Complete guide to conducting successful customer development (CustDev) interviews and what questions are harmful to ask potential customers

In this article, I've detailed how to conduct CustDev interviews, inspired by Rob Fitzpatrick and his book "The Mom Test: How to Talk to Customers and Learn If Your Business is a Good Idea When Everyone is Lying to You." I've analyzed common mistakes in CustDev according to the book and prepared recommendations and a checklist for preparing interviews with potential customers. The article includes examples from three large companies, comments from professionals, and additional study sources. Let's dive in!

Rob Fitzpatrick is a businessman and partner at Founder Centric Institute. He helps develop and implement educational programs in startups, companies, universities, and business accelerators.

"The Mom Test" teaches how to communicate with customers to extract business ideas from their answers. Rob provides practical tips to make interviews a useful source of information: minimizing exaggeration, recognizing disinterest, and asking logical questions. The main idea is that to have a successful business, you need to know the customer's needs. Only then will your product or service be truly in demand.

The article covers common mistakes in customer interviews and how to avoid them, with "The Mom Test" as a primary learning source.

Regarding the advice of "asking your mom," the author is joking. If you directly ask your mother if she likes your business idea, the conversation won't be useful. However, the book offers many recommendations on what to ask customers to understand how to develop your business.

What is the Benefit of Customer Interviews?

90% of startups do not survive beyond three years, according to the Startup Genome agency's analysis of 3,200 startups. The main reason is that the product does not meet customers' needs. This indicates that most startup founders do not understand for whom and how their product should be.

Opinion of Eric Ries, Author of "Lean Startup"

"The main task of a startup is to learn quickly. Interaction with customers and interviews are not just a way to collect feedback but tools to verify your hypotheses and accelerate the learning process. It's important not only to ask the right questions but also to be prepared for your assumptions to be wrong."

Comment by Steve Blank, Entrepreneur and Author of the Customer Development Methodology

"Get out of the building. The true test of your business model is not what happens inside your office, but how real people react to it. Customer development is not about convincing customers of the correctness of your vision, but about discovering and understanding their true needs."

Advice from Marc Andreessen, Co-founder of Andreessen Horowitz

"The market that actually exists is more important than the team. Even the best team will not succeed in a bad market. It's not only important to collect feedback from customers but also to analyze it in the context of the market to understand how significant the need for your product is."

Observation by Reid Hoffman, Co-founder of LinkedIn

"If you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you have launched too late. The idea is to get feedback from the market as quickly as possible, even if your product is not yet perfect. This allows you to learn and adapt faster."

Perspective of Jake Knapp, Author of "Sprint"

"The Sprint process involves quickly creating prototypes and testing with real users in just five days. This approach not only saves time and resources but also ensures that you are developing products based on real data and user needs, not assumptions."

Interviews are a way to understand the needs and tasks of potential customers. This understanding will help make the product truly useful for the target audience.

There are three types of business interviews:

1. Expert: Talking to a specialist who knows everything about your competitors and target audience. During the conversation, initial hypotheses about who the customer is, what their problem is, and how we can help them arise.
2. Problematic: Discovering the needs of a typical representative of your target audience and how the product should be for them to want to buy it.
3. Decision-making: Talking to a potential customer to find out if they are willing to buy the product.

Let's move on to the mistakes.

What mistakes are made in an interview with a client?

When conducting interviews, entrepreneurs often make the following mistakes:

• They describe their idea and ask for the interlocutor's opinion;
• They immediately ask leading questions;
• They use questions with words and phrases like "typically," "if you could," "how would you act," and similar;
• They start selling their product when the interlocutor expresses doubts.

Let's look at these mistakes using the example of the novice entrepreneur Juan. He noticed that in his city, there are few places to meet with partners or clients or simply work quietly with a laptop. Juan wants to open a coworking space. He invited his friend for a conversation to understand her needs. At first glance, everything seems to be going well: the friend works from home as a freelancer and might be interested in working in a coworking space.

— Rosa, I want to open a coworking space in the center. Do you think it's a good idea? — Excellent idea. There are a lot of remote workers now, and it’s not always possible to work from home: either my husband interferes, or the children want to play. — Tell me about your typical day when you work from home. — I get up at six, make breakfast for everyone. My husband takes the kids to kindergarten and goes to work. I wash the dishes, make coffee, and plan the day. I work until noon: I reflect, analyze metrics, set, and control tasks. Then I prepare lunch, clean, or do laundry. After two, I go back to work: make calls, and have meetings. At five, I pick up the kids, and in the evening, I no longer work. — Do the kids bother you? — Yes, sometimes I have to reschedule a meeting or a call when they are around. And in general, I could work more, but when the kids are at home, it's hard to concentrate. — Do you often meet with clients? — Yes, a couple of times a week. — Have you ever wanted to work in a café, and all the places were occupied? — Yes, that has happened. — What prevents you from seeing clients more often? — Probably, the lack of time. — Are you willing to pay for a place in a coworking space to work there occasionally and meet clients or colleagues? — Well... — It will only cost €200 a month. You can come on weekends or weekdays. Even in the evening, to finish your work quietly. — It's hard to say, Juan, I need to think. — Just imagine: air conditioning, soundproofing, comfortable chairs, large windows, fast Wi-Fi, no kids, no husband. — Wow, soundproofing is great! Then it's quite a reasonable price. — I told you, you'd like it. — Yes... You know, I have to go, I need to pick up the kids.

Now let's analyze this conversation.

Mistake №1: "I want to start a business, do you think it’s a good idea?"

Here, there are two mistakes right away: talking about the idea and asking the potential client's opinion.

❌ Talking about the idea is risky. The interview to discover the potential client's problems is not the place to talk about the idea. As soon as Juan explained his idea, he created certain expectations for the conversation: "I want to start my business and make sure it will be successful." Now Rosa, not wanting to seem indifferent, will try to support Juan's efforts: she gives compliments and adjusts her answers to his questions.

This kind of support harms the progress of the problem interview: the potential client ceases to be an objective source of information. Today Rosa praises the idea; tomorrow Juan invests money in it. And half a year later, it turns out that Rosa needed something different, for example, a nanny, but didn't dare to mention it so as not to offend Juan.

Reason for prevalence: Many entrepreneurs approach client interviews with already formed assumptions about what clients need or what their problems are. This is related to a cognitive bias known as the confirmation effect, where people seek, interpret, and remember information in a way that confirms their prior assumptions or beliefs.

Impact on the quality of information: As noted in research published in the Harvard Business Review, this approach can lead to the collection of distorted information that reinforces these assumptions, rather than provoking their reevaluation. This can lead to the development of products or services that do not meet the real needs of the market.

❌ Asking for an opinion is useless. Here are some reasons why you shouldn't ask for a potential client's opinion:

• Only after several years of work can you objectively judge how good an idea is. Even an expert's opinion must be tested in problem interviews. The only indisputable metric is the volume of sales of your product;
• People don't know what they want: the problem is on their side, the solution is on yours. If Henry Ford had asked what customers wanted, he would have sold faster horses, not cars.

✅ Start with problem verification. At the beginning of the conversation, check how the person you are interviewing fits. Ask how they are dealing with the problems you plan to solve with your product. The answers will show whether they have such a problem or not.

— Rosa, how is it working from home for you?

— I can't complain. Now I don't spend time and money on commuting to the office, I interact less with colleagues and achieve more.

— How do you work at night when your kids and husband are at home?

— Sometimes, the kids interfere, especially during calls.

— I understand, this question may seem silly, but it's important: how exactly do they interfere?

— They run in and shout: "Mom, I lost my duck!" and I am at that moment talking to the general manager of an oil company. Every time it’s uncomfortable.

Here are the following advantages: Rosa didn't have the opportunity to lie to support Juan, as he didn't expose his idea. Instead of compliments, Juan got valuable information: he learned that the kids interfere with Rosa during calls at night. This information can be used as a starting point: maybe coworking spaces need rooms for kids with animators.

Error No. 2: Asking Leading Questions in Advance

This is an error: the first three questions are leading, and only after them comes the open-ended one.

There are open-ended and leading questions. The difference between them is that leading questions imply a specific answer, while open-ended questions do not.

❌ You should not ask leading questions before asking open-ended questions. This can lead to the omission of important details or push the respondent to give answers that contradict reality. Leading questions are not even used in courts because they can lead to false testimonies.

Juan, in a failed dialogue, asked two leading questions. He used them to find out if Rosa has problems she plans to solve with his product. Let's consider one of these questions.

Juan asks: "Do you often meet with clients, right?" In this question, there is a statement: "Rosa often meets with clients." She confirms this by responding: "Yes, several times a week."

However, the reality is a bit different: Rosa tries to meet with clients but cannot always do so. Sometimes in a month, there is only one meeting, and the rest of the issues are resolved online.

Rosa thinks that since the question is about meetings, the number of meetings is important. She wants Juan to think that she is busy and active, so in the conversation, Rosa presents the desired as the real.

Reason for Prevalence: Leading questions are often used unconsciously. This is due to the desire to obtain confirmation of clients' ideas. Sometimes, entrepreneurs are not even aware that their questions can push respondents to give specific answers.

Impact on Information Quality: According to the MIT Sloan Management Review, leading questions can lead to biased responses that do not reflect the true opinions and needs of clients. This decreases the value of the collected data and can lead to incorrect strategic decisions.

✅ Transition from Open-Ended Questions to Clarifying Questions. If you ask clarifying questions before open-ended questions, you may overlook how important the problem is to the person. Therefore, it is better to ask more general open-ended questions first and then move on to more specific clarifying questions.

For example, Juan asks an open-ended question: "How is it going working from home?" This way, he is exploring not a small problem but the person's general attitude. After the open-ended question, Rosa can immediately express all the real problems. Then you can ask a clarifying question, such as: "Do people at home bother you during calls?"

Rosa remembered the problem with the children only after the clarifying question. This leads to asking: is the presence of children during calls a problem? It is worth asking how interlocutors react when children enter Rosa's room. Perhaps Rosa's clients actually find the children charming, and although Rosa feels embarrassed, she is already used to it and is not looking for a solution. In that case, she would not need a coworking space, at least not to work in silence.

If you want to understand the real situation, ask open-ended questions and listen to the respondent's answers.

Error No. 3: Asking a Person's Opinion About Their Needs

This is an error: using the word "typically" undermines the objectivity of the response.

Juan asked Rosa to describe her typical workday from home. In such a situation, Juan risks missing important information or encountering dishonesty. For example, Rosa did not mention in her description that her husband gets sick several times during the season, and during that time, he is at home. On those days, Rosa prefers to work in a coworking space.

To avoid these problems, ask about facts, not someone's fantasies. If the answer seems incomplete, ask additional questions.

Reason for Prevalence: Respondents may try to answer in a way that makes them look better or meets the interviewer's expectations. This phenomenon is known as the social desirability effect. People may not express their true feelings or opinions for fear of being misunderstood or judged.

Impact on Information Quality: The social desirability effect can significantly distort the obtained data, as indicated by research from Harvard Business Review, making them less reliable for business decision-making. This is particularly important in the context of new product development, where understanding the true needs of clients is critical.

Error No. 4: Selling When the Person Has Expressed Doubts

Here is the error: first a dangerous construction "would be" is used, and then Juan begins to actively sell the coworking space.

Let's consider the conclusion of a failed communication. Here are several errors at once: an incorrectly formulated question and pressure on the potential client. We have already discussed why you should not ask questions about the business idea and, moreover, about the future purchase: there is a high risk of getting an insincere response. Now let's talk about pressure.

• You talk more than your interlocutor.
• The interlocutor gives you many compliments.
• "No, you misunderstood me. Everything is organized differently."
• "That's correct, but another task is also solved!"
• The interlocutor responds without emotion and monosyllabically: "yes," "uh-huh," "maybe," and you ask questions with great enthusiasm in your voice.

The ability to insist on your own is a useful quality for an entrepreneur, but in the research of needs, it works against the business.

When Rosa felt the pressure, she carefully expressed her doubts and agreed that the product was not bad to support Juan. As a result, Juan overlooked the doubts and now thinks that his product will be in demand.

Perhaps Juan is simply not ready to discover that no one needs his coworking space. It can be understood: he has been nurturing the idea for a long time, has written a forty-page business plan, has already gathered half the team, and it turns out that all this was in vain. But it is better to stop now when Juan has spent 50,000 ₽, and not in two years when the expenses reach two million.

Experienced product managers say that only one out of 10 hypotheses is confirmed. That is, it is necessary to conduct nine series of interviews to understand which hypotheses are incorrect. When Rosa expressed doubts, Juan could have listened to her and been closer to the coveted winning hypothesis. Bad news is good, it means you are making progress.

If you realize that you have started selling and praising the product, stop and return the conversation to the research track: "Sorry, I got carried away. We stopped at the fact that you don't have time to go to the gym. Were you looking for a gym closer to home or the office?"

During several years of working with small businesses, Rob Fitzpatrick wrote three books about what entrepreneurship taught him.

How to Conduct Customer Interviews

Before the Interview

In this article, I will focus on the interview and related questions. However, preparing for the interview is also crucial. I will provide general information on this topic and may write a separate post about it later.

Emphasis on Pre-Interview Research with Customers

Importance of Research:

Pre-interview research with customers is essential for several reasons:

• Identifies the right participants: It's crucial to interview people who are part of your target market and have experience with your product or service.
• Formulates relevant questions: Research helps you understand your customers' needs and problems, allowing you to ask pertinent and interesting questions.
• Avoids mistakes: Without prior research, you may interview the wrong people or ask irrelevant questions, affecting the quality of your interviews.

Tips for Pre-Interview Research:

• Review your customer data: Analyze customer data to understand their behavior, needs, and problems.
• Conduct market research: Investigate your target market to understand consumer trends, needs, and preferences.
• Read blogs and articles about customer interviews: Many online resources can help you learn about the customer interview process.
• Talk to other entrepreneurs: Converse with other entrepreneurs who have conducted customer interviews for advice and suggestions.

Benefits of Pre-Interview Research:

Pre-interview research helps you:

• Obtain valuable information about your customers.
• Formulate relevant and interesting questions.
• Avoid mistakes that can affect the quality of your interviews.
• Conduct more effective and efficient interviews.

Conclusion:

Pre-interview research with customers is essential for obtaining valuable information and conducting effective interviews. With prior research, you ensure that you interview the right people, ask the right questions, and get the information you need to improve your product or service.

Examples of Incorporating Pre-Interview Research in Your Customer Interview Process:

• Use your customer data to identify the right participants: Segment your email list by age, gender, location, or purchasing behavior to identify customers likely to provide valuable information.
• Use market research to formulate relevant questions: For example, if developing a new fitness app, conduct market research to understand the needs and problems of people who exercise. This information will help you ask relevant questions for your target audience.
• Read blogs and articles about customer interviews to learn about the process: Many online resources can help you learn about different interview techniques, how to ask questions, and how to analyze responses.

By conducting pre-interview research, you ensure that your customer interviews are effective and provide the information you need to improve your business.

During the interview

Recommendations based on research in communication psychology will help you understand clients' needs and problems, which is key to successful product validation and development. Follow these rules to obtain objective information:

1. Use active listening: Show interest in the interviewee's responses using verbal and non-verbal cues to encourage more open and honest answers.
2. Avoid technical jargon: Speak in the respondent's language to avoid misunderstandings and foster detailed discussion.
3. Identify the need, not the product: Determine if the person has a need that your product can meet at the beginning of the conversation.
4. Use open-ended questions: Start with open-ended questions. These allow the interviewee to freely express their thoughts and feelings, leading to deeper and more impartial information. Then move on to follow-up questions.
5. Focus on facts and experience: Ask about facts, not plans or self-perceptions. Questions about specific past experiences provide more reliable information than hypothetical or abstract questions.
6. Practice neutrality: Pay attention to doubts to understand why a hypothesis is incorrect and move on to the next one. Interviewers should maintain a neutral stance, avoiding agreement or disagreement with respondents' answers.
7. Reduce the effect of social desirability: Using anonymous surveys or ensuring data confidentiality can help respondents feel more comfortable expressing their true opinions.

Understanding and considering these aspects when planning and conducting client interviews will increase the likelihood of obtaining reliable and useful information, which will be the basis for successful product development.

Examples of good and bad questions

Rob Fitzpatrick's "Ask Mom" concept emphasizes the importance of asking the right questions when interacting with potential customers to get honest and informative answers that help validate and develop business ideas. Effective questions help avoid biases and socially desirable responses, revealing the true needs and problems of customers. Here are some examples of good and bad questions with comments based on research in communication psychology.

Questions you should ask:

Open-ended questions about problems and needs

• Good example: "Tell me about the last time you faced [description of the problem]?"
  • This question motivates the respondent to share a specific experience, providing a deep understanding of the real problem.

Questions about the current solution

• Good example: "What solutions have you already tried to deal with this problem?"
  • Asking about tested solutions helps you learn about satisfaction with current options and possible shortcomings.

Questions about the consequences of the problem

• Good example: "How does this problem affect your work/life?"
  • These questions allow you to assess the severity of the problem and its impact, which can indicate the degree of need for a solution.

Questions to avoid:

Questions that imply an answer

• Bad example: "You also consider this a big problem, right?"
  • These questions can push the respondent toward a specific answer and do not reflect their true opinion.

Questions related to hypothetical situations

• Bad example: "If you had solution X, would you use it?"
  • People often have difficulty visualizing their behavior in hypothetical situations, making responses to these questions unreliable.

Questions that require socially desirable answers

• Bad example: "Is it important for you to care about the environment when choosing products?"
  • Questions that imply a "correct" socially desirable answer can lead to information distortion due to the respondent's desire to present themselves in a more favorable light.

Major errors:

1. Asking leading questions
   • Avoid formulations that imply a specific answer.
2. Asking about hypothetical situations
   • Focus on real experiences and past situations.
3. Trying to sell an idea during the interview
   • Focus on gathering information, not selling.

Ways to avoid them:

1. Use open-ended questions
   • "Talk about the last time you faced this problem."
2. Focus on past experiences
   • "How did you solve this problem the last time?"
3. Neutral interviewer position
   • Maintain a neutral stance and listen actively.

More examples

Open-ended questions

• Can you tell me more about your experience with our product?
• What do you like about our product?
• What do you dislike about our product?
• What would you like us to change about our product?
• What would prevent you from recommending our product to others?

Specific examples of interview questions and answers

• What is the biggest frustration you have had with our product?
• What would you like us to change about our service?
• What made you choose our product over the competition?
• How would you describe our product to a friend?
• Would you recommend our product to others?
• How likely are you to recommend our product to others?
• What would prevent you from recommending our product to others?
• Is there anything else you would like us to know about your experience with our product?

Client Interview Preparation Checklist

1. Define the interview objectives
   • Determine what you want to know
   • Formulate key questions
2. Select appropriate participants
   • Identify your target audience
   • Recruit participants who match your ideal customer profile
3. Prepare the interview questions
   • Make a list of open-ended questions
   • Avoid leading and closed questions
4. Technical preparation
   • Check the recording equipment (if planning to record)
   • Ensure the interview location is quiet and comfortable
5. Conducting the interview
   • Start with an informal conversation to establish rapport
   • Follow a flexible interview plan but be open to deviations

Analysis of the responses obtained

Analyzing information from client interviews requires a careful and systematic approach to uncover valuable insights and determine future actions. Here are some recommendations for analyzing client responses, covering both qualitative and quantitative analysis.

Qualitative Analysis

1. Thematic analysis: Re-read interview transcripts and highlight key themes, ideas, and motives. Use color-coding or labels to indicate patterns or recurring ideas.
2. Data coding: Develop a coding system to classify and organize information. Codes can represent specific problems, solutions, emotional expressions, or suggestions. Coding helps structure the data for deeper analysis.
3. Affinity diagram construction: Use affinity diagrams to visualize relationships between different ideas and themes. This helps reveal non-obvious connections and key areas for innovation.
4. Searching for stories and quotes: Highlight expressive stories or quotes that illustrate important moments or feelings of the clients. These "voices of the clients" can be powerful for team communication and product development.

Quantitative Analysis

1. Frequency analysis: For multiple-choice questions or rating scales, count the frequency of specific responses. This can help determine which problems or features are most important to the majority of respondents.
2. Correlation analysis: Use statistical methods to identify possible correlations between different responses or characteristics of respondents. For example, investigate if customer satisfaction levels are related to product usage frequency.
3. Data segmentation: Divide the data into segments based on key demographic or behavioral characteristics of the respondents. This allows for a more detailed analysis of the preferences and needs of different user groups.

General Recommendations

• Use mixed methods: Combine qualitative and quantitative analysis to get a more complete picture. Qualitative data helps understand the "why," while quantitative data shows "how much" and "how often."
• Reliability verification: Ensure the reliability of your conclusions by reviewing the data multiple times and discussing it with the team. Additional interviews may be needed to verify initial perceptions.
• Data visualization: Use data visualization tools to create graphs, maps, and diagrams that help better understand and present the obtained information.
• Report preparation: Prepare a report that includes key findings, client quotes, and recommendations. This document will serve as the basis for strategic planning and product development.

By following these recommendations, you will be able to effectively analyze interview data and turn it into actionable insights that aid in product development and business strategy.

The methodologies of Rob Fitzpatrick, especially the approaches to "interviewing" clients to validate business ideas, have been reflected in the practice of many companies. Here are some real-life examples demonstrating the successful application of these principles.

Example 1: Dropbox

Problem: The Dropbox team had trouble demonstrating their product to potential users. Instead of directly asking clients, they created a short demo video explaining key features and benefits of using their cloud storage.

Application of Fitzpatrick's advice: Instead of asking clients if they would like the product, Dropbox showed how the product works in practice and observed market reactions. This allowed them to gather feedback without imposing their own assumptions about what clients might like.

Result: The video went viral, significantly increasing the number of pre-registrations and confirming product demand.

Example 2: Zappos

Problem: Zappos founder Nick Swinmurn wanted to test the hypothesis that people were willing to buy shoes online but didn't know how to validate it without a significant investment.

Application of Fitzpatrick's advice: Instead of creating a full online store, Swinmurn photographed shoes in local stores and posted the photos online. When someone placed an order, he bought the shoes in the store and shipped them to the customer. This minimum viable product allowed direct feedback from real users.

Example 3: Lean Canvas

Problem: Ash Maurya, the creator of Lean Canvas, was looking for a way to simplify the startup planning process so entrepreneurs could validate their business models more quickly.

Application of Fitzpatrick's advice: Maurya developed Lean Canvas as a tool for rapid business model creation and began sharing it with other entrepreneurs for feedback. Instead of simply asking for opinions, he observed how entrepreneurs used the canvas and how it impacted their planning process.

Result: Lean Canvas has been widely adopted by startups worldwide as an effective tool for business model development and validation.

These examples demonstrate how the principles described by Rob Fitzpatrick can be applied in practice to validate business ideas and gather valuable client feedback without significant costs or biases.

Conclusion

After understanding the key points of client interaction and business idea validation, it's time to take concrete steps. Don't stop at what you've achieved. Here’s what you can do today to start applying the acquired knowledge:

• Subscribe to my newsletter. I regularly write posts about product management, marketing, and soft skills development.
• Try conducting your first interview with a potential client tomorrow. Use the interview preparation checklist to ensure you don't miss anything important.
• Schedule a brainstorming session with your team to discuss obtained insights and determine the next steps in developing your product or service.

Your actions today will determine your project's success tomorrow. Don't miss the opportunity to improve! Research, test, analyze, and constantly improve. And remember, every step forward, even the smallest, brings you closer to your final goal. Good luck on this journey!

Additional Study Resources

Books

1. "The Mom Test" by Rob Fitzpatrick
   • This book is the basis of many recommendations mentioned and offers practical advice on how to ask clients questions to get useful feedback, even when people try to be polite.
2. "Lean Startup" by Eric Ries
   • The book presents a methodology for rapid and effective business idea validation and product development through the creation of minimum viable products (MVPs) and iterative learning based on client feedback.
3. "Sprint" by Jake Knapp
   • The authors propose a five-day plan to solve important problems and test new ideas at Google Ventures, which can be applied in any organization.

Courses

1. Customer Development and Lean Startups (Coursera, Udacity, edX)
   • Look for courses on these topics on online education platforms for an in-depth study of methodologies for interacting with clients and developing business models.
2. "How to Build a Startup" by Steve Blank (Udacity)
   • The course offers an in-depth study of the Customer Development process, which is a key element of the Lean Startup methodology.

Video Resources

1. TED Talks on Entrepreneurship and Innovation
   • On the TED platform, you can find many presentations by well-known entrepreneurs and experts sharing their stories and lessons on interacting with clients and validating ideas.
2. Y Combinator Startup School
   • This resource offers lectures and materials from one of the most successful startup accelerators in the world, including advice on how to interact with clients and test products.

Additional Resources

1. "Intercom on Product Management" (the book is available on Intercom's website)
   • Offers practical advice on product management and client interaction from the Intercom team, which develops software for customer communication.