FDE Foundations · Module 2: Customer Discovery
Running a Discovery Interview
A discovery interview is 80 percent listening. Open with the operator's last bad day, follow the workflow, and leave with numbers, not adjectives.
11 min reading
Objectives
- Open an interview without pitching a solution
- Use past-incident questions to surface real workflows
- Close with a confirmed, measurable problem statement
Do not pitch
The moment you present a solution in discovery, the customer stops describing the problem and starts evaluating your demo. Park every idea you have. Your only job in the room is to understand the workflow well enough to rebuild it.
Questions that work
- "Walk me through the last time this broke. What did you do first?"
- "What do you do when the tool is down? Show me the workaround."
- "How do you know it worked? Who checks, and how often?"
- "What would have to be true for this to be worth your team's time?"
Past-incident questions beat hypothetical ones: memory of a real event includes the sequence, the tools, and the emotion of the actual work.
Capturing the result
End by reading back a one-sentence problem statement with a number attached, for example: "Your team spends six hours per day reconciling carrier invoices, with a two percent error rate that triggers customer penalties." If the operator corrects you, the correction is the discovery.
If your notes contain adjectives like slow and messy but no counts, durations, or frequencies, the interview is not finished.
Quick check
An optional 2-3 question self-check. Answers never leave your device, are not stored, and never count toward any assessment.
Exercise
Interview a colleague about a real recurring task in their work using four questions from this lesson. Write the one-sentence problem statement with a number, and note where they corrected your first version.
Pass criteria
Four questions used verbatim or adapted, at least one number captured, and a revised problem statement recorded after the correction.