Get Out of the Building—There Is No Substitute for Direct Customer Contact

You hesitate outside the coffee shop, tablet in hand and butterflies in your stomach. This is not your comfort zone—making cold calls or introducing yourself to strangers just to ask about their day. Yet, once inside, you catch the eye of your first interviewee, a tech-savvy student with an old backpack slung on one shoulder. You offer to buy her a coffee in exchange for ten minutes of honest feedback.

The first three minutes are awkward, but you push through, focusing on her words as she talks about the pain of organizing assignments. You resist the urge to pitch or defend, nodding as she jokes about lost post-its and last-minute submissions. Her candor disarms you. After she leaves, you scribble notes, realizing half her complaints never even crossed your team’s mind.

Week after week, you repeat the routine with others—at libraries, bus stops, park benches—sometimes getting nothing, sometimes leaving with a story that sparks a new idea or kills an old one. It never really gets easy, but it does get easier. The scribbled insights grow into themes, priorities shift, and so does your confidence.

Behavioral science shows that direct, in-person interaction beats surveys, analytics, or assumptions for uncovering real motivations and unsolved problems. Regular contact trains you to see through superficial feedback and builds the empathy that great products require.

Put it in your calendar: once each week, reach out to—or meet up with—at least one target customer and listen with the true goal of learning, not persuading. After each conversation, sum up the biggest surprise or the thing that most challenged your assumptions. By making this a weekly habit, you’ll keep your thinking grounded in reality and build genuine insights that no focus group or analytics dashboard can match. Start the cycle this week and keep at it—small steps, big returns.