--- name: customer-interview-guide description: "A topic-by-topic question bank for a general customer-discovery interview — open-ended questions with real follow-up probes, drafted from your research goal and yours to edit before you take it into the room. Use when: You're about to run a general discovery interview and want a real instrument, not an improvised conversation. You have a stated research goal — even a rough one — that a structured question bank would serve better than winging it. Not for: The interview is happening in context, watching real work as it's done — that's the gemba interview protocol, built around what's observed in the moment rather than recalled afterward. The interview is specifically about a closed deal (won or lost) — that's the win-loss interview guide, built around a decision that's already been made. You don't have a real research goal yet, just a vague sense you should 'talk to customers more' — sharpen the goal first, or the guide will be as vague as the goal." --- # Customer interview guide A topic-by-topic question bank for a general customer-discovery interview — open-ended questions with real follow-up probes, drafted from your research goal and yours to edit before you take it into the room. Family: Voice of the customer · Format: .xlsx · Domain: core ## What it is An interview guide is what turns 'go talk to some customers' into a real, repeatable instrument — a topic-by-topic question bank built around a stated research goal, with genuine follow-up probes woven in, not just a list of first questions. State who you're talking to and what you're trying to learn; a full guide gets drafted, and it's yours to edit before you take it into the room. ## When to use it Use it when: - You're about to run a general discovery interview and want a real instrument, not an improvised conversation. - You have a stated research goal — even a rough one — that a structured question bank would serve better than winging it. - You want interview-technique reminders specific to this conversation, not generic interviewing advice. Not when: - The interview is happening in context, watching real work as it's done — that's the gemba interview protocol, built around what's observed in the moment rather than recalled afterward. - The interview is specifically about a closed deal (won or lost) — that's the win-loss interview guide, built around a decision that's already been made. - You don't have a real research goal yet, just a vague sense you should 'talk to customers more' — sharpen the goal first, or the guide will be as vague as the goal. ## How to fill it in - **researchGoal** — What are you actually trying to learn? Specific beats broad — 'understand why onboarding takes longer than expected' drafts a sharper guide than 'understand the customer experience.' - **topics** — Drafted from your research goal and any seed topics you already had in mind — add, remove, or reword anything before the interview. - **reminders** — Drafted for this specific guide's context — real interview-technique discipline, not generic platitudes. - **narrative** — Drafted from the research goal — how to actually run this conversation and what to listen for. ## What good looks like The example below is a general onboarding-discovery guide: four topics building from background through to open frustrations, real follow-up probes within each topic, and interview-technique reminders grounded in the coaching stance this whole product tries to model — ask before answering, let silence sit. Full worked example, on-screen and as a downloadable .xlsx: https://www.katafacts.com/katas/customer-interview-guide ## Common mistakes - **Writing questions that are really statements looking for agreement.** — "Wasn't onboarding frustrating?" plants the answer before the customer has said anything — open-ended questions surface what's actually there, leading questions confirm what you already believe. - **Treating the question list as a script to read verbatim rather than a guide to work from.** — The real value of an interview comes from the follow-up that isn't written down — a rigid script misses exactly the specific detail a genuine 'tell me more' would surface. - **Covering too many topics to go deep on any of them.** — Same vital-few discipline as everywhere else in this catalogue — a focused guide that goes deep on three topics beats a shallow pass across eight. ## What it connects to Downstream: - **Voice of the customer (VOC) evidence log** (`voc-evidence-log`) — The quotes and observations this interview produces are exactly what feeds the evidence log — log them as they come in, not from memory afterward. - **Affinity diagram** (`affinity-diagram`) — Once you've run several interviews, an affinity-diagramming session is where the individual quotes get synthesized into real themes. ## Where AI helps Judgement — stays with you: - Deciding whether a drafted question actually fits the real conversation, or reworking it before the interview - Knowing when to deviate from the guide because something more interesting just came up Analysis — AI helps: - Drafting open-ended questions and real follow-up probes from a stated research goal - Drafting interview-technique reminders specific to this guide's context Drudgery — automated: - Counting topics and questions - Exporting to xlsx in the house format --- Customer interview guide is licensed [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Attribution: Katafacts (katafacts.com). ## Using this skill Apply this method as part of whatever broader task, instructions, or deliverable you're already working on -- it's a method to use, not a standalone conversation to start. There is no generation tool for this catalogue yet, so draft the artifact's actual content yourself, following the fields above, the same way a person filling this out by hand would. The canonical guide page and a downloadable worked example (.xlsx) are at https://www.katafacts.com/katas/customer-interview-guide.