How to choose the right customers for product discovery interviews
Find the best participants for every type of learning goal
Last updated: May 2025
Discovery interviews only produce meaningful insights when you speak to the right people. This guide explains how to match each learning goal with the right participants and create a system you can use again and again. |
You cannot talk to everyone (and you should not try). Interviews only create value when you speak with the people who are closest to the problem you are solving. Yet too often, discovery starts with whoever is easiest to reach.
User interviews are a cornerstone of product discovery — but the insights you gather are only as strong as the people you include.
It is tempting to rely on familiar voices: the most vocal critics, the power users who always respond. But these perspectives can be outliers. If you talk to the wrong segment, the feedback you get feels disconnected and your next step feels unclear.
Discovery should sharpen your thinking. That only happens when your learning goal and participant selection are tightly aligned.
Link customer research to product decisions with Aha! Discovery.
Whether you are exploring churn, validating a concept, or identifying usability gaps, the participants you choose matter. This guide breaks down how to select the right customers based on your learning goals and build a system you can use again and again.
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Define your discovery interview objective
Every discovery effort should start with a specific learning goal. What do you want to understand? Why now? (A customer interview template can help you organize your thoughts.)
Different types of discovery work require different types of input. If you are looking for fresh ideas, you need to speak with people who see your product from a new angle. If you are trying to understand why something is not working, you need to hear directly from those feeling the friction.
At Aha! we think about user interviews in four broad categories, each tied to a specific type of learning:
1. Discovery interviews: Explore new opportunities to improve or extend the product
2. Feedback interviews: Understand pain points in real usage
3. Usability interviews: Observe how people navigate workflows
4. Validation interviews: Assess whether a concept solves the problem
Clarifying your learning goal will help you decide who to talk to, what to ask, and how to analyze what you hear. This is how you elevate individual conversations to truly hear the voice of the customer — a collective understanding that informs your product strategy.
Let's walk through each category in depth.
1. Discovery interviews: Explore opportunities and future product ideas
Expansion opportunities often show up in edge cases or from people using the product in ways you did not anticipate.
When your goal is to explore new directions or expand what exists, talk to a wide range of customers. Power users can reveal advanced edge cases. Less engaged users might surface gaps, unmet needs, or reasons for drop-off. A variety of perspectives helps you spot patterns and spark new ideas.
Here is a category breakdown:
Goal: Generate new ideas or explore ways to extend your product.
Who to talk to: This includes a range of customers — from power users to first-timers. It also includes potential users who match your target personas, but have not adopted the product yet.
What to look for: Seek out people who have used the product in different ways or who represent your ideal future customer. Include these interviews at key lifecycle moments, such as new signups, upcoming renewals, or recent churn.
Pro tip: Ask CS or sales who stands out — especially people who see things differently or push use cases beyond the core.
In Aha! Discovery: Use tags to group participants by usage patterns or engagement level. When you are ready to explore new opportunities, you can easily invite a balanced mix of folks to your study.
The Participants page in Aha! Discovery is where you see all your customers in one place — and quickly find the right people for research.
2. Feedback interviews: Uncover pain points and product gaps
Not every problem shows up in your data. Some issues only become clear when you hear customers describe them in their own words.
When your goal is to understand pain points or uncover sources of frustration, start with the people who have already spoken up. Maybe they submitted a support ticket, shared feedback in your ideas portal, or flagged something during onboarding. These customers are often your most direct line to the areas that need attention. Whether it is a missing feature or a confusing workflow, their input can help you pinpoint real product gaps.
Here is a category breakdown:
Goal: Get to the root of customer frustration and understand where your product is falling short.
Who to talk to: Identify people who recently reported an issue, suggested an improvement, or reached out for help.
What to look for: Check for feedback tied to a specific part of the product — especially when it is emotionally charged or recurring.
Pro tip: Pay attention to negative feedback. Even a critical comment can point to a meaningful opportunity.
In Aha! Discovery: If you use Aha! Ideas, your participant list is already growing. Anyone who submits feedback through your portal is added to your list of potential research participants automatically — making it easy to invite them to a study when you are ready to dig deeper.
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3. Usability interviews: Observe real usage and identify friction
You cannot improve what you do not understand. And the best way to understand usage patterns is to observe real behavior — not just gather opinions.
When your goal is to assess usability, you need to go beyond opinions and observe actual behavior. Where do users get stuck? What steps do they take instinctively, and where do they hesitate or work around limitations? These moments often reveal what works well and what gets in the way.
Here is a category breakdown:
Goal: Observe how customers interact with your product and note points of confusion or friction.
Who to talk to: Talk with people who actively use the feature or workflow you want to evaluate — or those who try to accomplish the same task a different way. You might also include participants who have never used the feature, especially if you are testing a prototype or early concept.
What to look for: Identify usage patterns, skipped steps, and workarounds. Pay attention to how people interact with a prototype or new concept. What feels intuitive, where do they pause, and what assumptions do they bring to the experience?
Pro tip: Do not rely on titles or seniority. Use behavioral data to find participants who are actually using the product.
In Aha! Discovery: Interview history is automatically tracked. This means you can avoid repeat outreach and keep usability feedback fresh and relevant.
4. Validation interviews: Evaluate early concepts with the right customers
You have a concept in mind. Now, you need to understand how customers perceive the problem and what they expect from a solution.
When your goal is to validate early functionality before it is fully defined, talk to the people it is designed to help. These conversations show you whether the concept resonates, how it fits into existing workflows, and whether it actually addresses a real need. The goal is not to confirm your assumptions — it is to reveal gaps in understanding and sharpen your direction based on what you hear.
Here is a category breakdown:
Goal: Evaluate whether a concept solves a real problem in a way customers understand.
Who to talk to: Find participants who closely match the intended use case, even if they are not frequent users yet. What matters is relevance, not engagement.
What to look for: Seek participants who requested this type of functionality or share relevant attributes (e.g., team size, role, or workflow).
Pro tip: Be deliberate in how you describe the concept. Offer just enough context to invite useful feedback, leaving room for input that might shift your plans.
In Aha! Discovery: You can link interview insights directly to features or initiatives on the roadmap — so customer input stays connected to the work it supports.
Connect studies and interviews to your initiatives, epics, and features in Aha! Roadmaps and Aha! Ideas.
How to work cross-functionally to find interview participants
You do not have to do product discovery work alone. And in most organizations, you cannot.
Product managers are not always the ones talking to customers every day — but other teams are. Sales, support, customer success, and marketing all have valuable insight into who is worth reaching out to and why. Tap into their knowledge to find great participants you might otherwise miss.
Ask CS about recent onboarding friction. Sales can flag prospects who evaluated competitors. Support sees where users hit the same blockers repeatedly. And marketing could have insights into highly engaged community members or social followers.
If you are launching a new product or do not have a large customer base yet, you will need to get creative:
Recruit from communities where your target users already spend time. Just be mindful of each space's norms.
Invite people during moments of natural interaction, like in-person events or interactive webinars.
Use your network intentionally. Reach out to relevant connections or ask coworkers to refer potential participants who fit your target audience.
And remember: When you ask for help, make it a two-way exchange. Share what you learn in interviews and how you plan to use it. A quick follow-up (even a "Thanks, here's what we heard") builds trust and makes future collaboration easier.
Build a customer research database
If sourcing participants feels like a scramble — digging through Slack, chasing referrals, exporting another spreadsheet — it is time to centralize. A centralized research database helps you track who you have already spoken to, what you learned from them, and who to reach out to next.
This is more than a contact list. It is a system for grouping participants in meaningful ways so you can quickly identify the right people for any type of discovery work. You might group customers by feature usage, job role, industry, or the type of feedback they provided. Over time, this gives you a clearer picture of who is available and how they fit into future research.
You can even go a step further by creating opt-in research groups. These are customers who have explicitly said they are willing to share feedback — making it faster and easier to recruit the next time a question arises.
It is simple to build and maintain a participant database in Aha! Discovery. You can import contacts, tag them with custom fields, track interview history, and group participants, all in one place.
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Discovery work becomes more focused and impactful when you match your learning goal to the right audience. But the real value comes when you treat each interview as part of a larger system — not just a single moment of feedback. A thoughtful participant strategy helps you not only spot patterns, but also build a deeper understanding of your customers over time.
FAQs about sourcing the right people for user interviews
Aim for enough conversations to reveal clear patterns (typically five to seven per segment or persona). Keep going until the answers start to repeat. That is usually a sign you have gathered enough input to move forward confidently.
Team up with customer-facing colleagues. Explain what you want to learn and how you will use the input. You might also offer to share your notes or outcomes. If interviews are not an option, try shadowing support calls or reviewing anonymized tickets to gather early insights.
Include a mix. Happy users help you understand what is working. Frustrated ones show where you are falling short. You need both to see the full picture.
Yes, as long as it is intentional. Some customers have unique insights or deep knowledge of your product. But be careful not to rely on familiar voices too heavily; you might risk confirming what you already believe instead of learning something new.
Recruiting takes effort. Make it easy for people to say yes:
Personalize your message and be clear about what you need.
Keep the ask short and specific.
Use tools that let participants self-schedule or respond asynchronously when possible.
Ask a trusted customer success or sales rep to introduce you.
