Interviewing Customers No. 2

1) Fine tune your opportunity. You began with an idea of what an opportunity might be. After your first round of interviews, what do you think, now?

I changed my opportunity for this assignment as it seemed more practical in the interim. My opportunity is taking the pain out of doing laundry for people and providing a turn-key, no-hassle solution so they can regain hours per week on time spent doing laundry.

2) Fine tune the "who." Did you talk to the right customers last time? What did you do differently this time? How did you adjust your conceptualization of who your customers are?

Since my opportunity changed, I was not able to improve upon my customer selection this week as there was no existing data, but my focus was on women who likely do the laundry in their households. I screened the interviewees before recording to make sure they were the ones primarily responsible for laundry in their households.

3) Tweaking your interview questions. You might need to ask different kinds of questions to get at a fuller, richer idea of what your opportunity is. What kind of changes did you make?

Since the shift in my opportunity is more of a service base idea instead of a “grand scheme” as last week (improving Jacksonville’s downtown landscape), I had to completely start over with my questions to ask. I avoided asking dead-end questions in all of them (except for the main qualifier to ensure they were the ones responsible for laundry in their household).

The questions I asked:

1) How many times do you do laundry per week?

2) How many hours does that take?

3) Do you use a laundromat? If so, how often.

4) What do you think a fair price would be for someone to completely handle your laundry each week? (Or, if you wouldn't pay for a service like this, how much would you expect someone to pay you if you did their same amount of laundry that you do for yourself?)

5) If you did pay for a service that pics up your laundry, cleans it, and returns it, what kind of expectations would you have for this company at the price you just mentioned? (I.E. turn around time for clean clothes, if they should have the option to use green products, etc)

4) Go talk to customers! This is the same deal as last time: 5 people, you can't know them, you must video record them.

5) Tell us what you learned about the opportunity. You now have 10 interviews under your belt. What do you think about your opportunity now that's different from where you started? 

I think the doorstep laundry service is definitely viable. Laundry, in general, is one of my largest pet peeves (feels like such a waste of time), and I think many out there share this same sentiment. I believe my opportunity can put a value on the customer’s time and allow them to reclaim time spent every week on laundry in order to do other, more meaningful, things with their families. I believe that the service could be provided for a lot less than their envisioned value, which will result in added value for them (reclaimed time + a savings from the gap in perceived price).

6) Tell us what you learned about interviewing customers. You're practically an expert on interviewing customers. Please write three tips that you'd like to offer students in this class next semester about interviewing customers.

• 1) Just do it – it’s easy to talk yourself out of speaking to a specific person, but you will usually be surprised to their response. The people you think will help you out are the ones that will reject you, and the ones who don’t seem friendly to approach are usually the friendliest to talk to.

• 2) Don’t answer for the interviewee – let them talk and provide their own answers. As we were shown in class to not ask leading questions, the only way you’re going to benefit from their feedback is if it is truly their own feedback, not the result of a question loaded with your own beliefs and frustrations.

• 3) I found that the mall was a good place to do this exercise, as it gives you a wide sampling of people and you will usually find people sitting around waiting. This creates a good environment (as it gives the person something to do) and they are not in the middle of shopping or doing anything else. A park would also be a good place to complete the exercise as people will be there leisurely instead of on a mission.