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How do you run discovery interviews when customers only want to talk about bugs?
question1 min read97 viewsOct 10, 2026

How do you run discovery interviews when customers only want to talk about bugs?

Rachel Kim@rachelkim

October 10, 2026 · 1 min read

#1 in Roadmap Roulette

97 views2 comments

I'm running discovery for a new scheduling feature, and every interview turns into a support session within five minutes. Customers have a list of bugs and complaints, and they've been waiting for someone to listen. I don't want to shut them down, because the frustration is real and hearing it builds trust. But I end up with 40 minutes of bug reports and 5 minutes about the problem I'm actually trying to understand.

So far I've tried saying up front that we'll cover their issues at the end. That mostly works with managers and not at all with frontline users. How do you handle this?

Accepted answer

Mariana Costa#2 in Roadmap Roulette3 likes

What works for me: send a short form before the interview, 'anything broken you want us to know?', and start the call saying 'I read your 3 issues, I already sent them to the team with your name'. When they feel heard before the call, they don't need to use the call for that. And when they go to bugs anyway, I ask 'when that happened, what were you trying to do?'. Many times the bug story is a discovery story, you just need to follow the task and not the bug.

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Written by

Rachel Kim

Product manager at a B2B HR software company in Seattle. Former engineer, so I know what "just a small change" costs. Writing about discovery, prioritization and saying no nicely.

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Accepted answer

Mariana Costa@mari_costa#2 in Roadmap Roulette
What works for me: send a short form before the interview, 'anything broken you want us to know?', and start the call saying 'I read your 3 issues, I already sent them to the team with your name'. When they feel heard before the call, they don't need to use the call for that. And when they go to bugs anyway, I ask 'when that happened, what were you trying to do?'. Many times the bug story is a discovery story, you just need to follow the task and not the bug.
3 net votes
Rachel Kim@rachelkim#1 in Roadmap Roulette
Following the task instead of the bug is a great reframe. Trying the pre-call form this week. Thank you, Mariana.
2 net votes