Problem/Solution Interview

This type of interview allows you to gain qualitative insights on the pain points, perspectives, and needs of potential customers. By providing a solution at the end of the interview, the proposed value proposition can be tested and adapted according to the feedback.

Problem/solution interviews should always be the first step in validating your business model hypotheses. The advantage of this test format is that it is quickly developed, easily executed, and inexpensive. There is much debate about whether it makes more sense to start with interviews focused on potential problems even before generating ideas for new business models. Our experience has shown that both the interviewer and the interviewee benefit from having something tangible to discuss and give feedback on, thus we combine problem and solution interviews.

Helpful Tips

Come in well prepared: Collect the assumptions you want to test and have them in mind when conducting the interview.

Keep your questions open ended: You want to explore the mind of the customer, ask questions that lead to stories, personal experiences, and comments.

Get to the bottom: Always ask why multiple times (up to five times if you are able to) to get to the underlying motives of their comments.

Do it yourself: The opportunity to talk to customers is a humbling and very insightful experience, don’t give that task away.

Don’t do it alone: If possible, take someone with you to document the feedback on the spot and give a second opinion on what the customer meant.

Niko, Belgium’s market leader for switchgear, used Problem/Solution Interviews to gain insights into the interest of consumers in smart home solutions. Walmart used interviews with customers to come up with the well-known slogan “Save Money. Live Better”.

How to Guide

Develop an interview guideline including the main hypotheses you want to test, open ended questions, and a presentation of your value proposition. Be diligent and review your guide with others by conducting test interviews.

Identify potential interviewees that fit your target customer segment and set dates for face to face interviews. Be consistent with your identified customer target. It’s better to have fewer good interviewees than many that do not fit the customer profile you want to validate your hypotheses with. Ideally, go for 10-15 interviews, but just 5 interviews will give you a good first impression on the specific target customer. The recruitment tasks generally take the longest, so start with those.

Conduct the interviews. Always review the guidelines after 2-3 pilot interviews to check how the guide works and update it if necessary. Document your findings right after each interview in a predefined way and cluster the results per persona/segment.