# Interview customers about their workflow, never their wishlist

- Category: mindset
- Author: Mihai Negrea (https://indie.md/people/mihai-negrea/)
- Source: https://indie.md/events/indie-tm-12-timisoara-july-2026/
- Canonical URL: https://indie.md/advice/interview-the-workflow-not-the-wishlist/

Of the thirty or so customer interviews Mihai scheduled, ten to twelve happened, and in every one he refuses the founder's favorite question. He never asks what features people want; he asks what they do: walk me through the process, how many hours does it take, who on the team touches it. Feature requests are guesses filtered through what the customer imagines software can do, while workflow descriptions are facts, and the product opportunities sit visibly inside them, the daily bookmark-folder patrol, the hours lost to six SEAP menus. The show-up rate is also part of the lesson: schedule three times the interviews you need, because most will evaporate. Treat customer conversations as ethnography rather than requirements gathering, and the roadmap writes itself from the pain you observed instead of the wishlist you collected.