“Tell me about how you do this today.”
From Cindy Alvarez · Author of Lean Customer Development
Why it works
Alvarez built her five-question customer development framework around present-behavior questions because customers reliably misreport what they would do; they accurately report what they do. 'Tell me about how you do this today' is an invitation to narrate a real process, which surfaces the actual tools, handoffs, workarounds, and decision points that constitute the job-to-be-done. Blunter alternatives ('What features do you wish you had?') produce a wishlist anchored to your product's frame; this question produces a workflow map anchored to the user's reality. The narrative form — 'tell me about' rather than 'do you' or 'would you' — signals that you want a story, not a yes/no, and experienced interviewers know that stories contain the evidence.
When to ask
At the start of any customer interview, before you have shown your product or mentioned features. It is also the right question whenever you are about to assume you understand a user's workflow — a single open invitation to describe the present state reveals more than a dozen targeted questions about it.
Good follow-ups
- What tools or workarounds are you using to get that done — what does your actual setup look like?
- What part of that process takes the most time, or do you dread most?
- When it goes wrong, what usually breaks down first?
Watch out for
Letting the answer stay at the summary level: 'I just email the team and we sort it out.' That is a polished description of a messy reality — press with 'Walk me through the last time you actually did that, step by step.' The friction lives in the details, not the summary.
Where to ask
- User interviewgreat
Alvarez designed this as a verbal opener — it creates a narrative space that a yes/no question closes before it opens.
- In-product surveyworkable
Adapt the blank to the specific workflow context ('Tell me about how you currently track your team's tasks') to make it answerable asynchronously.
Reworded for this context: “How are you currently handling [this task] — what does your process actually look like?”
- Sales callworkable
Effective as a discovery opener before any demo; the answer tells you which workflow sequences to show and which to skip.
Stage: Consider · A question popularized by Cindy Alvarez
Source: https://www.cindyalvarez.com/lean-customer-development/