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🗣️ Example Customer Discovery Interview Script

Purpose: Understand the customer’s pain and how they currently deal with it. ​Tone: Conversational, curious, and empathetic. ​Avoid pitching your idea! Focus on learning.
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🔹 1. Warm-Up (2–3 min)

Start casual. Build rapport. Ideally even a personal relationship through any connection you may have or be able to establish. Then proceed to the interview:
“Thanks for taking the time. I’m trying to better understand how ªpeople like) you handle [domain/problem area].”
“Can you tell me a bit about your role/day-to-day?”
Get to understand their role well enough to be able to represent them internally in your startup as the proxy voice of the customer.
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🔹 2. Explore the Problem Space (5–10 min)

“What are some of the biggest challenges you face with [relevant area]?”
“Walk me through the last time that happened.”
“What did you do? How did you try to solve it?”
“What was frustrating or hard about that?”
🔍 Follow-up with:
“Why was that a problem?” “Can you give me an example?” “How did that affect your work/life?”
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🔹 3. Validate with the a framework like the 4Us (5–7 min)

Unworkable
“What happens if you don’t solve this?”
“How significant are the consequences for you / the business?”
“Have you ever built a workaround?”
Unavoidable
“Is this something you must deal with — or could you ignore it?”
Urgent
“When it came up last, how quickly did you need to act on it?”
Underserved
“What have you tried so far?”
“What’s still frustrating or missing?”
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🔹 4. Wrap-Up (2–3 min)

A this stage, you want to build trust, not trigger defenses by starting to pitch in any way. So while you could ask questions like
“If something made this way easier, how valuable would that be to you?”
or
“Would you be open to seeing something later if we build a prototype?”
Don’t be tempted into that line of questioning too early. The goal is to leave the door open genuinely, while also leaving them intrigued.
“You’ve clearly thought about this a lot. As wex` end up digging deeper, would you be open to further conversation to validate how me plan on overcoming your challenges?”
Remember you first want to have such a clear definition of their problem that building a value proposition and solution for it is obvious.
If you’ve really built trust you could also go to things like:
“Anyone else you think I should talk to, that might help me understand this further?”
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✨ Tips:

Stay neutral. Ask open questions. Avoid selling or leading questions.
Focus on understanding their actual situation and business, not hypotheticals.
Record (with permission) or take good notes.
Don’t worry about asking every question — flow with the conversation and leave the interviewee feeling excited to continue the dialog and learn more how you can help them.
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