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8 In Customer Discovery, Embrace The Customer's Flow and Stop Interrupting

Name: 8 In Customer Discovery, Embrace The Customer's Flow and Stop Interrupting
Uploaded: 2023-08-18T20:54:51+00:00
Duration: 1 min 12 s
Channel: Bob London
Description: Bob London critiques the popular active‑listening formula that urges interviewers to constantly affirm, paraphrase, and repeat back what a customer says…

18 Aug 2023 · 1 min

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1:12

Bob London critiques the popular active‑listening formula that urges interviewers to constantly affirm, paraphrase, and repeat back what a customer says. He argues that such frequent interjections—"uh‑huh," "I got it," or verbatim playback—interrupt the interviewee’s natural flow and can be distracting. Instead, London recommends listening to the full recording of discovery calls, waiting until the customer finishes a thought, and then offering a concise, synthesized summary that captures the essence of what was said. This approach helps both the interviewer and the customer clarify ideas without breaking the conversational momentum. He emphasizes that summarization should be natural, not robotic, and that clarification should only occur after the speaker has completed their point.

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So there's a concept called active listening, which has become very popular. And it says that you should engage with the other person by summarizing what they said, giving affirmation and things like that. I actually do not use that. I don't use it in the strict letter of that. I found if you listen to recordings of customer discovery conversations, which I do all the time because the teams that I teach bring their customer recordings back and we listen to them. If I'm talking to you, then think about what it's like when we're constantly saying, "Uh-huh. Uh-huh. I got it. What did you mean by that? Let me play that back to you." I'm from the school of thought, and in my practice, I believe that that actually can be a little distracting to the customer. Think of it as an interruption. Now, as far as the summary, summarizing what you heard, the goal is to understand what they're saying. If you need to clarify it, sure, go ahead and clarify it, but wait till they're done and then find a place where it feels natural to go back and say, "So here's what I heard you say." Don't try and get it literally. You're trying to synthesize what they're saying in a way that makes sense to you. And again, going back to before, that helps them clarify their thoughts. But I'm not a big believer in kind of robotically repeating back what people said every time they say something, because I feel that that's very disruptive to this thing called flow. Customers have a flow when they get on a roll. Let them go. Like, don't keep jumping in.