Conducting Customer Discovery Interviews for SaaS
A ready-to-use question bank for saas customer interviews — organized in the order you should actually ask them.
What questions should you ask in saas customer interviews? In summary, the key metric for a useful customer interview is asking about past behavior instead of hypothetical opinions — 'walk me through the last time this happened' produces evidence, while 'would you use a tool that does X?' produces a polite guess almost everyone agrees with.
Ask these in order. Each section builds on the last — skipping straight to pricing before establishing the problem produces weak, generic answers.
Who should you actually interview?
Browse validated ideas to find the target customer worth talking to first.
Browse SaaS ideas →Frequently asked questions
How many customer discovery interviews should I run?
8-10 people who genuinely have the problem is usually enough to spot a pattern. Fewer than that and you're pattern-matching on noise; more than that with no new information means you've heard enough.
Should I take notes during the interview or record it?
Recording (with permission) lets you stay present in the conversation instead of scribbling — you can always transcribe and review afterward for the specific language people use.
What's the biggest interviewing mistake founders make?
Asking leading questions like 'would you use a tool that does X?' Nearly everyone agrees to be polite. Ask about past behavior instead — what they actually did the last time the problem came up.
Turn your interview findings into a score.
Type your idea in plain English and see how it stacks up.
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