always like, really exciting, because then it's like, oh, yeah, I really, I was hoping he was gonna dig on it. And then he did, yes. And I am I am interested in sort of understanding, you know, I think what that journey has, like been like for you, and, and it sounds like you have been getting that feedback from listeners of, hey, you know, you were saying that phrase a lot. And, you know, try this again, or, you know, try this other thing. Um, you know, I've given you some feedback on audio quality and whatnot. But I think that's, you know, that's very normal, especially for the early days of any podcast, I mean, this podcast, like, I didn't have a proper mic for like, the first two months, because I didn't know if anyone was gonna listen. And then it turned out people did. So I got a real mic. So thank you for suffering through that with me. You know, cuz I guess you're you're also you're learning customer interviewing, you're also learning how to, like, run a podcast as well. So it's like, you're, you're learning to separate skills at the same time?
Jonathan Markwell 32:28
Yes, it's been pretty painful. I mean, I, I knew audio was a challenge. And so I got recommendations for the kit very early on, and got myself a decent mic. But the my main failure point actually on on there, so if anyone else is starting a podcast with guests on his, like, briefly, guests, make sure you know, figure out a checklist for them to, to, to make sure their audio is as good as possible, like, make sure they're wearing headphones, and little things like that, because most of the people I've interviewed haven't been on podcast before. And they don't have any, any any professional kit for, for doing audio recording. So they need a little bit more help. And that's helpful customer interview, as well. I've had some customer interviews, which where the audio quality has been really bad, and I haven't, which has made it difficult, after the fact, take notes and things and, and so that that sort of briefing might help with in those situations as well.
Michele Hansen 33:30
Yeah, I mean, I think that's kind of a sort of a trade off to you know, doing it as a podcast, right is because I've definitely had customer interviews where people are doing the dishes, they're eating, they're driving, like they're. So there was one customer interview where someone was in a boat in the middle of the Mediterranean, and I was like, Is this still a good time to talk? They're like, yeah, sure, it's fine. We're just we're pulling into port. So I got like, 45 minutes to kill, like, no worries, like, and I was like, okay, like, and you know, the kind of signal kept going in and out and like, that's, like, that's authentic. Right? Like, like, background noise is authentic. And distractions are authentic. And that's what you might experience but for a podcast, you know, you need it to be as as quiet as possible. And so I think that's kind of a, like a challenge of, you know, of how authentic do you make it right? Like, you know, in a movie, you'd never see anyone going or talking about going to the bathroom, right? Even though that's part of everyday life. And so it's sort of like that, it's like, okay, well, if they had their air conditioner running in the background, like, that's authentic, and I was genuinely having trouble hearing them, but like, how much of that authenticity do we put the audience there?
Jonathan Markwell 34:50
Yeah. Yeah. So same with edit. So I'd be interested to hear what your your thoughts on this is like It's quite common I think in podcasts now especially, it's fairly easy with tools like descript to remove arms and ORs. From a from a podcast, it makes all this sound smarter and I know I an awful lot. There we go. So I kind of I was messing around editing early on, I think you should I take these out, I went and did a version that was taken out, but it just felt so unnatural. I probably went too far with it. And I'm not a professional editor. So I'm not sure if I should do that with these interviews or not my just gonna give them a very light touch. So far, yeah, I
Michele Hansen 35:38
think on that I would I would err on the side of not editing and not editing out the hums and ahhs because they are authentic. And also, I think I think you sent me two versions of one of those early episodes. And when it was edited to remove the pauses and remove the arms and ahhs like, there were points where it almost sounded like you were interrupting the other person and I was listening to and I was like, that just doesn't sound like how he talks and how he would run an interview. And nevermind, that's also like in an interview, like the pausing is really important. Like, you know, if we had edited out the hums and ahhs and pauses in the sample interview, I don't think people would have quite grasped how important not pausing is, right, like the pausing is almost a, you know, a form of speech in an interview, because you need to let things hang. Um, and so, I would, I would veer on the side of not editing, even someone's dog barking in the background like that, that happens. And, I mean, even I mean for this podcast, right? Like we we were editing out hums and ahhs for a little bit, and then we kind of stopped because it's like, you know, people are listening, because they want to hear a conversation between people who are two people who enjoy talking to each other. And in any normal conversation, there's going to be pauses, we're gonna say like, and, and, and all those other things like, exactly right there, you know. But I think there's sort of this. For you, I feel this like push and pull between authenticity and listen ability. And like, where is that line?
Jonathan Markwell 37:30
Yeah, I think I'm currently have the conclusion that I'm going to keep it very light. And I'm not, I'm not expecting anyone to really listen to every single episode, it's more of one to dip into where there's an a person that's in a role that you're interested in hearing from or we're talking about a software product that you're interested in hearing a perspective on, and you might dip in and out of it. So I'm just going to keep going and not really expect people to be listening to every single episode, as I do, because it's maybe it isn't an easy listening podcast, like many others.
Michele Hansen 38:08
So if people do want to listen, where should they go?
Jonathan Markwell 38:12
So you can search in your favorite podcasting app for empathy deployed, or visit empathy. deployed.com.
Michele Hansen 38:23
Awesome. Well, thank you so much for coming by today. I really appreciate it. And I'm really excited for the wonderful resource you were creating with the podcast.
Jonathan Markwell 38:39
Thank you for inviting me on. Thank you, thank you for all the things that you've been doing over the last year that's inspired me ultimately to do this and been so supportive of me doing it and even provided the name for the for the podcast. So thank you. Yeah,
Michele Hansen 38:55
I guess we should make it clear that I endorse you using a similar name to my, to my book, but I think I mean, I did that that's one thing that people kept asking for was more customer interview examples. And even you reached out to me asking for that. And I was like, That's a great idea. But I don't have time, you should do it. And then a few weeks later, you're like, Okay, maybe. Well, awesome. Thank you so much, Jonathan. It's been it's been really great chatting with you and excited for more episodes of empathy deployed. Thank you.
AUTOMATED TRANSCRIPT
Michele Hansen 0:01
Hey, everyone, I am super excited to have a guest with me today. Jonathan Mark Well, he is a strategy consultant, and also the host of empathy deployed a new podcast about customer interviews, or rather, I should say of customer interviews. So he's doing example, customer interviews, so you get to be along for the ride as he improves his customer interviewing skill. He is also a longtime listener of this show, and was one of the people I interviewed about my book when I was drafting it. So you could sort of say this is a new episode. It's like longtime listener first time caller, sort of episode. So welcome, Jonathan.
Jonathan Markwell 1:49
Thank you, Michelle. It's great to be on. Yep. It's wonderful to, to join you after, after listening for so long.
Michele Hansen 1:58
I'm really excited to have you. And, you know, so one thing that we have talked about a lot, and it was a very big focus for you is the podcast that you're doing. But I think if you if you could kind of pull us back to like, how did you even get interested in the concept of customer interviewing? And like, like, how did you start working with that in your work with with your clients?
Jonathan Markwell 2:28
Um, I think, you know, I've been aware of interviewing customers for many, many years, maybe 15. I actually did a postgraduate degree I didn't finish, but it was in human centered computer systems. And so an element of the user or customer research would have been customer interviews, or the star I think was quite different from, from from, from your style. And, and so it's kind of in the back of my mind, but it's not, it's nothing, something I've been particularly comfortable with. So admittedly just avoided it a lot. But then, as I've worked with more and more software businesses, I found actually some of the the biggest aha moments for us. In the end, the biggest chunks of progression that those businesses have made are actually as a result of what we're effectively customer interviews, although accidental ones. And so the more I realized that actually, maybe if we were doing this more formal and more systematically, like I probably know, we should have been doing all along, we might have, you know, made may progress significantly faster, and spent a lot less money, figuring out how to make these different businesses work.
Michele Hansen 3:53
Yeah, it sounds like you sort of had these moments where things kind of sort of unexpectedly learned things that were helpful to you. And you kind of became hungry to get more of that.
Jonathan Markwell 4:08
Yeah, yeah, hungry. But then still not. Not enough to get into the habit of really doing it. Every every time the opportunity came up, where it's like, you know, maybe if we did lots of customer interviews here, we might get us past this, this problem that we that we currently have. And I you know, I guess it's sort of only from listening to the, this, this podcast, and subsequently reading drafts of your, your book that I'm like, you know, it really, it's not that hard. I just need to get into the habit of doing it. I mean, not to say it's not hard. It's just that come on, John, you need to do Just get in the habit of doing it and learn this stuff. Because all the materials that you've got no excuse now, it's all laid out in front of yours is the is the how you can do it. And, and by doing it often, maybe I'll be more comfortable doing it when I need to do it.
Michele Hansen 5:19
So I'm curious, so when. So So you started listening to the podcast, you sort of heard me extolling the virtues of talking to customers as I am wanting to do. And so from that point where you started reading the newsletter in the draft, like, like, at what point did you start interviewing people again?
Jonathan Markwell 5:44
I'm not sure I know, I, it was definitely earlier this year, I need to look at my calendar. I didn't do very many. But I did a few here and there, using the the some of the early interview scripts that that you shared. And, and there were people that I already knew, but I really wanted to dig into some of the their approaches to solving their problems, which are customer interviews, things be very simple to fit fit well, with, they weren't my customers, they're people that I was interested in, if there was a product, maybe for them that I could help them with. So it's kind of like I used it, use it there. And then it wasn't until I had one client where that I started working with earlier this year, to May, June time where it was like, you know, to really understand what's happening here with this, you know, pretty successful, profitable product, but there's not growing so well, we need to need to really understand customers and start talking to them more. So then we got a bit more rigorous. And, and we interviewed over the course of a month, I think six or seven people.
Michele Hansen 7:04
So what were some learnings that came out of those interviews.
Jonathan Markwell 7:11
The I think the main thing, I did most of these interviews with the founder of that product on the call with me, so he was observing. And the best part of it was really him hearing firsthand just how happy his customers were with, with the product. And so you know, not having much of that feedback loop. Because it's a developer tool that he provides great support for, and as a lot of conversation with people via chat, and email, but very rarely. voice or video communication. And so hearing that those those people read it get a lot of value out of that it was a great product, I knew it to be as well, because I happened to be a customer of his in in the past. That was as pretty wonderful. And then hearing how they described the situation that they were in without the tool before and the experience that they went through to, to come to the conclusion that they needed his product and the you know, in settled on it long, long term.
Michele Hansen 8:33
You know, I think when you're like when you have a product like this can be one of the most sort of rewarding parts about doing interviews is you know, you get a lot of support requests every day, you're used to hearing about bugs, you're used to hearing what feature requests and all these kinds of things. And rarely do you get an email and sometimes it had does happen but rarely do you get an email from someone that's simply just them effusively praising the product and talking about what they use before and how this is so much better than what they were doing before. And, and I think for us, who are you know, founders who were, you know, wearing a lot of hats ourselves, it can just be just so motivating, to too, and rewarding to hear wow, like, we really are helping people and they, what they were doing before does sound terrible. And now this is easy for them. And they're grateful to us. And then it kind of takes you out of that mindset of just sort of, you know, seeing an endless parade of, you know, help tickets or GitHub issues or whatever that is. It's being like, hey, like, No, we're really making a difference for people.
Jonathan Markwell 9:45
Definitely. Yeah, and I, you know, I know and I, people that have worked in businesses that are much closer to people. My agencies are where there's a high touch, sell. So much of the energy that they speak People get is from that interaction with with customers and feeling that that loop. And it's yeah, it's strange that so many of us that are more working in very low touch sales or self service situations where often the customers don't want to get on the phone that you miss out on that, that whole back and forth. And, and don't get that benefit.
Michele Hansen 10:27
Absolutely. So let's fast forward a little bit to your podcast because I'm really curious about, you know, sort of the caveat of your, or another caveat with the conceit of your podcast, rather, is that you are learning alongside the listener, which I love. And, and so I'm curious. So you so you've done about, you've done it, you've done a handful of episodes at this point. And I'm curious what you feel like you have learned and what you've noticed, in how you do interviews in that time?
Jonathan Markwell 11:06
Um, good question. All right, it's, yes, it's good to take an opportunity to reflect on that, I guess. portion of the people I've interviewed I know quite well. So I started off with people that I knew quite well. And and so I found it really insightful learning things about that. I've known them for years, and yet I learned about how they making some of their decisions, and they're quite different from what I what I had guessed, or I expected to learn from them by going so deep into one particular topic and, and really listening. The there's also a bit of a strangeness around these, this particular approach to customer interviews, I feel quite different always. Because I know that there's going to be other people listening and the other the other people involved do so I'm not quite as relaxed. As, as I am, or I have been in other customer interviews that are just being recorded for, for me, and people know, well, to listen to take notes on afterwards. But yeah, I just, I love the fact that I just, I'm learning new things about people that I wasn't expecting to learn from, from each episode. And as I listen more critically, to my, to myself, I guess in these when I'm listening back, so I do, I'm doing all the editing myself, and I'm listening back, I'm very lightly editing really, I've had to take my dog out a few times who goes berserk. No one's at the door. But I guess I'm listening just as much more so to my approach to interviewing with these ones than I have with previous customer interviews. And so I'm kind of more kicking myself about things that I didn't ask. And hopefully, you're getting better at remembering some of the things to add in later. Also, realizing that I I'm using maybe some things as a bit of a crutch. And I've had I've had some feedback from people that maybe I I'm using the same response very often and it might not be helpful, helping people open up as much as, as, as they as they might if I tried a little bit harder with my responses or made them feel a bit more natural.
Michele Hansen 13:52
What is that response that you tend to fall back on?
Jonathan Markwell 13:57
I think it's, um, that makes sense.
Michele Hansen 14:00
I mean, it's one of my books. That's sort of a Yeah.
Jonathan Markwell 14:06
Yeah, so I, but I've had a specific as far as you know, if you said this in that situation, then you might, they might have opened up a little bit more. And I've actually, I've printed out I don't have them here now. But the I have a sort of crib sheet for each episode where I've sort of made a very big font, a lot of the affirmation or responses that you suggested in their in the book, and that one is the top of the list and his biggest because it's the shortest phrase, I think. So it's so easy to go to is like, say that to keep the conversation going. And, you know, the the conversation does continue and they've you know, I'm yet to hit the the the challenge that I know clean spoke about a lot where the conversation just just feels like it's ended after, after 10 minutes, I've experienced that once with a with a customer where it wasn't really set up so well as a customer interview. But I've, I've not experienced it on the podcast yet fortunately.
Michele Hansen 15:16
I think it's interesting. I mean, you're doing this in public, which, you know, is so vulnerable of you to do that, and opening yourself up to other people saying, Hey, you keep repeating that. But I think it's so valuable, because, you know, when I was learning to interview I had, you know, people I was working with, who were very experienced in this, to give me that nudge to have like, hey, like, maybe tried to say this instead, next time, like, it's so valuable to have that. And you're kind of turning that on its head a little bit by having an audience that is telling you like, hey, so you said, that makes sense. So can we turn to this other thing? Maybe you should have said, Yeah, I can see why you would do that that way. And then let it hang. Right. Like, you're still getting those nudges, but you're kind of getting it publicly. And and I think it's really interesting, because because I, I wonder if you're helping listeners realize what phrases they might say, often, when they're talking to people, and maybe as you said earlier, you know, you're kind of a little bit more nervous, because it's in public. And so you're just kind of jumping to that first, easiest, sort of most convenient phrase, when otherwise you might be a bit more natural.
Jonathan Markwell 16:39
I'd say. Definitely, like, I, one of the reasons that I really felt that I need to make this podcast and I made it happen is that every time I thought about it, it's like, it's a podcast, I wish I was I've been listening to for the last 10 years, and I wish I'd been recording for the last two. And I just know that, you know, even if no one listened to it, I would, you know, I have more insight. And I'd be better at doing this thing that I find quite, quite awkward. And you know, 10 years ago, me or 15 years ago, me if I had this to listen to I would have you know, hopefully, yeah, gain gained from it both in terms of understanding good and bad ways of, of interviewing customers, but also having lots of insights into some real situations, which maybe I could kind of build products for, or explored more deeply.
Michele Hansen 17:34
Now worst case scenario, you have an audience of one person, which is yourself, and you're getting something out of it no matter what. Yeah. I'm curious have you interviewed your own customers or your because your clients customers? Because Because you work with a probably like a handful of different small companies, right, like in this sort of indie SAS business kind of space? Like, have you interviewed their customers? Since you started the podcast?
Jonathan Markwell 18:06
Yes, I've interviewed the good to my clients, I've done it we've so one I've already mentioned. And another, less formally, so it's more that we've got an opportunity to talk to someone who may become a customer who is a customer, and I tried to make it more of a customer interview than a sales conversation, because I think there's more to gain from it. And everyone's happy to sort of have me lead in and do that for most of the conversation, which has been helpful to, to understand. You know, what, what they're what they're looking for. Yeah, and I haven't someone asked me this recently. It's interesting, because the sixth episode of my podcast, I'm being interviewed by someone who's interested in my experience of interviewing people, so it's a very meta episode. So this came up a little bit in, in that episode, which is that I realize I've not yet not yet formally customer interviewed my clients, or members of my co working space, which is a sort of side business that I run into is a co working community in Brighton, but I've not actually used it in those two situations. Yet, I have more informal conversations with them and, and I work so closely with the clients in particular that I'm not it might be a bit awkward. I mean, yeah, I don't, but maybe I should do that and, and put myself through that situation even though it's a bit too from, from what I've usually use customer interviews for, in the past, I should say two or three of the people I've interviewed are actually members of the co working space. It's just I've been interviewing them about their use of other products rather than them. Their use of the of the co working space.
Michele Hansen 20:17
In the hardly 20 minutes, we've been talking, I feel like I've heard you mentioned in different ways three or four different times this fear of something being awkward. And it sounds like that's pretty front of mind for you, when when you're having these conversations, or whether it's an interview or even something else.
Jonathan Markwell 20:42
Yeah, it's not my preference to talk to people, I guess. And I, I kind of,
I like burying my head in code. Like, I will spend days at a time doing that. And you know, making conversations happen on a one to one basis with people I just, for some reason, struggle with, and I've heard other people say, say similar things. And it may be an element of my own neurodiversity, or divergence, which is, it makes me feel that way. Or it might be the weird experience of the last couple of years. But I'm, I'm, I, a lot of people say that I'm someone that has quite a wide network. And I'm known by lots of people. And so therefore I must communicate and talk to lots of people and be able to feel very comfortable doing that. But I've, I've compact my way to doing it by organizing events or, or running a co working space. And that means that mostly people come to me asking me questions, and that starts a conversation. And, you know, it's always easier if it's over a few drinks or something like that, that can take the edge off of a more relaxed conversation. But when it's when it's for mine is picking up the phone, or organising a zoom call with someone, it's just not something that that comes naturally to me or something that I look forward to doing. I'm even guilty of that with family. To be honest. I'm very bad at speaking to family regularly. Yeah, usually the conversations are started by them, rather than me going, going out to them.
Michele Hansen 22:35
I think it's very normal, you know, to feel this awkwardness. And, you know, I'm just thinking back how, you know, it takes inertia to start interviewing customers, it feels it to everybody, regardless of how much they like talking to people, it feels like strange and very different. At first, because it's not really a conversation, and you really have to be convinced that like, it's something that's worth doing. And I'm all the more struck by, you know, now more deeply understanding your sort of
your perspective on on having conversations with people in general, that is, it's really quite remarkable that it must, it must have taken so much inertia have been those insights you got from those accidental interviews that you did, those must have been so compelling, in order for you to take on this effort of learning how to interview them and dealing with that awkwardness like that the the risk reward ratio there like it must have been like the, the reward of it right like must have been that great that you were willing to deal with all that and then now on top of all of that, you have a podcast about doing this and I'm just sitting here kind of like amazed and in awe of the transformation that you have gone through and how much you have stepped outside of your comfort zone and and really pushed you're pushed yourself to do this despite it feeling so against your sort of, you know, normal habits and perspective on talking to other people. It's just it's, it's remarkable and I don't know if you have stopped to really appreciate yourself for, for that transformation that you've gone through.
Jonathan Markwell 24:51
I mean, it's very, it's very kind to say I mean, you know, the probably quite selfish forces. Well, here I've, I've, we talk about the pull towards doing it. Like, I've tried other approaches to research, and I guess maybe I'm not as good as other people at detecting strong signals of sort of a willingness for, for someone, you know, a demand for a product or service from, from, from reading, research or, or doing all the other work that is required to really understand an audience that way. I mean, I've learned from people that are absolutely brilliant at this, like Alex Hillman, and ABI and taking their course was a huge, you know, leap for me, in my understanding of how people understanding how people view the world, and how they may become customers have a product or want a product, or you have a willingness to pay for something. And that actually really helped were identify a problem, and one of the businesses I worked with, but it was ultimately a customer interview. So it's the combination of the two that actually brought out because the audience that we were working with, we didn't really find them hanging out online and, and talking about this problem online. And it was when we went into an office of a few customers of a CRM that we had built, and talk to them about it, and really listen not to the people that we'd sold to, but the people that were being asked to use this tool that they told us, you know, we really want the reports that come out the other end, we don't want to do all the the building of you know, creating this, doing this whole workflow in the CRM to get there. And that's the the quick reflection, it took a bit more to really under understand that. But that turned a business that had 10 customers that were hardly using the product, and was probably going to churn soon. And we're really hard to onboard into a business that now has 1800 customers paying between $99.04 $199 a month. So you know, pretty solid business with 1010 employees as well, high profit, high margin, you know, the self service, wonderful SAS that any indie hacker would love, love to have. And so that there's, that's a pool, for me is the, you know, if you, if you can understand a problem that an audience are having, and really find that, you know, have those moments where you can see, that's actually what their problem is, it's not what you thought it was, that can just be so transformational, and can be very financially rewarding. And also, you actually just get to help out to people in a way they want to be helped, rather than trying to give them something you think they they want.
Michele Hansen 28:03
You know, sort of it's sort of ironic, right? Because you said that business is a self serve SAS with over 1000 customers. And, you know, I think that is the indie hacker dream. And, but the irony of that dream is that in order to build a business that people intuitively understand, they sign up for it without talking to you, they have minimal support requests, they just pay you every month, right? You actually need to get out and really talk to some customers, and it doesn't have to be all of them. But in order to build that kind of a business where people can just use it and pay you and not need to talk to you. Right? Like, you really need to understand what is it they're trying to do, and especially in those early days figuring out like, what are the friction points? And what do they really want to do? And and so you need to make this investment and, and, and talking to people. But you can still have a business later on where you don't have to talk to them all that much.
Jonathan Markwell 29:10
Yeah, yep, definitely. It's yeah. So it's an in pursuit of the dream of having the wonderful kind of product business that, that I think many people listening to this podcast would want. That, you know, doing some of that talking thing and the high touch stuff, which is what you don't want to be doing long time is the way to get there. Yeah.
Michele Hansen 29:34
So I'm curious, we've talked a lot about your podcast and your journey with customer interviewing. What questions do you have for me?
Jonathan Markwell 29:43
So very hopeful that I could get get more of your impression on the on the podcast and my approach to to interviewing and I'm trying to phrase this right. Because I know that you you don't want to be The police have of how people do customer interviews. But why
Michele Hansen 30:05
did you the police? Roll? I'm going,
Jonathan Markwell 30:09
but But I'm curious as to how, you know, there's some standout moments in some of the episodes that you listened to so far where you would have you would have done it differently, or you would suggest I could try it differently next time. In a similar situation.
Michele Hansen 30:27
I think I mean, there's always so many different directions you can go in, right. And I think you're the I think about your podcast is that you're not really interviewing anyone with an agenda, right? So you know, you interviewed someone about? They were like, they're a customer of a VPN service. Is that right? remember which one? And you know, if I'm thinking about creating a VPN, or I already run that company, that's the one he uses, right, like my perspective on what I want out of that interview, and the questions I'm going to ask are going to be very different. And how you steer that conversation. And so I wouldn't say that you've done anything wrong. And, you know, there's a lot of cases where you ask the question that I really wanted to know the answer to, and it's so it's always like, really exciting, because then it's like, oh, yeah, I really, I was hoping he was gonna dig on it. And then he did, yes. And I am I am interested in sort of understanding, you know, I think what that journey has, like been like for you, and, and it sounds like you have been getting that feedback from listeners of, hey, you know, you were saying that phrase a lot. And, you know, try this again, or, you know, try this other thing. Um, you know, I've given you some feedback on audio quality and whatnot. But I think that's, you know, that's very normal, especially for the early days of any podcast, I mean, this podcast, like, I didn't have a proper mic for like, the first two months, because I didn't know if anyone was gonna listen. And then it turned out people did. So I got a real mic. So thank you for suffering through that with me. You know, cuz I guess you're you're also you're learning customer interviewing, you're also learning how to, like, run a podcast as well. So it's like, you're, you're learning to separate skills at the same time?
Jonathan Markwell 32:28
Yes, it's been pretty painful. I mean, I, I knew audio was a challenge. And so I got recommendations for the kit very early on, and got myself a decent mic. But the my main failure point actually on on there, so if anyone else is starting a podcast with guests on his, like, briefly, guests, make sure you know, figure out a checklist for them to, to, to make sure their audio is as good as possible, like, make sure they're wearing headphones, and little things like that, because most of the people I've interviewed haven't been on podcast before. And they don't have any, any any professional kit for, for doing audio recording. So they need a little bit more help. And that's helpful customer interview, as well. I've had some customer interviews, which where the audio quality has been really bad, and I haven't, which has made it difficult, after the fact, take notes and things and, and so that that sort of briefing might help with in those situations as well.
Michele Hansen 33:30
Yeah, I mean, I think that's kind of a sort of a trade off to you know, doing it as a podcast, right is because I've definitely had customer interviews where people are doing the dishes, they're eating, they're driving, like they're. So there was one customer interview where someone was in a boat in the middle of the Mediterranean, and I was like, Is this still a good time to talk? They're like, yeah, sure, it's fine. We're just we're pulling into port. So I got like, 45 minutes to kill, like, no worries, like, and I was like, okay, like, and you know, the kind of signal kept going in and out and like, that's, like, that's authentic. Right? Like, like, background noise is authentic. And distractions are authentic. And that's what you might experience but for a podcast, you know, you need it to be as as quiet as possible. And so I think that's kind of a, like a challenge of, you know, of how authentic do you make it right? Like, you know, in a movie, you'd never see anyone going or talking about going to the bathroom, right? Even though that's part of everyday life. And so it's sort of like that, it's like, okay, well, if they had their air conditioner running in the background, like, that's authentic, and I was genuinely having trouble hearing them, but like, how much of that authenticity do we put the audience there?
Jonathan Markwell 34:50
Yeah. Yeah. So same with edit. So I'd be interested to hear what your your thoughts on this is like It's quite common I think in podcasts now especially, it's fairly easy with tools like descript to remove arms and ORs. From a from a podcast, it makes all this sound smarter and I know I an awful lot. There we go. So I kind of I was messing around editing early on, I think you should I take these out, I went and did a version that was taken out, but it just felt so unnatural. I probably went too far with it. And I'm not a professional editor. So I'm not sure if I should do that with these interviews or not my just gonna give them a very light touch. So far, yeah, I
Michele Hansen 35:38
think on that I would I would err on the side of not editing and not editing out the hums and ahhs because they are authentic. And also, I think I think you sent me two versions of one of those early episodes. And when it was edited to remove the pauses and remove the arms and ahhs like, there were points where it almost sounded like you were interrupting the other person and I was listening to and I was like, that just doesn't sound like how he talks and how he would run an interview. And nevermind, that's also like in an interview, like the pausing is really important. Like, you know, if we had edited out the hums and ahhs and pauses in the sample interview, I don't think people would have quite grasped how important not pausing is, right, like the pausing is almost a, you know, a form of speech in an interview, because you need to let things hang. Um, and so, I would, I would veer on the side of not editing, even someone's dog barking in the background like that, that happens. And, I mean, even I mean for this podcast, right? Like we we were editing out hums and ahhs for a little bit, and then we kind of stopped because it's like, you know, people are listening, because they want to hear a conversation between people who are two people who enjoy talking to each other. And in any normal conversation, there's going to be pauses, we're gonna say like, and, and, and all those other things like, exactly right there, you know. But I think there's sort of this. For you, I feel this like push and pull between authenticity and listen ability. And like, where is that line?
Jonathan Markwell 37:30
Yeah, I think I'm currently have the conclusion that I'm going to keep it very light. And I'm not, I'm not expecting anyone to really listen to every single episode, it's more of one to dip into where there's an a person that's in a role that you're interested in hearing from or we're talking about a software product that you're interested in hearing a perspective on, and you might dip in and out of it. So I'm just going to keep going and not really expect people to be listening to every single episode, as I do, because it's maybe it isn't an easy listening podcast, like many others.
Michele Hansen 38:08
So if people do want to listen, where should they go?
Jonathan Markwell 38:12
So you can search in your favorite podcasting app for empathy deployed, or visit empathy. deployed.com.
Michele Hansen 38:23
Awesome. Well, thank you so much for coming by today. I really appreciate it. And I'm really excited for the wonderful resource you were creating with the podcast.
Jonathan Markwell 38:39
Thank you for inviting me on. Thank you, thank you for all the things that you've been doing over the last year that's inspired me ultimately to do this and been so supportive of me doing it and even provided the name for the for the podcast. So thank you. Yeah,
Michele Hansen 38:55
I guess we should make it clear that I endorse you using a similar name to my, to my book, but I think I mean, I did that that's one thing that people kept asking for was more customer interview examples. And even you reached out to me asking for that. And I was like, That's a great idea. But I don't have time, you should do it. And then a few weeks later, you're like, Okay, maybe. Well, awesome. Thank you so much, Jonathan. It's been it's been really great chatting with you and excited for more episodes of empathy deployed. Thank you.
