Jon: Welcome to empathy deployed the podcast where you can experience an
example customer interview every week.
You'll discover new perspectives on different software products and improve
your customer interview technique.
As I attempt to do the same
I'm Jonathan Markwell.
This episode provides some background on why I started this podcast.
If you'd like to get straight into some customer interview examples,
you can skip to episode one.
I've lost jobs, falling out with co-founders and had my software
products fail, because I didn't understand other people's perspective.
I really enjoy writing software and tinkering with my own ideas.
My comfort zone is not talking to anyone.
Unsurprisingly, multiple colleagues have given me feedback,
telling me I lack empathy.
I spent over a decade struggling with this along with the anxiety,
depression, and debt that often followed, I think fortunate to see
more than my fair share of success.
I've helped four B2B subscription businesses go from zero to
over 1 million in revenue.
After spending hundreds of thousands of pounds building the wrong thing,
they discovered the problem they should have been solving all along.
I can trace the success of each of them to a few conversations where the founders
empathized with customers, luck played far more of a part than it should
have in making those conversations.
I've had many teachers who have taught me the importance of
empathy over the last 15 years.
I've attended conferences, listen to podcasts, read books and taking courses.
They've drilled it into me.
I know having more empathy for customers, colleagues, friends,
and family would be a good thing.
It will help me grow personally and professionally, and I will
be better equipped to help them.
Yeah, I still fail to practice it regularly.
I've wondered if I'm just not cut out for it.
I learned I was dyslexic at 16, which explained some of my
struggles with work at school.
I also really struggled with making friends and keeping them last year.
My son was diagnosed as autistic and I learned much more about
neurodiversity as a result.
I know I'm an introvert, but I suspect I may have ADHD and, or
be autistic as well, either way.
I feel I need to put far more work into having and displaying
empathy than other people might.
There's one podcast I've kept up with every episode of over the
last year, and it's really helped.
I started listening to the software social podcast, because I wanted to change from
hearing the experiences of men without children starting software businesses.
I kept listening because I found it more insightful and
inspiring than anything else.
I relate to the hosts.
Colleen schnetzler as a Ruby developer and Michelle Hanson as a customer research.
Yeah.
I found one episode, particularly fascinating.
And interview of one of Colleen's customers conducted by Michelle.
In the example, interview Michelle expertly demonstrated what questions to
ask, how to ask them and how to respond.
The example is an excellent companion to Michelle's book, deploy empathy.
I was lucky enough to get early access when she started publishing chapters
to her newsletter earlier, this.
It was the practical guide to interviewing customers that I, and many
of my clients always needed the book and interviewing combined inspired me
to conduct 12 customer interviews for both my clients and my own businesses.
Michelle's work helped me have some of the most insightful customer
interviews I've ever experienced.
We learned pricing for one product was far too low for some custom.
We learned the job and other product did for customers was completely different
from how we described it on the website.
I found myself talking to people outside of work in far more positive ways.
I was getting a better understanding of how and why other people were thinking
certain things, even when I didn't agree with their ideas, then before
I knew it, I realized I had failed to keep up with this new practice.
Weeks had gone by since my last customer interview, I spent another with my
heading code, not talking to anyone outside of my household, I'd likely fall
into the trap of building more stuff.
Nobody wants I was stressed and it was showing outside of work too.
Now there's a hack I've used repeatedly over the years to force me to do
something that doesn't come naturally.
I'm really bad at starting conversations with people and
building long-term relationships.
I learned early on that if you organize something, people will
inevitably come to you with questions and break the ice for you.
So I started meetups conferences and even a coworking community to get to know
people and keep seeing them regularly.
I can now trace most of my best clients and many of my
closest friends back to doing.
I felt I needed a new hack to keep me in the habit of doing customer interviews,
listening to an example, customer interview every week might do the trick.
I'd have a steady source of inspiration to do it myself.
I found other people were looking for this, but no one
else seemed to be doing it.
So after checking Michelle wasn't planning something similar, I started this pub.
I'm recording this intro after doing the first two interviews, I've
learned about highly valued products.
I was previously unaware of I've learned why they were chosen by people working
in different businesses to my own.
I'm hopefully getting better at empathizing with
people with each interview.
You can be the judge of that.
They're not perfect.
I'm still learning, but I think you're going to find them as fascinating as that.
Each episode explores a different software product from the perspective
of a different user I'm being guided by the interview script, Michelle
includes and deploy empathy.
I'm primarily focusing on business software products as that's
always been my area of interest.
You might hear from people using your competitor's
products in parts of the world.
You don't yet have customers in.
Hopefully this will help you to discover new perspectives.
Make better products and do more customer interviews for your own products.
Guests will get some attention from my audience of business
owners and developers.
Those who haven't been on a podcast before.
Shouldn't find my questions at all.
Difficult to answer the focus will be on tools and services they've been using
rather than them and their own businesses seasoned podcasters will hopefully find is
a nice change of pace from other podcast.
But of course also gets influenced a few hundred people into building better
products while raising awareness of their own businesses and or causes.
If you'd like to join me as a guest on a future episode, please send me a note.
I'm jumped on Twitter.
That's J O T.
My DMS are open.
You can also use the form at empathy, deployed.com or email.
Hello at empathy deployed.
Please include the names and addresses of free software products
you use regularly and or pay for.
Now.
Let's get into the customer interviews.